cool school stuff

I’ve Become a Stapleless-Japanese-Stapler Convert

Those holes in the top-left corner of those sheets are “staples.” Photo: Copyright 2017. All rights reserved.

As days get shorter and temperatures cool, it’s also time (eek) to start thinking about going back to school. To help you get a jump on the best school (and school-related) supplies to buy for fall, we’re running a series called Cool School Stuff, in which we’ll sniff out the best backpacksbest dorm décor, and best bento boxes, among many, many other things.

In college, I kept a pocket-size stapler in my pencil case because the full-size staplers near the library printers were less reliable than my roommates, always either fully jammed up or totally empty. But it’s not like my mini-stapler was a dependable alternative to a regular stapler. Much like the library, I, too, was always running out of extra staples, and though I was enough of a dork to carry around a tiny stapler, carrying racks of staples felt like one step too far. So although the decline of paper has been an ecofriendly bonus for me, there are still those times when I must print out and staple sheets together, usually for official purposes, and in those situations, folding paper corners over themselves generally doesn’t cut it.

It’s not magic, but some origami-inspired paper-folding. This staple-free stapler works by punching a hole, then tucking the loose paper flaps through a thin slit. The manufacturer claims you can bind eight sheets at a time, but I’ve had best results between two and five pieces. (There’s also apparently a newer version of this stapleless stapler that’s good for up to ten sheets, but I haven’t yet tried it, I love mine so much.) And though a paper staple doesn’t sound secure, once they’re bound, the pages are surprising difficult to pull apart. Since there’s no metal, you can also run the whole document through a shredder without worrying about accidentally jamming the machine.

Oh, and did I mention I own this Japanese stapleless stapler in hot pink? So come at me, Milton. Your red stapler’s got nothing on my magenta staple-free one, though mine is labeled with my last name, just in case someone does try to “borrow” it. Dorky habits die hard.

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I’ve Become a Stapleless-Japanese-Stapler Convert