Household Stationery That Actually Helps: Labels, Whiteboards, Junk Drawers & Kitchen Kanban | Stationery Freaks Podcast
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Stationery Freaks podcast with myself, Rob Lambert, and of course.
Helen:And with me, Helen Lesowski.
Rob:Today, Helen, we're gonna be talking about household stationery. And Yes. We're not exactly experts, but one of our listeners prompted us to do an episode on this. So we're gonna, I guess, explore it together, aren't we?
Helen:We are. And what we're gonna also do very nicely, she gave us a big long list of sort of suggestions of things that she would use it for. So that's been really useful too. And Rob and I were comparing notes. So we thought we would talk about it on air, which would be much more fun for everyone else.
Rob:I think so. Let's see how it goes. If you never hear this episode, then you'll think it didn't quite go to plan, did it? But before we jump into that, we mentioned a couple of other, pieces that we've got going on. Helen, any stationary stories from your world?
Helen:I I don't think so. I haven't even written anything for two weeks. I have been so so manically busy. I don't even think I could write my own name in longhand anymore. It's been that bad.
Rob:That sounds pretty bad, actually. Yeah, I've I mean, you've been busy with work. I've been busy doing a video series, my first online video course, and my God was a lot harder than I anticipated. I it was one of those things where I've got a big whiteboard. And the the model that I'm sort of talking about is a is basically a funnel with a few stages on it.
Rob:You know, you work in the business, it's easy. We're going from idea to value. That's what we're trying to do. And I spent the whole of a Sunday creating this most beautiful sort of crafted bits of this model on beautiful little bits of card with really nice fonts. And then I stuck them on the whiteboard and then did an overhead camera shot of it.
Rob:And the only problem was the camera kept timing out. It kept losing the video. And it just got to a mess where I had to rerecord them all just using an iPad with, you know, screen recording on. Was so disappointing, but it's a good course. I'm happy with it.
Helen:Was that a camera issue rather than think
Rob:it was a combination of camera issue. It was a combination of my craft was just a bit too big to fit in the camera, so when I zoomed in, it lost a lot of quality. Oh. And of course, there's just basic user error of me forgetting to press start, things being out of focus. But you know what, I think on the iPad it ended up being better because I think it was a bit clearer for the audience.
Rob:So, know, lesson learned. It's taken about two weeks. It's been absolutely brutal. Very, very, very hard work.
Helen:All I've got from that brief summary, Rob, is that if you're going to do video, don't, really.
Rob:Yeah, well don't try and complicate it with two cameras, you know, maybe. Know, there were batteries run out. It was just painful. It was so frustrating. But anyway, it's done.
Rob:You know what else? I was on our favorite, favorite place to get stationary at the moment, which is Vinted. And I saw a Moleskine travel, I guess pack travel case, you want to call it.
Helen:Oh yeah. And
Rob:I bought it and it was, I think it was eight pounds or something and I was thinking this is going be great. I'm going be able to put my Moleskine Kehir notebooks in here. I'm going to put pens. It's going be a great little travel accessory. And then it arrives.
Rob:And you know when you open it and you think that's a little bit smaller than I
Helen:was expecting. I've had that with notebooks. Yes.
Rob:And yeah, I can't get a notebook in it. It's basically as a travel wallet for a passport, some money and some keys and that is it.
Helen:Doesn't that feel like a massive miss for the brand?
Rob:Yeah, exactly. I was thinking, Moleskine, at least, you know, I've got the keynote here in front of me. At least make that fit. That's pretty small. Yeah.
Rob:No, nothing. So there you go. Disappointing.
Helen:I walked past the Moleskine shop when I was in London last week.
Rob:Did you? Or the one down at Covent Garden?
Helen:No, it wasn't Covent Garden. It was I don't know. It was somewhere in London. It was raining, Rob. Wasn't Covent Garden because I wasn't at Covent Garden.
Helen:But yes, I was there. And I drove past and I drove past. I walked past. I did pause and take a photo, between showers. Didn't post it though, I should have done.
Rob:Well, I was in Budapest last week, did a keynote conference, is a lot of fun and Budapest is one of my favorite cities. I absolutely love that place. Nokia were there, Everybody's heard of Nokia and they had a stand and of course you do the stand, the expo piece where all the sponsors are. They had notebooks, I was like, Decent great, I'm in notebooks and they had five and obviously, I almost got that correct here, Nokia. Each one had like an n and o, a k, an I and an a on it.
Rob:So if you got one of each, you spelled Nokia. And despite my winning charm, my elegance of language, they refused to give me more than two, which is fine because obviously there are other people at the conference, I shouldn't be entitled to five notebooks. But I feel like I've got the n and the o and I'm sort of missing the k and the I and the a. And I was like, look, I'll even post a picture on Instagram. I showed them the Instagram and they were like, that's not a lot of followers.
Rob:Was like, okay, fair enough. So anyway, got some free notebooks, which was very generous of them. But it's somewhat incomplete, which feels a bit of a shame.
