The Art of Loving Paper Squares

I don’t know if I’m just in love with being organised and stationary items, but my latest excitement is over – wait for it – paper squares!

I don’t know if they have a proper name.

Basically all they are is a tall stack of paper squares I keep on my bedside table. Think bigger than sticky notes but smaller than a quarter of an A4 piece of paper. And I love mine because squashed together they make patterns on the side of pastel spots and stripes. How funky is that?

Why do I like them so much? They’re just so handy. You need to remember something? Scribble it on this square piece of paper. Wake up and want to write down your dream? Easy. Portable to-do list? Done. And they don’t go gross because they’re not sticky like sticky notes. (Don’t get me wrong, sticky notes have their place, but I’m more of a sticky-tab kind of girl to mark important things in books, etc. And sticky notes, for me, always manage to fall off whatever I’m trying to stick them to. I usually end up putting glue or bluetac on the back of them anyway.)

Paper squares just make a lot of sense. Simple. Effective. Kind of boring but not really.

I’m hoping that when I turn twenty my creative-blog-post-brain will refresh itself so I don’t have to resort to talking about paper squares. Not that there’s anything bad about talking about paper squares, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not the most thrilling blog post you’ll find out there. Though, I suppose, it’s not the most boring. In my opinion, anyway.

I guess what I want at this point is to be able to tell a story about paper squares. Funny, poignant or witty would be my goal. But the only thing I can tell you about my paper squares is that I use them, they sit on my bedside table (for easy access) and the top piece of paper is currently discoloured and feral looking because I kept a playdough-sculpture-person lying on it for more than a day and the playdough colour is bleeding onto the paper square.

There’s nowhere else to keep the playdough person, though. I made it on Friday and I don’t want to hide it away in a container, but if I don’t it’ll go cracked and hard. The playdough hand has already crumbled off on numerous occasions, so I don’t really know what to do.

(Interlude for playdough person):

And I would keep the playdough somewhere else on display, but I tried standing it up elsewhere in my room and it just looked too disturbing standing up and looking at me without eyes. So I want it to be lying down, but it’ll annoy me to much if it just lies in the middle of my bedside table (because my bedside table is mostly bare except for a lamp, a breakable figurine, my paper squares, and a tiny pen bucket).

Do you see my dilemma, campers?

So now I have a pink playdough person lying on my paper square, which makes them not as effective as they could be because when I wake up in the middle of the night to write down a dream (this doesn’t happen often; I pride myself on my ability to sleep through the whole night) I end up flailing my arms with half-closed eyelids trying to find the paper square, and all I achieve is crumbling off my playdough person’s hand. Again.

There has to be an easier solution, but I have yet to find it. Where do I keep my precious pink playdough person? Who knows! I want to see it every day without it being creepy and standing up on the bookcase.

Who knew this would ever be a struggle of mine. I used to not even like playdough (it has that smell and sticks to your hand and even when you’ve gotten it off your hand feels weird) (at least I have a hand that’s not crumbling off in the middle of the night, I suppose) (or bleeding onto a paper square) (everyone’s a winner, am I right?)

I feel like this blog post was a train wreck from the beginning.

Get some sleep, campers,

Sarah xx