Making your workplace desk look quirky

Oddly shaped sticky notes, funky notebooks, magic erasers and many otherwise weird stationeries are adding fun to our work life, writes Pritha Banerjee

In today’s world where notebook and notepads are mostly referred to as a piece of technology, there also exist a breed of stationery addicts. The craze for fancy journals is still alive in them as they are always hunting for ways to add some funk to their studies or work. To meet this demand, there are numerous online and offline stores offering an amazing variety of stationery. There is a high chance that you may fall for these adorable products even if you don’t use them.

Magical desk 

No matter how tech savvy you are, some diaries and pens are so adorable that even your wallet wouldn’t mind paying for them. For the people who are always on desk multi-tasking on a tight schedule, sticky notes, dairies, and pens are life savers. A pinch of quirkiness can only make work more interesting.

Boring notebooks are the thing of the past now because there are a couple of online stores which offers affordable notebooks with graphic artworks, fandom messages, and motivational quotes. Instanote.in offers products that have a Pinterest-y charm to it. The website has a huge range of stationery products which includes travel journals, mouse pads, and planners in the range of Rs 300 – 500. From offbeat cardholders to cool badges, the products can single-handedly brighten up your workspace.

Cooliyo, an online shopping platform, also creates a community of buyers and sellers of stationery products. If you are someone who prefers a personal touch to their workstation then you cannot miss out on this website. For more offbeat products, you can also check out Kraftly and Happily Unmarried besides many more.

Old-schooled

For most of the college students, when asked what they prefer as Valentines’ Day gift, the choice was simple. Away from cliché gifts like chocolates and stuffed animals, beautiful stationeries, customised fountain pens, and hand-written notes topped the list of items to gift. “All of my friends are strict when it comes to diet and we would prefer funky notebooks and notes as gifts more than chocolates. Personally, I feel handwritten notes are much more heartfelt and romantic than anything else,” says Arpan Banerjee, a college student.

Even though most of us might prefer digital calendar and notebooks to keep a track of our upcoming meetings, many prefer jotting it down on paper. According to the psychologists, writing down things is actually beneficial as it helps us to ease mental clutter. “It is easier to remember things if we write it down as it stimulates a bunch of cells at the base of the brain which is called the reticular activating system (RAS). The RAS acts as a filter for the things that your brain needs to process. It gives more importance to the stuff which you’re actively focusing on at the moment. When you write something that physical activity brings the things that you need to remember to the forefront,” claims Dr Archana Sharma, counselling psychologist from Kolkata.

“De-cluttering the workspace can increase the productivity”, says Dr Sharma. Apart from colourful furniture, getting quirky stationery and creative planners for the employees can actually help to boost the mood. “It depends on person to person, for some people it might be a distraction. But colours are highly effective on a person’s mood and it increases output and sparks creativity,” she adds.    

Innovative and environmental friendly

Where there is creativity, there is also innovation and the stationery market is booming because of it. If your child loves to draw all over the house, you don’t need to worry about your expensive paint. You can buy him/her washable crayons from Kokuyo-Camlin. Children are encouraged to play with colours and be creative, as scientists believe that it enhances their brain.

Aparupa, a pre-school teacher from Mumbai, says, “The students actually enjoy the process of learning when they are taught using colours. We have students with learning disabilities who require a calming environment. Their aggressive and anxious behaviour decreases when exposed to a colourful environment.” This is due to a notable drop in blood pressure and it changes when the environment changes, Dr Sharma says explaining the behaviour of the child.

“The products offered by Kokuyo-Camlin are not only innovative but also easy to use. The brush pens are really interesting because you don’t have to worry about colours and pallets when you are painting. These pens have flexible brush tips for medium, small and bold strokes,” says Tuli, an arts and craft teacher from Mumbai.

We are living in an age when most of the people are aware and using environmental-friendly products. They are not hesitating to pay a bit extra to buy products which are not harmful to the environment. Thus, huge sales of the notebook made of handmade papers are not surprising to any of us. Xerox Corporation, one of the biggest company that sells print and digital document solutions, has invented a way to make prints last only for a day so that the paper can be re-used. These temporary prints will help save a lot of paper in offices.

Extra expense

As the new school session begins, it’s time to buy new stationery. Not just in the office, stationery is a big part of school’s daily requirements. At the beginning of each session comes a huge list of stationery for the parents that include different types of highlighters, pens, paper, files, and folders. The request is for specific colours, brands, and even models ranging from binders to pencil. This becomes a huge trouble and mostly a waste of money because most of the stationery not used by the end of the year.

“It is not just the cost of the supplies; the teachers are actually forcing the students to bring a specific brand of stationery. They come home and are stubborn to buy it. We can’t make them re-use it next year because the list will change by next session and so does the brand,” says a parent from Mumbai.