Helen:They I like the fact that they spelled their rejection out to you in notebooks.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah, everybody just got that. Thank you. Can I have one of each? No, you can.
Helen:You could have two, an egg and a no, just to be clear.
Rob:That's genius. I've never, never put I actually sat looking at them now and it spells no, and I'm like, okay, great. Never spotted that.
Helen:You're never gonna be able to understand that, right?
Rob:We got a couple of other announcements, I guess. We have one of our listeners, Nat. So thank you, Nat. She sent us a link to something called Magic Click. Now this was after listening to the podcast, I think, with Jenny on there who uses the different colored pens to do different parts of that writing and editing process.
Rob:And we've both been having a look at the website, and we're not entirely sure how the system works, but it looks pretty awesome, doesn't it? It's basically using one of those pens that's got four different colors in it, And I'm assuming each color represents some part of that creative thinking process.
Helen:When you look at it, it looks like from there's like icons. So it looks like red might be to do with communication. And I don't know, green is for, it's got a helicopter I think for the green. So I can feel that this would be really cool, but it doesn't really explain it very well. We've only really had a brief look, but it wasn't obvious.
Helen:And that feels tantalizingly unfair that this like, hey, look, we've got a system. It uses colored pens right up your street, Helen and Rob, but no.
Rob:Yeah. Well, kudos to Nat for sending it through. And and the lady that sort of come came up with this magic click is called Barbara Thames. And I love the way she describes herself. She's a self acclaimed ambassador for creativity and play.
Rob:Oh. I like that. What a great title. Yes. Yeah.
Rob:Wonderful. So if you're using the magic click and you've heard of it or you can send us some further resources, please, you know, do let us know because it as Helen says, it looks tantalizingly productive and effective.
Helen:I do like, I used to write years ago, Rob, before we worked together. That's how long ago it was. I used to write, I'd had before bullet journaling, before everything, had a notebook and I would buy a big A four size notebook and I would write my to do list. And then I would write in different colors underneath it what had happened with it. And then the next day it would be different colors again.
Helen:Over a week I had different colors for different days and I could follow what had happened on different project points on different days. Just gave me like a layered view. It makes me think of that. It worked really well for me at the time, but it made me break out in hives thinking about it now, but at the time it was great.
Rob:I was gonna say why you're not why you're not back using that. That sounds very effective.
Helen:Because yeah. No. So
Rob:before we jump into the household stationery, which was from a lady called Lisa Abu, and I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing your surname wrong, but she signed off her message to us. And we do read every message that people send us. Lisa signed this off as Lisa in Berlin in a kitchen, which was great. So thank you, Lisa. We're gonna get into that topic in a minute.
Rob:But before we do, we just want to draw attention and say thank you so much to our anonymous reader of the newsletter who kindly donated a very large amount as part of the premium tier of that newsletter. And there's nothing in return for that is literally just to support our work, isn't it Helen?
Helen:Well, and much as we yeah, much as we'd love to be able to give you extra value. This is all we've got to give. We are very, very grateful. And it does cost us. This is not putting on these podcasts when we always say we're busy, that's not the half of it.
Helen:It also costs. So we're running software, we're running tools to help make sure that this all works and is, I mean, perhaps not professionally produced, but pretty damn good Rob, isn't it?
Rob:It's not too shabby, yeah.
Helen:So yes, that definitely helps. So that was really kind. You will all know, we don't do adverts, we don't do sponsorships. We will tell you about the stationery we love and that's fine. But we won't, yeah, we don't ask for money from people in exchange for good words.
Helen:And yeah, so this is somebody who's donated just to keep us going, which is nice.
Rob:Yeah, very kind, very generous. And we're very, very grateful for that. So thank you. If you're not subscribed to the free email, then head over to stationeryfreaks.com where you will find a link to our Substack email newsletter, which always goes out to accompany one of these episodes. So, Helen, we're gonna jump into the magical world that I think has escaped my attention, but is actually right there in front of us all the time, and that is household stationery.
Helen:This was interesting, actually. When when Lisa said about it, it was like, well, actually the world is not mine, stationary that's not necessarily in my study for me to do my things. This is that enables, you know, other things in the house to happen. When I started thinking about it, there's quite a few bits and pieces we've got going.
Rob:I was the same. I was I was sort of, you know, sat in the kitchen in the chaos that it is when you've got three teenage boys charging around and eating mountains of rice krispies. Quite know why they get through so many, I don't know. But I was just looking around thinking actually, we do have a lot of stationary in here that it like, like you say, it's not mine. It's not in my studio.
Rob:It's not for me to use just for me. It's for everybody. And it helps us I does it help? I guess we'll explore that. It helps us get through life and be a little bit more organized.
Rob:Lisa has sent us a wonderful list of things that are talking points, we will share a lot of those in the newsletter as well. But Helen, where did you start focusing when we started talking about this household stationery?
