If you think about it, the window envelope is a highly useful piece of stationery, but it does take certain things for granted. You need to write the letter in a particular format, with the recipient's address printed at a chosen place, to a specific depth allowed by the window.

On Friday night when we locked up the office we noticed that a number of PC's had been left on in the hope that they would drift into a restless hibernation themselves.

We all know that it is supposed to save energy to properly shut down your computer, therefore cutting costs for the company as well as doing something positive for the environment but does it really make any difference or is it just a load of waffle?

I'm the kind of guy that re-uses envelopes, at least in my personal life. Someone who thinks that, in some circumstances, making an impression with a crisp, new, envelope is less important than doing the practical, economical and ethical thing of recycling. The way we use envelopes probably says a bit about our personality and our companies.

Monday morning again, where did that weekend go? Why is it that the weekend can fly by and yet week days tend to drag, while at the coffee machine this morning I was chatting to a few people about what they did at the weekend and one asked me if I suffered from Monday morning blues. I had to think about it for a moment, as I do sometime feel sluggish when coming in on Mondays but love my job and the people I work with. This has been bugging me and so thought I would turn to you all for help.

You learn something new every day. It seems that rooks (cousins of the crows, in case you didn't know) can fashion tools to help them get at food. Scientific experiments show that these birds have the nous to choose the right tools for the job and to use two tools one after another. Joined up thinking in action!

Its Friday again (thank goodness) – as we start to think of the plans for the weekend some can fill us with dread and make us want to work on through. Or just as it used to be when at school, waiting for the home bell for the weekend to start.
Let us know how you are going to spend the weekend.

While perusing the news the other day, I stumbled across an article on SME Web with the following headline:  “Study: Women less productive than men”.  After getting over my initial shock and disbelief, I clicked through to find the results of a rather interesting study.

How do you like to shop for your stationery? Some people like to leaf through a catalogue while others prefer to browse online. At Euroffice we have gone one step further and introduced a Virtual Office to make it that little bit easier to shop with us. Take our pole and let us knowhow you like to shop.

Styrofoam, polystyrene, insulated... Whatever you call them, this kind of disposable cup is familiar to us all. To me, it's a reminder of cold days visiting Brick Lane market in London, having a hot, sweet cup of tea (and maybe a hot dog with lots of onions).

 

Meeting! The very word sends a shiver down my spine. I have a passionate dislike for them but I’m not too sure why. I think it stems back to my schooldays when as a kid I lost count of the times that I heard “I’ve called your parents in for a meeting with the head”, so much so that it has probably left some sort of Meeting phobia imprinted in my brain.

Ahh, the run up to Christmas. People wondering what they'll give – and get! – on the 25th. And the shopping – tree, tinsel, stocking up on turkey and Brussels sprouts. All the important things that one has to get out of the way before the New Year.

Except for one thing. Most people forget that one thing. The thing that, come the New Year, they'll be walking around their office or home looking for. That they'll remember just when it's least convenient and then find out it's out of stock almost everywhere......

It’s a story that’s been covered around the world during the past week, travelling from the UK to as far away as Australia and the US. The BBC covered it. So did CNN. The Times even put the story on its front page.  And it’s left one Daily Mail writer outraged.  Must be something big, right?  Something highly political, controversial and polarising.  It’s….wait for it….high heels – and it’s certainly become all of those things.

If you've not been able to face going back to work after a summer break, you're not alone. According to a survey for Investors in People, almost four out of ten of us find it difficult to knuckle down after a summer holiday and a third of us actually dread returning to the office.

Did you know that men can have pregnancy symptoms (called the Couvade syndrome) that mimic those of their wives or partners? How convenient then, in a completely unrelated move, and one that is important for small businesses, that the government has come up with proposals to give men more paternity leave.

We’re going to be on TV!  Well, our products are….

We’ve provided some of our great office products for the new season of ITV1’s 60 Minute Makeover.  And now they’re going to be on TV!

Is there such a thing as a woman's notebook and what should a notebook have to make it a woman's accessory? If you're thinking stereotypes, then it would have to be in pink and have an in-built mirror.

Have you got a plan so everyone knows how to share work in case someone in your team has swine flu? There is no point in wishing flu misery on your staff for the sake of a little planning and anyway it could cost you a packet if you find the office half empty. Forewarned is forearmed, and that's especially true when it comes to swine flu.

As I said the other day, when you send a piece of mail or a packet, it's the other person who's at the receiving end, so to speak. It's best to keep them happy – you know how annoying it is when a packet arrives with split ends because the enclosure was a tad bulky, or in less than pristine condition because the envelope was not strong enough.

I suppose we have some reasons to be cheerful – we're being told that the slowdown is slowing   down and people are feeling more optimistic. Last week Nationwide said its consumer confidence index rose to 63 points in August, up from 61 in July. People are also more upbeat about the economy, jobs and the state of their own finances in 6 months' time. This was reflected in the expectation index, which stood at 94 (91 in July), the highest since the start of the credit crunch in September 2007.

