End of school year = free paper!

Thistle-down

My daughter always ends up with many partially or totally unused A4 and A5 school notebooks at the end of the year. She used to just toss them in the recycling, but a few years back I was looking at her work and realised how much perfectly good paper was going to waste. If the books are completely unused I will offer them back to the school, but if they have a name on them or any marks or creases, the school doesn't want them back.

I use the notebooks for all sorts - shopping lists, meal planners, journals, address books, spending diaries, I punch extra holes in the A5 size paper to use in my filofax, I've even used the notebook covers as filofax dividers. I spent 30 mins last night drawing some vertical lines in an unused book and now have a new accounts book, rather than buying one from WHSmith.

I cut out the blank pages from a mostly used book and trim them up neatly. I really dislike wasting perfectly good paper and I have the time at night to sit and do this kind of thing. It's very satisfying, and I now have a huge box file of blank paper to use in the printer or for writing letters.

I used to prefer keeping everything on the computer but have gone back to pen and paper in recent years - maybe it's my age - but I remember things so much better if I've actually written them down.

Gigervamp

That's a great idea for those with school age children. Notebooks are always handy. Wish I'd thought of it when mine were at school!

just_trying

Great idea thistle, my kids used to tell me to keep them !!.

Then I said how about you practice during the holidays in the books, maths I would write out questions and mark, English they had to keep a diary of what they done each day etc.