Clip-Clack: Can We Bring Office Supplies Back?
Written by Lyn Poats, Writing Center Consultant
Oct 31, 2025
As a kid, I found great comfort in bookstores at local malls. I hated shopping for school clothes, and crowds made me nervous. The quiet of looking for the next book in a series or a Vonnegut I’d yet to try helped me escape the changing pressures of my pre-teenage years. Back then, all bookstores had stationery aisles, densely packed with solutions to adulthood: paper weights for paper avalanches; airmail paper for vital London correspondence; smokeless ashtrays for client comfort. As a ten-year-old, I could feel the control of the unknown. By studying the tools available, I could hack any problem life would bring.
As I got older, “stationery” became “office supplies,” and aisles in bookstores became giant box stores. As suspected, adulthood needed fixing, and now I could wander mega-church-sized spaces devoted to MacGyvering life! Problems previously solved by ballpoints or pencils became problems that could be solved by gel, rollerball, felt tip, Fineliner, fountain, or highlighter. It was no longer a question between college-ruled or blank; now it was glossy or matte, card stock or foam-backed, inkjet or laser, synthetic or recycled. Do I need bulk? If so, I probably need to make holes. Do I want to use The Force + meditation and then aim with a single hole punch? Or do I need the factory precision and guidance from a three-hole punch? As far as I was concerned, life was as good as hacked.
Then one day, I made a trip to Office Max for a handheld, single-holed sharpener for fat pencils. The person helping me scoffed.
“I’m not sure we carry too many pencils,” they sneered. “Did you say sharpener?”
I may have blacked out. What I heard was, “We are all inside computers now, lady. Pencils don’t work there.”
I get it! I am no Luddite! Tech saves trees, and supply-closet minimalism reduces waste. The move from solving problems in the external to the virtual was bound to have some casualties. But while we might “have an app for that,” now we find ourselves surrounded by chunks of tech that used to provide tactile solutions.
There is a reason our ambassador into the virtual life was shaped like a paper clip. “Clippy” the Know-It-All would jump out of our word-processing programs with unsolicited reports of wrong-doing and pending virtual chaos. He was eventually “retired” for stalking, and we still keep a few paper clips around anyway, albeit not like we used to. We used to need a wrist-deep amount nearby so we could search for the right size and perform the perfect clip-related hack. Now we keep a decorative amount…somewhere around here, I swear.
More and more, I am missing that tactile experience of office supplies:
- While working with a PowerPoint file last week, I suddenly craved the hum and rattle, heat and burn from an overhead projector. I saw my hands turning papers on a pull-down screen. I asked a Writing Center colleague if he remembered them. He said yes – that he had recently seen one somewhere on campus in a corner. I could hardly believe this myth. I want to find it and party with it!
- Back in 2007, we purchased all the staples we will need for eternity and didn’t know it. I don’t care from what department you hail, you have enough staples. Let’s keep the boxes dusted because we can’t throw them away! (But wait: Is the stapler still broken?)
- A friend of mine lamented the loss of the inter-office manilla envelope. She explained how a memo would travel around the plant inside of a classic, yellow 8” x 10” with a few names crossed out above hers. She would read it and add the name of the next recipient. I want to get one that asks, “Hi! Have you seen my Staples delivery?”
How can we see all the solutions in a virtual life if we can’t touch some of them? Why do I find the ability to reinforce my notebook paper holes with vinyl disks so relaxing? How can a Rolodex hold five hundred names and addresses, make that great noise, and not be the first place to find a contact? To heck with touching grass! I want to write on “time-saving” carbon paper and smell the mimeograph machine! I want to search for both of those blue-purples in nature! I want to shake a box of tacks like maracas again! Let’s paint with White-Out and use masking tape as labels! I need to type on something with some mechanical resistance and a satisfying clack!
Oh, well. I’m sure I will continue to embrace those apps and their haptics and call it “engagement.” Will anyone be surprised if I show up to meetings with vinyl hole reinforcers stuck all over my face?
Don’t answer that.