I was recently asked by Get Buttoned Up to review a sampling of Pendaflex office products. Of course, I said yes, as I frequently organize offices for my clients (at home and work) and was eager to see and use the products, and put them to the “professional organizer” test.
The line of products is the PileSmart series, which is designed to help a person that piles paper instead of filing it to be able to easily find and access the papers, even if they are in piles on the desk! The three products I am reviewing are Pendaflex PileSmart Desktop Organizer Tray, Pendaflex PileSmart Binder Label Clips, and Pendaflex PileSmart View Folders with Write-On Tabs.
(Full disclaimer – I am receiving a $20 Target gift card from Pendaflex as a thank you for trying out their product line. I plan to use it to buy . . . What else? More Pendaflex organizing products to use as giveaways for my organizing workshops!)
1. PileSmart® Desktop Organizer Tray is pretty cool looking, made of clear durable acrylic. It is very modern and streamlined in design, and will also help your papers stay in a neat pile as it is slightly slanted towards the back corner. The tray comes with accompanying colorful dividers with write and erase labels, which are visible from 2 sides to help identify different stacks of papers. A nice bonus — not only are the dividers colorful, but they are sturdy enough to help lift your papers out of the tray too!
And what do other organizers think? Well, apparently this product won the Organizer’s Choice Award for Best Business Product at the 2007 annual NAPO Conference. Not bad, huh? I would suggest you check it out if you know you won’t stop piling paper but want to at least keep it in organized piles!
2. PileSmart® Binder Label Clips let you pile documents on your desk and find them again at a glance. How? The clips are designed to clip your documents together and label them. Simply write on the plastic label’s white surface with a ball point pen and voila, instant label. Yes, it’s that easy. The idea is that the plastic labels can be easily spotted among the piles of papers so that you can identify the ones you’ve clipped together. Again, if you are going to pile them anyway, you may as well organize the piles into categories and clip them together for easy access and identification. This will help you to quickly find what you are looking for, saving valuable time. The clips come in two sizes, with 1/4″ or 1/2″ capacity, holding up to 100 sheets of paper.
3. PileSmart® View Folders with Write-On Tabs are handy little poly folders that convert piles of paper on your desk into neat organized folders. They are quick, convenient and very smart. The textured surface helps to prevent slipping (a common problem with many plastic folders that slide all over the desk making a bigger mess than the paper!). They include write-on labeling tabs for creating customized category headings, and the different tab positions keep labels visible even if you stack the folders on top of each other (yes, people pile folders the same way they pile papers!). An added bonus — they hold up to 75 sheets of letter size paper and fit in a letter size hanging folder. These are hands-down my favorite!
So, if you are a piler and want products designed to work with your habits, not against them, try the Pendaflex PileSmart series. The products are colorful, modern, and easy to use, and sure beat seeing piles of paper on your desk! Let me know how you like them.