Helen:So I was thinking, I thought of two things. One is, well, one is the labels that I put on everything. So I do tend to batch cook. I do tend to freeze stuff. I break food up and put it into smaller portions and whatever it would be.
Helen:So I label all of that quite religiously. Can imagine. Because if the labels, and they have to be good labels because if the labels come off in the freezer, have got something once it's frozen, it's unidentifiable. And because I don't know what it is, I don't wanna defrost it. The fact that I obviously liked it enough to put it in my own freezer at the time.
Helen:But if once the label's gone, I no longer know what it is in it. Of course, it's only purpose there is to poison me. It's possibility. The So I was thinking about that and how actually that I've got that stationary and I am a little, not picky, but I do want labels that stick on the Tupperware and I do want pens that will write onto those kind of labels that'll stick. I did try using a chalk pen because that will wash off when you stick it through the dishwasher or whatever, but that was not as successful as you'd like to imagine.
Rob:Can imagine that gets a little bit wet in the freezer, doesn't it? If you, you know, I think it sort of
Helen:comes off. Yeah.
Rob:Yeah. I guess we don't label. We do. We've got all this sort of baking goods, you know, the flour and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Rob:We just bought these basic jars from Dunelmo or somewhere like that. They came with labels. So, you know, nothing fancy there. Just stick them on and and doodle on them, which is good. But I do know somebody who uses and Lisa's mentioned this, one of those Dymo or Dymo label makers.
Rob:And I know someone who got one of these and I went around to his house and he had labeled everything. Literally everything. And I thought, why have you done that? And then I thought, well, actually, if I had one
Helen:I would do Ducky Hunt. Exactly. I would too. I mean, how much fun is it to have? I mean, I have to be honest.
Helen:Those are, yeah, it's like a bit dangerous for me because like your friend, I would have labeled everything. This is the door. This is the door handle. If they would all have labels.
Rob:It reminds me, we went on holiday many, many years ago to Cornwall to a place called Padstow, which is famous for Rick Stein's restaurants and all that kind of stuff. Lovely place. And we stayed in this sort of series of cottages. We stayed in one of these cottages, and everything was labeled, absolutely everything. But it was all labeled in a really strict rule based negative of way.
Rob:Everything was like, if you open this cupboard, please close it. If you break these pots, you will pay. It was just it was awful. Because everywhere you went, was a label telling you to be careful and don't break anything. So, you know, we're not gonna rent a cottage and actively go and break as much stuff as possible.
Rob:That's not our style.
Helen:I mean, maybe it's the style of other people who've stayed. I don't know. Yeah,
Rob:but it just felt really sort of oppressive. It wasn't the most relaxing place to chill.
Helen:So the other thing that I thought when you mentioned stationary, and this is not the actual biggest thing we use stationary for, so that came to me much later. But the other thing I thought was how, when we closed down offices, my offices relatively locally, only an hour away as opposed to the four and a half hours that my local office is now. When we closed it down, mine and my jobs was to get rid of everything that we didn't need. And I gave as much away as I could because otherwise it had to go to the skip and it couldn't bring myself to do it. But one of the things I saved was a whiteboard.
Helen:Now, can I just tell you that a whiteboard in an office, there's something about the time space continuum that when you get it in the house, it's three times the size? So I now have the whiteboard, my daughter took one look at it and stole it, but it's genius. I mean, actually she did loads and loads of studying notes. So she was practicing for her exams doing, I don't know, they have all kinds of study techniques. She's just doing this blurting idea, which is which you'd literally write down everything you could possibly know.
Helen:And then you go back with the book and you check where you are missing things and where you've got everything. And I don't know, she spent ages, ages doing it, but I don't know whether it was just the joy of the whiteboard that made us study, but whatever it was genius. Whiteboard I love.
Rob:Yeah. I've got one. Obviously I was using it for that course, but I've now cleared it and my son's using it for his GCSE revision.
Helen:Yeah.
Rob:See? And it's up in the house and like you say, it's, it's like eight times bigger up there than it is. But we used to have one of those little whiteboards, like a little tiny one that you could hang up in the kitchen and just sort of doodle on, which was great. But when we had the house renovated, we didn't want stuff hanging around like that. And we're looking to have a little pantry, and in there is a is a calendar.
Rob:So this is another one that we've always had, which is one of those year to view calendars, you know, that kind of really big. I think it's about an a two size. And on there is written at the beginning of year, we write everything on there that we're doing for the year, and then we never touch it again since then. And instead it's like, are doing next weekend? Why are we going out this Friday?
Rob:And it's, yeah. So that's in there, and it's got most of the stuff that we know of in advance, but we don't use it. I kind of, we use it to start with and then we just don't revisit it.
Helen:See, I I have a calendar on the wall that we, given that most of my life is not using that calendar, that's purely as simply for communication purposes. I take it off the wall and I will write a load of things on it. This is what we're doing for the next sort of month or six weeks. And I only do like that far in advance because I don't think my husband knows how to turn the pages to be honest. If it's not this month, he doesn't care.
