Two Questions: When Binders Don't Quite Work

I've seen two questions in the past week or so regarding alternatives to binder. One came from a reader, who sent me an e-mail saying:

I am looking for an alternative to the 3-Ring binder for keeping documents together. In the past, I used a shelf with the binders, but the 4" models added so much width to them that they began to hang off the edge. Plus, they tend to lean and fall over. We now store the binders in a horizontal drawer filing cabinet designed for hanging folders. That is a bigger mess because you cannot see the binder where the information is.

So, is there an alternative that will bind several hundred pages, have hooks for the hanging folder bars, and have a flat binder area for attaching a label?




Yes, there is indeed an alternative. Both Avery and Acco/Wilson Jones make hanging binders; see the picture above. However, I've only seen them in 1-inch, 2-inch, and 3-inch sizes. However, I've read that the 2-inch binder holds up to 500 pages, and the 3-inch binder holds up to 700.




Another storage option worth knowing about is the binder carousel. They come in many sizes - the desktop carousel is shown above. For a whole range of binder carousel options, see Bindertek or Ultimate Office.


The other question was posted on the Getting Things Done Yahoo group; someone was frustrated by the wasted space a binder takes (if you don't have just the right size for your papers), but was also frustrated by pressboard report covers, which don't waste any space but which make it hard to reorganize papers - and again, wanted to know if there were any options.




The product worth knowing about here is the clamp binder. Here's one version, from Ultimate Office.




You could also get the Semikolon clamp binders, available from See Jane Work. The clamp binders at Jenni Bick also seem to come from Semikolon.

[photo by A.J. Gazman, licensed under Creative Commons]