STATIONERY SNOB 01

The forever favorites, old and new.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop collecting, testing, and judging stationery, so instead of keeping my finds to myself I decided to make a series of it, therefore Stationery Snob is born. In this first issue I’ll be going over my favorites, all the pens I reach for on the daily, what notebooks I’m writing in, and my coveted grey highlighter.

Let’s look at notebooks first. I’ve been using the Leuchttrum1917 for years now, I have four filled up cover to cover and two others that are almost finished. I tend to favor the ruled and dotted medium A5 journals.

Each one comes with label stickers, which are pictured above with the little animals drawn on them. The sticker sheets also have a spine sticker though I prefer to have a blank spine on mine. The paper is smooth and a tad see-through, it doesn’t bother me when I’m writing but if I’m drawing it’s definitely something I note before picking my medium. I’ve used these the most for diaries, bullet journals, and sketchbooks.

My second most used journals are the Rollbahn journals, I prefer the spiral bound ones, which makes it easier to use every bit of the page. I use a white B6 grid notebook for my writing and work lists as well as brainstorms.

The orange/yellow one has a rougher, almost canvas texture, in contrast to the glossy covers of the other books.

When I planned my trip to Italy I bought this loud-pink one and was disappointed at how big it was, though now that it’s been in my care for a few months I do really enjoy this size for writing out stories and essays before I type them out to edit. I definitely keep this one’s insides less pristine than the white Rollbanh. You can find the size and style I use here, this website has colors I haven’t been able to find before!

The grids on these are very faint, which is why I’m able to write in them without problem. The third size I own is a 7 in x 4 in horizontal spiral notebook. This one is perfect for habit tracking.

It’s precious.

I adore Penco’s entire line of stationery and supplies, though I only have two items of theirs, the B6 and B7 soft notebooks. I bought the B7 for my daily to-do lists. I genuinely don’t get things done unless I write them down. I kept using memo pads for these lists and saving up the single sheets to put in a junk journal. The cover is a plasticy material with a bit of grain to it and the pages are slick and ruled in a grid.

Had to force the cover done for the photo.

I used the Little Things Label stickers for the front page, I found them at paper source when cheering myself after a long work day.

I do have a few gripes with the smaller book. The cover is permanently popped up a bit once folded over, which drives me mad. This could be remedied with a clip holding the covers tight against the pages. I also find myself reaching for it less due to the awkward size, if it was spiral bound the size would be no problem but with the stitched and glued spine it’s difficult to get the pages flat.

Next time I purchase a notebook from Penco I’ll be opting for the spiral bound spines.

Let’s talk ink. I’m sure if you’ve gotten this far into the article you’ve heard of Muji. Their 0.38 pens have been a staple of mine for years. I used to use Micron pens for everything, but specifically the brown 05 for journaling. They changed the color slightly around 2023 and I made a full time switch to Muji. These are always tucked into the bottoms of my purses and placed in my many cups of pens on my desk. They don’t ever bleed through the thin pages I tend to write on and they last a long time.

Pitol, tiny ruler, blue muji.

When I’m not writing with a Muji I’m using the Pitol G-2 07. The red color is perfect, it’s a click pen, and it doesn’t bleed either! I adore this pen, we used them at my old job and I still have the ones I had accidentally pocketed. I got told off a couple times about it.

Before finding these pens I’d always write and draw in pencil. The Pentel 0.9mm P209 is my favorite pencil. The pencil itself is metal, and with both the lead and eraser being refillable you only really need to buy one. I prefer a larger lead size to get both thick and thin lines but they have other sizes available.

Lastly, I found these highlighters on my mama’s nightstand and immediately went to go buy them. I love the shape of the highlighter and the tip has a bit of an angle making it easy to highlight inside books. There is a bit of bleeding, but with the grey color I really don’t mind it. I wouldn’t personally use either of the colored highlighters for novels since that would bother me more than the grey.

Only the essentials.

Honestly I usually just throw all of these into my bag and fish around for them later, but if I’m feeling more organized I’ll tuck them into my Lihit Lab Smart Fit pencil pouch, it’s been well loved and is a little banged up but it still does it’s job very well.

There will be plenty more articles such as this one in the future. If you enjoyed reading subscribe to be alerted when I send out each new issue. Thank you so much for reading!