Helen:But as soon as I've written on it, then everything changes and I'm scribbling stuff off and moving it around and it always looks really untidy. So yeah, it's the opposite for us. I get a lot of value out of having it up there, but only it's all very transient.
Rob:Yeah, we tend to use Google Calendar. It's just easier with the kids now and they've all got their own colored calendars and it's, you know, you can just get repeated tasks like football every Friday and all that kind of stuff. So I remember years ago, many years ago, one of our earlier episodes, and I can't for the life of remember which one it was. But you were you were talking about having a drawer in the kitchen that is just full of junk, just stuff that doesn't have a home a home Yep. Anywhere Does that have stationary in there?
Rob:Yeah. As as a string, God knows why, we've not used string for years apart from to play with the cats. It's got elastic bands in there, it's got pens, it's got a pen knife that we can use. Does that gather stationary in your house?
Helen:It does a little bit. It gathers the ends of sellotape, so when they're nearly dead, but not quite. And the same with post it notes. They're only, like, three left in there, so we'll just pop them in there. I opened it I have to be honest, I opened it the weekend and found £40 in there, I was delighted.
Helen:Nice. My husband took it off me and went, no, no, you can't spend those ones. They're special. There's weird stuff in there and it changes all the time. So it's always a voyage of discovery.
Rob:Well, you know, Lisa put on her list rubber bands for closing packages and unwieldy Tupperware, which was a nice way of putting Tupperware. Isn't all Tupperware unwieldy?
Helen:It is. It is.
Rob:Yeah, it's a bizarre, bizarre industry, but there you go. But we use rubber bands for tying together cables. We've got cables everywhere. There's all the different charging cables, you name it, there's hundreds of them. And we just use elastic bands to, you know, fold them up, tie them together, and keep some nice neat stuff.
Helen:Really, I've got those little Velcro ties that they use. Yeah. Yeah, I quite like those.
Rob:Yeah, they are very good. But the problem we have is if we unwrap that and leave that Velcro tie on the table or anywhere, the cats come and get it because they love playing with those things. And so there's about 20 of them under the settee probably where the cats are.
Helen:Yeah, my cat's not in the least interested to be honest. I've been trying to teach my cat completely, this is completely off topic, Rob, we might have to cut it out. I decided I was gonna try and teach my cat to use these little press button recorders. So you've got a button that's about, I don't know, about the size of a bun. It's like quite small, but it's very light to press and you can make a recording.
Helen:So when I press the button, it gives the word treat in my voice, treat. And I hoped that she was going to learn this would mean treat. And then I could start expanding this marvelously brilliant idea and get her to communicate that she wants to go outside or, you know, I'm hungry, can have more dinner or I don't like that food or whatever it is. Yeah. That's going really badly.
Helen:Shockingly badly.
Rob:I don't think cats are unintelligent. I think they're just super stubborn, aren't they? They're just, I don't know.
Helen:She's looking at me saying, why am I what are you faffing around with the button? You know, I communicated to you perfectly well in body language that I want a treat. You know it. I know it. Just give me the goddamn treats.
Rob:We got two cats and we had these nice big glass doors put in at the back of the house, which we didn't want a cat flap in. So we put a cat flap in the utility room, one of those cavity ones that goes through the wall, a great expense hidden beneath the worktop. And it was one of these ones that opens if it's your cat
Helen:and you can see Yep. The
Rob:Absolute waste of money. Yep. Two things. One is it never connects to the WiFi, so it never works. Oh, done.
Rob:Whoever makes this thing is garbage. And number two is the cats refuse to push the cat flap open. It has to stay open. So we have to get a bit of string and hold the cat flap open. And actually, third one is they actually mostly refuse to just use it.
Rob:So they just sit at the door. Yeah. Until we feel really guilty that they're sat there in the rain looking at us and we open the door and let them in. Now, yeah, they're so ignorant like cats.
Helen:My cats never used it, Rob. Not in all the time we've had her, not once.
Rob:So listeners, that was a gentle three minute detour about cats. So you you mentioned that you're using a sort of kanban system. Would you consider that to be household stationary?
Helen:I would. Now, this is the one reason where when you said household stationary, this is what should have come to mind. So years ago, my husband is a builder and years ago, I tried to persuade him to develop some kind of system because he can't keep everything in his head. The older he gets, the harder it is. But he'd had some really bad experiences with what he called project managers.
Helen:Really, he could barely talk to me about it. Nevermind think about whether this was gonna work for him.
Rob:I think we've all been there, haven't we? We
Helen:have. Anyway, I'm not saying that this is not about me keeping track of where you are. This is about you knowing where you are. I don't care. Do what you like.
Helen:So I set him up a little Kanban board with a few very small tweaks. He has, like, probably 35 or 40 post it notes on the wall in the kitchen. Mhmm. And that's all that it gets used for. And he does keep track of where his projects are.
