16 life hacks with paper stickers

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

These sticky notes will help you drill a hole and keep it clean, sort your cables and drive a nail into place. And you can also print photos from Instagram on them.

I don’t know about you, but for me personally, stickers are rarely used for their intended purpose. I take notes in electronic form, and there is simply no need to write anything on sticky notes. Fortunately, there are more fun and rewarding ways to apply stickers than covering them with insignificant text.

1. Dust box for drill

Need to drill a small hole with a drill in a drywall wall, pressed wood table, or similar thing? It is not necessary to spread newspapers on the floor. Attach a sticky note paper underneath the drilling site, fold it up, and your makeshift dust and shavings trap is ready.

2. Marking where to drive the nail

Another little life hack for home craftsmen. Hanging pictures, mirrors and shelves on walls is easy when you know where to drive nails. However, ugly marks often remain from a pencil or marker. Therefore, you can put a dot on the sticky sheet, place it in the right place and hammer in a nail, and then simply remove the sticker by tearing it apart.

3. Replacement ruler

If you don't have a ruler at hand, but you need to draw a more or less even line, stick a sticker and run a pen or pencil along its edge. It is then very easy to peel off the auxiliary paper.

4. Labeling of cables

Those who have a lot of electronics in one place (for example, a computer, laptop, router, tablet and smartphone on the table) can easily get confused about which cord is connected where. If you don't want to buy an organizer for cables and place everything according to feng shui, then you can simply mark them with stickers. Cut a label from a piece of paper, sign and wrap it around the wires: this will make it easier to identify what is connected where.

5. Organizer for cables

They can not only be marked with stickers, but also put together. To do this, cut off the sticky part and wrap a group of wires with it. Suitable for headphones, chargers and other little things that tend to get confused.

6. Cleaning the keyboard

Cleaning tiny, thin gadgets like the Apple Magic Keyboard is easy. But removing the dust that accumulates between the buttons of full-size keyboards is a long and dreary task. You can, of course, disassemble the entire device or move a cotton swab between the keys, but it's easier and faster to pick up dirt and debris with the sticky side of note paper. Cheap and cheerful.

7. Stand for drinks

If your mug of hot coffee leaves an ugly impression on your desk, you can place a stack of sticky notes underneath it. You will get an impromptu stand. Only it is better not to choose brightly colored leaves for these purposes, otherwise they will already leave traces.

8. Sorting small parts

Struggling to build your own retro console from a Raspberry Pi, or are you just taking apart your laptop to dust it off? Stickers will help you not to lose any of the little screws that love to roll off the table and disappear without a trace. Stick small pieces to the sticky side of the paper and they'll be safe. You can also sign what and where you will need to screw.

9. Calendar

Google Calendar is certainly a handy gizmo, but some consider it insufficiently descriptive. Designer and blogger Laura Doty offers her own calendar organization that can be hung on any vertical surface. All you need is stickers, a marker and free space. The advantage of this calendar is that you can easily change "cells" if you want to schedule a new task.

10. Bookmarks for books

Stickers make great bookmarks. Sign them however you like. If necessary, the leaf can be cut into several pieces to obtain narrower strips. And if you do not want the sticky part to touch the pages of the book, you can simply cut it off.

11. Stash for change

In Hollywood films, there are often moments when the hero hides money or other valuables in a book, cutting out the middle from it. If you are a bibliophile and the very idea of disfiguring masterpieces of literature terrifies you, use not folios for this purpose, but a thick pack of sticky sheets. So you can hide bills, jewelry, keys or something like that.

12. Menu planner

Designer Mickey Provost recommends creating a kind of menu page from stickers using a special template. It will be useful for those who make up a diet for seven days in advance: athletes, losing weight and other conscious individuals who do not allow themselves to eat everything whenever they want. Sign each leaflet by day of the week and indicate what and when you will eat. If your diet changes, it is easy to replace the planned one.

13. Printing paper

Designer Jen Hadfield has come up with an ingenious way to use sticky notes: print on them using a regular printer. To do this, you need a simple template. Make a copy of it on A4 paper, then attach the stickers (with the adhesive end on the side where the printer pulls the paper, this is important). Then place the necessary pictures, text, diagrams in the template on the computer, put the sheet with stickers in the tray and send the file for printing. You can do anything this way, from beautifully designed posts to Instagram photos.

Likewise, you can print letters on stickers, as recommended by designer Kelly Mindel. These are then compiled into messages that will be highly visible. One tiny sticker on the refrigerator is easy to miss, but it is harder to miss a whole series of pieces of paper that make up a phrase (for example, congratulations).

14. Mosaic

If you have so many stickers that you just have nowhere to put them, create a mosaic. For this, leaves of two colors are enough, but the more shades you use, the better. For example, designer David Stark makes pretty curious patterns out of stickers.

15. Origami

Mosaic is cute, but 3D crafts are even more interesting than 2D ones. You can also create origami from stickers. It's simple and fun.

16. Garland

Designer Angus Fergusson made bright garlands from the leaves. It takes a lot of time, but it is original and cheap. Connect the sticky side of one sticker to the smooth side of the next, and you get the same thing.

What interesting ways to use notepaper do you know?