The Business Card has long been the traditional way to exchange contact information in the business world. They date back as far as the 15th Century in China and first made their way to England, via Europe, around the 17th Century.

It's not difficult to keep an office clean, it just takes a little bit of thought. Here's some handy pointers to preventing spread of the swine flu virus.

It's hard enough being a mum isn't it? After all, having to look after kids is a full time job in itself. Yet there are mums who not only manage to run the household, but also run a business from home as well.

...but not in a jargon-fuelled, business-speak kind of way. I simply want to talk about this often ignored office item.

'Phill Jupitus likes Papershow.' If someone whispered those words in your shell-like, would you know what they meant? I do. The comedian and self-confessed author of such works as 'Pin Numbers: how to remember them without tattooing' has been singing the praises of a digital pen and paper kit that can actually make PowerPoint presentations more interesting.

You know it's a nuisance to lug your laptop around when you're travelling to a meeting, or working out of the office – there's always the danger you'll forget it on the train, or leave it behind in a cab (it's been known to happen). Yes, a laptop can be indispensable for things like presentations, but sometimes all you need is a painless way to translate those handwritten notes of a meeting, or some preparatory work you've done, into a document that can be reproduced or shared with colleagues.

After a fall-off of cases over the summer, a second wave of swine flu is expected as autumn turns into winter. Because prevention is better than cure, here at Euroffice, we've put together a little checklist of things to keep in mind. It's just common sense, but we hope it will make you more aware of the simple precautions you can take to keep flu – avian, swine, Spanish, whatever – at bay.

Sit back and imagine a four-day, 10-hour-a-day work week….three-day weekends EVERY weekend….an extra day a week for relaxing and doing the things you enjoy.  Ahhhh, pure bliss. 

Customer feedback has always been an important way of hearing from our customers, it is of course nice to know when we have provided the service that the customer expected but just as importantly it is very important for us to know when we have failed the customer.

I can't imagine life without sticky labels. How else (given my ability to mix things up) would I be able to tell files apart in the office? And when the stationery cupboard needs tidying, you can show everyone that you're well organised, with shelves labelled 'Pencils', 'Staplers', 'Ballpoint pens' in your best joined-up handwriting.

 There was something in yesterday’s (02/09/09) rag that caught my eye: Paul Lung is a 37 year old Graphic Designer from Hong Kong who in his spare time, creates photo-realistic images using only a pencil.

Every office has one. That person who insists on tidying their desk 3 times a day, every day. Any stray piece of A4 paper, stapler or post-it note is met with a loud “I hate it when people mess up my desk”, designed to enter the ear of anyone within a mile radius.

We have one of those people in our office. Me!

One of the most popular products at Euroffice for a number of years has been the the good old Snopake Polyfile. This product was launched into the market almost 15 years ago in 1995, being a more durable, environmentally friendly and elegant alternative to its predecessor – the manila folder.  Since then, the success of the Polyfile has grown and grown

Most of us don’t look forward to commuting to and from work everyday – especially if you work in London and have to take the Tube. 

Battling the daily rush-hour crowds and riding in a train smashed up against fellow commuters is bad enough, but on top of this, during the warmer months of the year, commuters in the capital are forced to tolerate some pretty hot temperatures underground – not to mention all those sweaty, stinky people. 

Euroffice has launched its very first branded product – a high-quality, eco-friendly paper. You could say it was a natural choice for us  – we know the paper we sell has an environmental impact and we thought it was time for us to produce our own 'greener' product.

Origami is the gentle Japanese art of paper folding, of making wonderful things from paper. Papercraft also originated in Japan, is sometimes known as "pepakura", and is also the art of making wonderful things from paper. Both crafts use paper sheets as their medium, but that's where the similarity ends.

Ever dreamed of creating something so fundamental, so useful and so indispensable that it’s a wonder nobody’s ever thought of it before? That all-important ‘EUREKA!’ moment that doesn’t involve bath water that’s way too hot or running around in a toga in an Aristotle kind of way?

Consider, if you will, the Post-it note…

In a world of paperless offices, every message sent by email/instant messenger/scuttlebutt at the water cooler and Internet-friendly mobile phones with touch screen technology, you’d think that there’d be no need for copious amounts of pens in the modern office any more.

You’d think, wouldn’t you?

I was looking at some of my old notebooks at home the other day, the standard spiral reporters' notebooks, with soft covers. The notebooks were dog-eared, coffee-stained, which was par for the course, but when I flipped the pages, some of the stuff I'd written, was faded and undecipherable. Not that it was anything serious, like solving the riddle of the universe, or Fermat's last theorem, stuff from years ago, but notes that I thought important at the time.