Helen:And he's learning over the years because he's been doing this now for probably ten years. He now records how long he thinks that piece of work is gonna be. It never is. But nobody's telling him off for it, He's got like, I'm allowed three weeks for this job. And you're like, you're still doing that.
Helen:It's been six weeks. Oh, I know. But that's the customers always adding new stuff on, but it's worked really, really well. This idea of visualizing the work, he's dyslexic. So it's really a sort of visual way of representing where he is.
Helen:So he's got these columns for, this is the stuff that somebody has mentioned to me in the past and I've gotta talk to them about at some point. And then this is the stuff that, yes, I'm definitely gonna do. And then this is the stuff that's up next. And then this is the stuff that I'm working on. And then this is the stuff that I've done, but it's still been invoiced or not paid yet or whatever.
Helen:But it's really visible for him and it's really helpful for me too. I can't tell you how helpful that is. And that's been really good. And I tried it with my daughter. This is something Lisa said about trying to do a fun weekly schedule for a child.
Helen:I tried to do this with my daughter to say, look, here are the three or four things I need you to do today, chores or whatever it would be. And she was probably eight or 10 at the time. And then you can choose to do any of these like five things as well. And we'll do those. And it didn't really work.
Rob:No, we've tried something very similar. And by the way, listeners, if you're not sure what kanban system is, we will include a link in the newsletter to various resources. Essentially, it's a visual ticketing system where you sort of flow work through. And that's the point of it. And you see the work, you have a little cry to yourself about how much you've got to do.
Rob:And then you sort of crack on and flow things through until they're pretty much done. And we tried this with our kids, but having three kids and seven days in the week is not divisible properly. So there was always one kid that had one extra day of chores to do than some of the others, you know, so yeah, we just, yeah, we couldn't make it land is that you know, why did it not work with your daughter?
Helen:She picked all the nice things, even though she still had the bad things to do, but she wasn't gonna. Yeah, chores were just not a joy or she would just ignore the whole thing because she didn't want to do the chores. So she wouldn't take the good things either. It was just, it was not a system that worked for her brain.
Rob:So when we talk about household stationary, we're lucky we've got study that she's which is literally just off the kitchen. So in there is my wife's study. I've got a studio down the bottom of the garden, and she's got lots of stationery stuff in there that I mean, she's not a stationery freak. She doesn't really use it, but that's where I store my excess station. We're forever writing lists, you know, basic cheap reporter style notebook, you know, the spiral bound little report style, always making lists.
Rob:You know, we've got shopping lists. We've got food planning lists. We've got lists for the weekend. You know, whenever we're noodling something like, you know, we were trying to get my son some car insurance, so we got a piece of paper and started working out all the different options that we had. So we're always going in there to get those little report reports and notebooks, whatever pen is lying around, usually the cheapest ones because the kids steal them all.
Rob:And we just use that daily. There isn't a day that goes by where we don't have something happening on a notebook in the kitchen.
Helen:Yeah, we don't have notebooks written down like that. I used to use the back of old envelopes to communicate to my
Rob:husband. Yeah.
Helen:We don't do that now. We had, our kitchen was put in a long time ago. The door was on the freezer space has broken and come off. And now I have a magnetic door, which is very unsightly, but it does mean that instead of being all pretty and glossy, it's now magnetic. Nice.
Helen:So I can actually stick on these magnetic backed notebooks. So I have one which I put the meal prep list for the week because I do that. And that reminds me what I'm cooking each night. Then I don't have to make any decisions. And then I've also have the shopping list there, which is constantly being updated.
Helen:But of course you've then got, you know, an endless supply of notepad and pen because that's always there. I can rip things off. Yeah, my husband won't see it unless I prop it against the kettle usually. It's where I leave all my notes written.
Rob:We always put the meal plan up for no other reason than every time every single evening without fail, 04:00 onwards, each of the boys will appear and say what's for tea. And instead of repeating myself, I'm like, you know, just look at the fridge. And I'm hoping over time that they'll just come in and look at the fridge. And I know the one day that they do come in and look at the fridge, it won't be on there. And I will have broken that cycle of training that I'm trying to get them into.
Rob:So I might actually start just putting a WhatsApp announcement out to the family each day. This is what's for tea, do not come and ask me again from 04:00 onwards. Lisa's got some other good stuff in here. Was really interested in, and she mentions that she knows a lady who names her sourdough starter Cornelius and has made a face on its jar with Google eyes.
Helen:Well, loved that. I know people who do label that who do name their sourdough starters. I do know that's not an unusual thing, but I've not known anybody's got googly eyes on their jar. I find that a bit creepy.
Rob:It's quite cool. Lisa also mentioned that she remembers seeing in Germany, essentially outside people's houses with these rolls of paper on the door so that if you turned up and no one was in, you could write a little message to them. That's really cool, isn't it?
Helen:I used to have that when I was a student, we used to have little like notes on the door like that. It wasn't a roll, but it would have been much better if it was. And you could just leave a note for whoever you go and visit somebody and they won't be there. So you could just leave a note. I love that.
