Home | Business | Office Equipment, Supplies, Services

Seven Common Stationery Items Your Company Cannot Do Without

By: Mark Bartley Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Card envelopes, window envelopes, photocopier paper, pens, pencils, staplers, ring binders, toners, ink cartridges, labels, notebooks, diaries, files, you name it. It's all over the place. The thing about office stationery though, is that it's virtually invisible (especially when you really need something in particular like a stapler), until you start to consciously think about it, its uses and the tasks it performs. Often taken for granted, undervalued, the unsung heroes and heroines of the workplace. There when you need it; reliably, helpfully assisting you through your working day. Though we're surrounded by stationery do we actually need it all? What, of all the stationery that surrounds us, are the absolute essentials? The must have, mission critical products. What are the seven most important common stationary items that your company simply couldn't do without? Here are our 'Magnificent Seven'; maybe you share our selection, maybe you'd choose others.

Paper – there's no such thing as a 'paperless office'. No matter how hard we try to banish this ancient product, paper still has and probably will always have a principle role in any office environment. Printer paper, photocopier paper, high quality correspondence paper, and in a huge range of colours, not just 'white'. How could we exist without paper? Life would be reduced to the tedious etching on bark or scratching on slate like in the good old days. Try feeding a tablet made out of Snowdonia's finest granite through your new Kyocera printer! Without paper there would be no office aeroplanes, no letters, to marketing literature, no invoices, no reports, no memos. Paper is, without doubt, the Yule Brynner of the office stationary Magnificent Seven. In hot pursuit is Steve McQueen in the form of toner/ink cartridges. Riding shotgun to Yule, toner and ink cartridges are essential in so many ways. With the paper in place, branded (only branded please; we don't want to damage our printers thank you) toner means that we can get the printed material completed. The perfect partnership, these two essentials depend on each other to fulfill their roles. Without one, the other is practically worthless.

Files and archives are next. Binders, wallets, box files and clipboards, lever arch files, magazine holders, presentation folders, archive boxes. Only once you've searched desperately through mountains of loose leaf paper do you realise just how much you rely on files and archives to keep your business organised, information easily retrievable and the place not looking like a building site. In our Magnificent Seven analogy files and archives are the Robert Vaughn of office stationary - Mr Cool, Mr Together, Mr Files and Archives.

Next up are envelopes and bags – infinitely varied and essential for carrying information. The range we use is amazing. How could we possibly live without them? From airmail envelopes, board-backed envelopes, padded and bubble bags, polythene envelopes, gusseted envelopes, window envelopes, wage envelopes, the list goes on. Despite email and Twitter, envelopes are big news. Envelopes are the Charles Bronson of the office. Cheeky but lethal Chico (Horst Buchholz) has to make do with pens, pencils and markers. Just look around you. Bics, Pilots, Parkers, Pentels, pencils, sharpeners, ball points, highlighters, markers, erasers all stored neatly and efficiently in dedicated holders, or scattered liberally around the place and even behind the odd ear. Writing and correction office stationery is an essential member of the gang.

Sometimes a paperclip just won't do. Sometimes you need the assuredness, the security, and the brute strength of a stapler. Imagine life without a stapler? Impossible. Make way for the one and only James Coburn, as fast and deadly with his switchblade as you are with a stapler.

Brad Dexter saved Frank Sinatra from drowning once (it's true). Now he can save you from a similar fate in the form of Post-It Notes. Long gone are the days when Post-It notes were yellow or, well, yellow, actually. Now, you get the opportunity to smother a partition and monitor in a colour, size and shape to match your mood. Post-It notes are eye-catching, get your message across quickly and effectively and have become absolutely essential office stationery.

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

About The Author: There are some items the efficient office just cannot do without and suitable stationary is one of them. Mark Bartley provides helpful information on how to decide which items of stationary are necessary and where to buy them. See Mark's other reviews for advice on other items of office stationary.