Below is a corner of my office where I was going through boxes of notebooks and had stashed some used ones that needed to be put away. There are a few months of daily notebooks, notebooks already reviewed, notebooks to be reviewed, and some childhood notebooks. (All of these have now been put back in a closet– I try to keep the notebook clutter under control!)

A close-up of some of the daily notebooks. I write the dates they cover on the bottom.

On top of my file cabinet: some stray samples to be given away someday, and some stuff already reviewed, and a small looseleaf binder I used many years ago that I’ll do a post on at some point.

Here’s the shelves in one of my closets: shoeboxes full of small notebooks, and stacks of larger journals and sketchbooks.

Here on a bookshelf are my Moleskine City Notebooks (though I’ve since bought more). Amsterdam is the only one in this stack that I haven’t used yet. The others are New York, London, Paris, Istanbul and Lisbon.

And finally, this is the stack of notebooks-in-waiting I keep in my desk. These are all notebooks that have made the cut as ones I like enough to use as daily notebooks or sketchbooks at some point (mostly Moleskines, HandBook Journals, Piccadillies, and a couple of others). I’m not worried about running out at the moment… but only because I have an additional stack of spares elsewhere!

There are close to 100 notebooks visible in these photos, not counting the ones in the unopened shoeboxes and additional notebooks I have stored elsewhere. Welcome to my world!

They’re only available in lined versions, at least so far. And I guess they’re only available through Piccadilly’s online store now that Borders is going out of business! I hope they’ll find some other retailers to work with soon…

It doesn’t seem like all that big a stack… I try not to go crazy but if it gets much smaller, it will need to be replenished!

Yes it is true, I love notebooks. I mean L.O.V.E.

I buy them because I like the size.
I buy them because I like the shape.
I buy them because of the cover.
I buy them because of the style.
I buy them because of the paper.
I but them because of the quality.
I buy them even when the quality is not so great.
I buy them because of the way they feel.
I buy them at full prize.
I buy them on sale. Especially when they are on sale!
I buy them for my children.
I buy them for gifts.
I buy one every time I go on vacation. (from the vacation spot)
I buy them when I’m just about done with the one I’m using.
I buy them when I don’t need them.
I just buy them.

Help! I keep buying notebooks and I can’t stop!

Here is my stash. I know, I know . . .
please ignore the rug mat sticking out from under the rug

That’s a total of 32 blank and ready to use notebooks/journals.

From Part 2:

My journal/diary, paper and pen obsession began as a child.  I loved to write in my little lock and key diaries, collect pencils with cute pictures on them and my name printed on the side.  I also loved those cute little erasers and would have them all lined up on my desk.  Yeah, yeah, I know,  I’m OCD.  I’ve admitted this already people!

I would sit at my desk or lay on a blanket in the back yard, pull out my little diaries and write and write.  However I was always embarrassed or ashamed of the words on those pages.  I would tear them out and discard them.  Oh how I wish I had kept them now.  I can’t remember anything I wrote, although I’d love to know what it was I felt compelled to put down on paper when I was a child and why did I feel so fearful of keeping those pages? Funny, the negative feelings remain – the need to remove my voice from those pages but not the positive  - what thoughts I put down on paper….

See the original posts for more photos and details about each journal.

Great collection, Shelley! Thanks for sharing your addiction with all of us!

Here’s what she has to say about them:

From the attic to various places in my bedroom: paper as far as the eye can see… I’ve always had a thing for paper and notebooks and, really, any kind of office supplies. I always have one or two notebooks on me at any given time. In eighth grade I carried around an ten-notebooks-high tower on top of my trapper keeper, with a notebook for each subject at school and each subject of my interest at the time. If I could only take five things with me on a deserted island, I’d pick four notebooks and one good pen. Notebooks notebooks notebooks. They’re my crack.

See more photos, with comments, on Flickr. Thanks for sharing, Bisonlady!

The notebook I just finished had a rather tight elastic, and I ended up keeping it tucked around the back cover most of the time– I realized I like being able to just open the notebook up without fiddling with it. I’d like to keep doing it, but alas, the red Moleskine I just started has a looser elastic, so it doesn’t wrap around the cover as tidily.

I’m a bit uncertain about using a red notebook after years of just using black ones. I certainly have plenty of non-black notebooks in my collection and have used many of them over the years, but more recently, I’ve found it so satisfying to have a row of uniform black-covered notebooks. I did use a red Moleskine diary a couple of years ago, but I didn’t carry it with me every day. The shade of red is rather glaring, I’m really hoping it gets dirty soon! (In case you’re wondering why I bought a red one in the first place, it was because I happened to stumble across a sale where it was only $3.00!)

As for the other notebooks, I sometimes carry the extra Moleskine sketchbook with me to use if I want to do a more elaborate drawing or painting that wouldn’t work well in the squared notebook. And I keep the HandBook journal at home, where I’ve been using it for collages and drawings on the weekends. The sketchbooks always take me much longer to fill.

The other notebooks I’m using now, less actively, are a large Piccadilly that I paste recipes in, and a small lined Piccadilly where I’ve been recording all the books I read. I also have a pocket size Moleskine Volant that I use for notes in my French class.

So that’s 6 notebooks going at once… I should probably come up with reasons to start a few more!

See more at List-It Tuesday: Journal Possibilities

Piccadilly has mainly sold their notebooks (by which I mean their Moleskine-like “Essential Notebooks“) exclusively in Borders stores. They are stocked in the bargain section rather than with the rest of the stationery products. As far as I know, the pricing has always been $3.99 for the Small notebooks, $5.99 for Medium, and $7.99 for large. There were some occasional issues with quality, but the company made efforts to address them, and the notebooks are a great value compared to other brands. Many Borders stores seemed to have difficulty keeping them in stock.

In the meantime, Piccadilly has (on and off) offered the notebooks to consumers directly through their website. When they were first introduced, they charged $4.99 for a small notebook. Then there was a period where they stopped selling online but they later reopened the online store selling their notebooks at the full suggested retail prices: Small $6.95, Medium $9.95 and Large $12.95, with some offers of discounts or free shipping with larger purchases. Just recently, they have lowered their online pricing to match the bargain pricing offered at Borders stores: Small $3.99, Medium $5.99, Large $7.99. Shipping is a flat $3.99.

But what will happen now? Borders has been having financial difficulties, and as I write this, it looks like they’re in the final stages of preparing a bankruptcy filing. I wonder how much money Piccadilly is owed by Borders, and whether the company can survive having their exclusive retailer go bankrupt? If you’re a Piccadilly fan, now might be a very good time to stock up…

Ever since I started drawing, I have been fascinated by books of blank white pages, i.e. Sketchbooks. A book devoid of all content, just waiting to be filled with anything. Throughout highschool I carried a sketchbook with me at all times after a friend of mine was doing the same. Granted, he drew more than I did and filled many books over the span of highschool, I only managed to filled mine half way. When I went to art school, I of course had to go to the school’s book store to get all of my books, not knowing that the same store was also the art supply store. Against one wall was stack after stack of empty, black, hardbound sketchbooks of all sizes and types. I was in heaven….

Read more at My Secret Obsession: Notebooks & Pens.