Helen:I think that's so good.
Rob:It is genius. Genius. I don't know why we don't do that anymore. Obviously, phones have sort of, you know, removed the need to do that. But I think it's something quite personal that isn't it?
Rob:You turn them, you write a little note.
Helen:I wonder if we don't go, wouldn't, in those days, I wouldn't have thought twice about people's coming to visit me without telling me or me going to visit them without telling them first. But nowadays I wouldn't do that. I think that that, you know, now that you can tell someone, hey, is it alright if I come? I usually text someone to say, Is it all right if I And call that's at work.
Rob:Yeah, that's weird, isn't it?
Helen:It is.
Rob:That's weird. I'm gonna call you tonight at three. I'll send that to my family.
Helen:You're waiting the meeting at 11:30 and somebody sends you a message, say, Are ready for the meeting? It's like, Oh yeah, I am actually, that's fine. And you do it. And I kind of like that. It gives me time to mentally get my head in the right space.
Rob:It's bizarre though, isn't it? That we've sort of, I guess, scared and lost the ability to just find somebody. I mean, it was never joyful in the 80s when I grew up phoning somebody on 90s. You you always knew your mate's dad was going to answer and it's been a really awkward conversation. But even so now, just messaging to say I'm going to call you is just weird, isn't it?
Helen:It is, but I'm glad that we do it. Personally, It suits me.
Rob:Because I never answer my phone. If there's a number of phones on my phone, I don't recognize it, I'm not answering it.
Helen:I don't answer my phone. If my phone rings and it's not a number I recognize, I don't answer it. And I just, I feel really guilty, but I just don't do it. I'm not ready for a phone call for somebody who I don't know.
Rob:No, a 100%. Chances are spam anyway. So the other one that I was thinking about, old recipe books. Yeah. For some reason, I'm obsessed with old recipe books, but only old recipe books that have the previous owners doodles, thoughts and notes.
Helen:Handwriting. Yes.
Rob:Yeah. And their own sort of variations of the recipes as well where they've sort of tweaked it to meet, whatever ingredients available or whatever their flavor or taste is, they fascinate me.
Helen:I have to be honest, there's a lot of people who are absolutely horrified that I would ever write in a book. But to me, books are a place just to hold knowledge. That's all it is. Whether that's a fiction story or whether that's a non fiction cookbook kind of thing. All of that is just to hold knowledge.
Helen:I absolutely write in all my books.
Rob:Yeah, If I
Helen:it occurred to me and I wanted to, I would, I don't annotate fiction books, but I do. Some people do that. That feels a little bit far, but that's if that's what you wanna do. But cookbooks, absolutely. I have got amended recipes in my cookbooks all over the place.
Helen:And I do think as well, it's really nice when you get those old cookbooks where people have slid extra recipes into pages, because that's really nice, right? Where they've gone, oh, this really should be in there.
Rob:Yeah, exactly. And sadly when my wife's grandmother passed away, I think we obviously went to help clear the house out and there were all these cookbooks which I, you know, took and they had her handwriting and she'd even written a name in the front of them. And, you know, cookbooks aside, I'm actually sat here looking at, do you remember Reader's Digest?
Helen:Oh, don't know
Rob:whether they're still going, but they used to produce these repair manuals, which are the most beautiful, simple, but super informative repair manuals. I've got it sat right in front of me, and this belonged to my wife's grandfather. So it's got his name in the front, and then throughout, he's got, like, little sketches where he's sort of modified some of the advice. And these are a thing of beauty. They are why we don't make them anymore, I don't know.
Rob:The Internet's obviously taken over. But yeah, there's these little, I guess, thoughts and moments and captures of time and space in there where you're seeing someone else's handwriting and their thoughts and their ideas. Love it. Wonderful stuff.
Helen:It is. It's like history, isn't it? Wood graphs and such like. All of that, the digitization of all of that, there's like a we're about to go off of the cliff on the end of a cliff on this, aren't we really? It'll all stop because there's so little of that kind of ephemera being saved anymore or even created.
Helen:Most of it's digital.
Rob:Yeah, 100%. Yeah, and that's why, you know, for a few of my books I've chosen to do printed copies just for, you know, if they don't sell, just to have a printed book
Helen:is So that it exists.
Rob:Yeah. It exists. Yeah. So, Lisa mentioned also how do you measure kids? Because obviously in the old days, well, even now you'd have like a door frame and you'd put a little marker of your kids at various ages as they grow.
Helen:Still do. That's exactly what I've got.
Rob:Have you got that on one of your And
Helen:my daughter kept making me do it until she was taller than I was because that really now is recorded forever on the side of the door of the laundry.
Rob:Now we did do that before we had the house renovated and now it just doesn't feel right. But we, you know, we haven't we used to have one of those, I guess, dressmakers measuring tapes as sort of, you can bend it, you can wrap it around things. But for some reason that went missing, probably the cats have stolen that. No, that's true. We just use a bog standard tape measure and I just capture it in Apple notes.
Rob:Very, very, I guess, unauthentic in some respects, but we've got a log of how they're growing year on year.
Helen:They're also big now. Mean, that's the other thing is that you just stop, don't you? You just kind of get to the point. It's fine when they're little and there's these big jumps every months or a year and there's a huge difference. And then suddenly they're taller than you and they're not moving anymore either.
Rob:Yeah, yeah, they're not taller than me though, at the moment. No, my oldest I think has stopped growing now. So he's not as tall as me, which is I think he's somewhat disappointed, but he claims he'll always be stronger than me, which is probably true. Oh, so Lee one of Lisa's, challenges, and this may be one for the, listeners of the cast, And if you wanna leave a comment on the Instagram, on the Substack, or over on the transistor site where this
Helen:is
Rob:hosted, one thing Lisa kept asking was how do you remove labels that get stuck onto things? Got that problem. Helen, you've probably got a solution to this, have you?
Helen:Not really. I mean, have to be honest, I bought a new mug while I was away, ill advised. It turns out that it's really a bucket with a handle on the side. It's just too big, but it's very pretty. But it, yeah, there was a label on the bottom, which I tried to peel off and obviously it doesn't come off.
Helen:So I stuck it in the dishwasher and hopeful that that might come off. And now I've got this kind of glue that's not, it won't come off, but it's tacky and it's stuck. And I would love to know, I believe white spirit would work on hard surfaces, but you know, who's got that around the house these days? I haven't got white spirit.
Rob:We've tried that. We've tried alcohol, vodka, gin, you know, we've tried washing
Helen:up a Yes. Bit of
Rob:Yes. Monumental waste, really, because it didn't work either. So was somewhat disappointing. No, we we're anybody's particularly on plastic, for some reason when you stick it on plastic tupperware, it just it's like super glue on that.
Helen:That's why you need to get the right kind of labels. So that's back to what I was saying. You need the right kind of labels and then a pen to write on the right kind of labels.
Rob:So, Helen, any more domestic household stationery that, you know, you got thinking about this week?
Helen:No. I do have to confess that I did buy one notebook. I mean, I know I said I was way too busy at the beginning of this podcast, but I did buy one more notebook because it was pretty. But it wasn't very expensive. I accidentally bought it.
Rob:You accidentally bought it.
Helen:Yeah. Well, I didn't need it, but I might need it one day. It's B6, it'll be used for my writing courses for all the little bits of work that I do with that. Yeah, I will use it, I just don't need it quite yet.
Rob:That's cool. Well, I've gone back to my Dingbats reporter style leather bound notebook.
Helen:Have you?
Rob:Yeah. I keep you know what I'm like. I just keep flitting between different notebooks. But for some reason, this still feels good and useful and helpful. And I feel like I'm getting stuff done.
Rob:But I guarantee the next episode, I'll be back onto A four legal pads or something else.
Helen:Yeah. Well, and that's the thing, isn't it? I we're always I mean, this is the point of of this podcast. We're always trying to find ways to make ourselves more productive. And sometimes we're all tempted by that just one more notebook, just that notebook, just that pen.
Helen:If I had that pen and that notebook, I could do, you know, conquer the world.
Rob:I was waiting for my son having his haircut in Winchester and I went into the Waterstones and Waterstones do have some beautiful looking notebooks in there.
Helen:Do they?
Rob:And I thought coming up to Christmas, I'm not going to buy anything. I'm just going to take pictures of it all and send it to the family as gift ideas. So that's what I did. Yeah, they've got some really nice looking notebooks. The problem is they're all shrink wrapped.
Rob:And so you can't get a sense of what the paper's like inside. It could be a risk, but it's not a big risk in the grand scheme of life.
Helen:I went to a very fancy, I said I had visitors this weekend and we went to a very fancy, well it's a restaurant, but it's really a hotel and it's got like a membership. It's called the Newt and it's in Somerset, it's very posh. And you can stay as a hotel guest if you can afford to stay. You can go for dinner, which is very nice. Or you can just have like a yearly membership and walk the grounds and the gardens and everything.
Helen:But they also have shops there. And while I was there, I was literally looking around the shops at the Tom's studio. I've got some new pens and some new inks out, which is nice.
Rob:They've got
Helen:them all there.
Rob:And
Helen:I found another, some very, very lovely stationery, but like that, they were all shrink wrapped and I couldn't get into them to see what the paper
Rob:was like. Yeah, and you feel really guilty, A, opening the shrink-wrap yourself, which is a bit cheeky, or asking anyone in the store to do that as well. So yeah, I can see why they do it to keep it pristine and protected.
Helen:Should have one open for you to look at.
Rob:Yeah, exactly. And as a stationary freak, we're obsessed with how the, you know, the flow of the pen on the paper and the quality and stuff.
Helen:There's nothing worse than buying a really lovely notebook. But when you write in it, the paper does, there's too much drag or it's too glossy and everything smudges. It matters, these things matter.
Rob:They do. That's why we run this podcast. Well, there's been a fairly lengthy episode that hasn't it?
Helen:We covered a lot of little topics really, didn't we?
Rob:We did. Yeah. So if you've got, like, household domestic stationary that you use that we've not covered, we've obviously not talked about Sharpies and cupboards and all that kind of stuff, then let us know. You know, leave a comment on the newsletter, leave a comment wherever you're listening to this podcast, or drop us an email. You'll find us over on stationeryfreaks.com.
Rob:Let us know how you use stationary in your house. And big kudos, big thank you to Lisa in Berlin in a kitchen who sent us some wonderful stuff through. So thank you so much, Lisa. And if you've got an idea or a topic that you want us to ramble chat about, then of course you can also do the same thing and drop us some inspiration.
Helen:And if you do find out about that pen system
Rob:Oh yeah, magic click.
Helen:System, that would be really great. We'd like to know.
Rob:Absolutely. And maybe even Barbara, who would know? Barbara might be listening to this and would wanna be on a the show and explain the magic click and I guess, get us to go out and buy some more pens and notebooks for it.
Helen:It's such an easy push, that one.
Rob:It's not difficult, is it? And, you know, I'm not going to reveal who we're going to go and see, but me and you or you and I, if we're using the correct English, are actually going to be in the same location on the same evening
Helen:Yes.
Rob:At a wonderful sounding stationary event.
Helen:Yes.
Rob:And I will bring my video camera.
Helen:Oh, really?
Rob:I will film it and do a little YouTube video of it for my other channel. But also maybe Helen, we could see if we could record a little episode, a little video episode of the two of us together for Instagram maybe.
Helen:That would be pretty cool. And we could see if we could get some drive by guests as well since,
Rob:one you 100%, 100%. So I'm very excited about this. This is gonna be a highlight of November, think it is, isn't it?
Helen:Yeah, absolutely.
Rob:And get to see you again. I'm not seeing you in person for God years.
Helen:It is, yes. But we will both be at this event at the same time in the same place.
Rob:I know. How remarkable. And we will do a proper, probably a dedicated episode about that as well afterwards, maybe reflecting on it and maybe we're gonna get some stationary hauls. Who knows? Who knows?
Helen:I hadn't thought about that. Would occur to me.
Rob:I'm taking my credit card and you know, I believe there is a little shop attached
Helen:Is it? Oh.
Rob:We do very much like this brand and we have mentioned them before and we will do an episode. Sorry to tease you all, we don't want to go and spoil this event.
Helen:But we are very excited.
Rob:Yes, very, very excited indeed. Right, Helen, I think we have done this episode justice in our ramble chats and fingers crossed, we covered everything that Lisa sort of prompted us with and she did a great job. Thank you again.
Helen:Yeah, thanks for the heads up and the idea. Yeah, it was good.
Rob:Yeah. It was a little bit, I did promise Lisa this would be out a couple of weeks ago, but we have struggled, haven't we, to find time to?
Helen:We have not been in the same place, barely been in the same time zone, I think, to be fair.
Rob:Yeah. And I was super ambitious about recording this whilst in Budapest and that was never going to happen, was it? There's too many people to see and too many restaurants to go to.
Helen:No, well, I was at a writer's retreat, which had no signals, it turned out, not at all.
Rob:So that's good. It's good for writing, though, isn't it?
Helen:No mobile, no WiFi. It was great for writing and I edited 25 chapters and I'm very pleased with myself.
Rob:And just a very quick one. If you are interested in the sort of writing process, I was watching Andrew Huberman's podcast. I don't know if you've heard of him.
Helen:No.
Rob:And he's a sort of bio doctor, very clever, very cool guy. I really like his episodes. They're super long, by the way. But he interviewed Steven Pressfield, who is the author of The Art of the War of Art, is it? And Turning Pro.
Helen:And he so did the one something about lean into the resistance kind of thing?
Rob:Yeah, that's it. That's it. All about the resistance. And it's a wonderful, wonderful two hours. It's a very, very long episode.
Rob:It's on YouTube. But if it's just a stationary freak writers heaven,
Helen:really. What's it called?
Rob:It's called Doctor. Andrew Huberman, and it's the interview with Steven Pressfield. I'll include a link into the show notes and the newsletter. But it's wonderful about how, you know, that resistance just shows itself in so many so many ways Yeah. And how to get past that and actually do work that means something to you and, hopefully, audience.
Rob:So really good. With that, Helen, I think we should declare victory on this episode.
Helen:We should.
Rob:So please don't hesitate to get in touch via stationeryfreaks.com where you'll find that newsletter and you'll find all of our previous episodes. You can also find us on Instagram @stationeryfreaksuk. And with that, Helen, any final words?
Helen:None at all. Thank you so much for continuing to listen.
Rob:Indeed. Thank you so much, and we will speak to you in the next episode. Bye bye.
Helen:Bye.
