How to Use Sticky Notes Creatively for your Home Office?

Working from home has its perks like comfort and convenience. Yet, I think we all can agree that it takes a toll on our productivity over time. 

The pandemic situation has changed my work environment to the work-from-home module.

I tried to improve my productivity by using sticky notes creatively as distractions at home affected my work organization.

In general, sticky notes can be used creatively to work, organize and manage our home office. When used creatively, it can boost your overall work productivity, increase work participation, and make working fun. Besides its original purpose, it has versatile use like bookmarking, organizing cords, and many more.

From my experience with sticky notes, I can say that as helpful as these can be for task management, they can be equally messy.

So, I tried different ways to organize my tasks in them and creatively organize and place the sticky notes or post-it notes.

Let’s look at some tips to use sticky notes creatively for your home office.

Benefits of Using Paper Sticky Notes

Sticky notes are useful and easy to use. So let’s have a look at their usefulness and benefits.

1. Better Planning

For instance, planning for work or an event is tedious because we must ensure no steps or vital details are missing.

We can quickly move around the steps or add to the workflow plan without the mess and struggle of modifying the whole project with sticky notes.

2. A Fun Way to Study

We can all agree that studying takes up lots of our effort. However, study time can be fun and easy by using Sticky notes creatively.

For instance, we can use them for creating a study plan. Also, we can use sticky notes to write short bullet points, summarize the lessons, index topics to notes, and many more.

Customizable sticky notes are also available, making study time more enjoyable—gear up for studying with customizable sticky notes available on Amazon.

3. Memory Booster

Flashcards use the active recall retrieval method to boost memory retention. According to research (Senzaki et al., 2017), students who use flashcards to study score significantly more on tests than those who do not.

They check most of the boxes to the similarity in size and functionality. Hence, we can use sticky notes as a cheaper alternative for flashcards.

4. Set Short Term Goals

Generally, people use planners for writing long-term goals. However, we can write short-term goals like daily or weekly goals on sticky notes.

We can constantly see the goals written on sticky notes and pasted somewhere, which reminds us always of our goals.

5. Enables Participation

Using sticky notes is not just about its functionality. It also enables participation.

We can arrange the sticky notes by color, contents, or shape.

Using sticky notes creatively, like moving them around and taking them off when tasks are completed, raises a sense of participation in users.

Due to this, one becomes motivated to work and complete tasks more.

6. Promotes Ownership

Organizing and managing one’s plans and tasks creates a sense of ownership among the users.

Furthermore, taking ownership of any activity increases one’s dedication toward it.

Also, using sticky notes is quite an enjoyable way to do it.

Where to Place the Sticky Notes to Keep your Tasks Organized?

The placement of the sticky notes determines how often we see them and when we see them.

Therefore, it is a given that we would want to see them at crucial times.

Here are some ideas on creatively arranging them in our workspace for time management.

The places we place sticky notes affect our productivity and are a different choice for everyone.

But first, let’s look at the table for places where we can use sticky notes creatively in our home office.

Where to place Sticky Notes	How they Improve Organization?
Whiteboard	Clustering of tasks in one place
Journals	Bookmark/Labels
Laptop/ Desktop	Increased visibility
Planner	Improved motivation Task organization manageable
Door	Increased visibility

 1. Placing on Whiteboard

Placing sticky notes everywhere on the wall can be messy. Instead, you can use the whiteboard for your home office to put sticky notes arranged by tasks on weeks and weekdays, days of the week, daily timetable, etc.

Note: Whiteboard works as a perfect placement for sticky notes by clustering all our tasks, making them easy to plan and organize.

2. Using Journal Pages

Journals help maintain our work updates and pieces of information. But, finding the required data is only possible by turning page by page. 

Sticky notes serve a dual function in solving this problem. First, we can easily access our work information by placing sticky notes as a page marker.

Second, sticky notes can also be snippets of the journal chapter or page if we write a summary.

3. Pasting on Laptop/Desktop

While working in our home office, we see our laptop or desktop more than anything else during our work hours. Besides, placing sticky notes on them ensures that we do not miss out on important work reminders.

Additionally, this placement will declutter the workspace and keep your workspace organized. 

4. Organizing Folders

Do you have folders filled with work papers stacked up at your home desk?

Sticky notes are the perfect labelers for you! Colorful sticky notes can be used as a label for all your folders so you can arrange them by category, priority, or any order.

You will never have to rummage through the piles in a rush again.

5. Marking Planners

Organizing is more manageable if we keep a planner for sticky notes alone.

We can organize sticky notes inside the planners by categorizing chapters or topics.

The sticky notes can be removed once completed, leaving a perfectly reusable planner.

Also, the motivation increases when we can physically cross out or release the notes to mark task completion.

6. Placing Reminders on Doors

When there are crucial reminders like meeting reminders, we need to ensure that we don’t miss them.

Unfortunately, especially while working from home, these things can go unnoticed.

We should place sticky notes in places we can’t avoid seeing, like doors.

It acts as a constant reminder and is a non-distracting alternative to setting phone alarms.

Dont have Binding machines learn to Bind papers without it

Organization of Tasks in Sticky Notes

Now that we can organize sticky notes in the workspace.

How about we go into depth and see how we can creatively manage our tasks in sticky notes to be more focused and punctual with our work?

1. Color Coding the Task

Sticky notes are available in a widely colorful palette. Therefore, we can use different colors of sticky notes for sorting and grouping tasks.

Furthermore, color coding is beneficial in prioritizing tasks. At one glance, we can differentiate urgent tasks from others.

Quick Fact: Color-coding improves clarity by applying basic visual methods.

2. Making your Writings Concise

Standard sticky notes are usually 3 X 3, which is not a lot of space. Primarily, the trick lies in maximizing the utility of its minimum space.

Besides, we should limit the writing to a few words or sentences. This way, the report is more visible and catches our attention quicker than reading long papers in small letters, making it more difficult.

Not to mention, concise writing helps us understand the context or reminders faster than wasting time comprehending longer texts.

3. Creating a Checklist

We can write short checklists of tasks on sticky notes for work motivation. They provide us with a clear view of the tasks to be completed and our accomplishments.

Also, checklists are handy for managing and planning a day or even weeks’ work.

Checklists are a fun and motivational way of getting things done.

Also, read about Enhancing your desk atheist.

4. Brainstorming New Ideas

Ideas required for completing any task can pop up in our minds anytime. Sticky notes are perfect for a brainstorming session.

After writing ideas randomly on those notes, we can identify themes and patterns on those ideas and collect them. These ideas can now form a good plan.

We can group them or sort them for further planning. For example, we can use different colors for headings and contents or a color pattern like red to show currentness and yellow for highlight points.

For a detailed idea on brainstorming using sticky notes, watch the video below.

Creative Ways to Use  Paper Sticky Notes

1. Bookmark Pages

What to do when you’re reading a book and need to mark a page quickly? Grab a sticky note!

In fact, you can use different colors of them in a single book to mark pages. Also, you can write small notes and have your own easy personalized bookmarks.

2. Keyboard Cleaner

The sticky side of the sticky notes makes it perfect for sticking in places and can also be used as a cleaner.

We can all relate to dirt and dust accumulating between the keys on our keyboards. Furthermore, they are quite hard to clean.

However, we can swipe the sticky side of the sticky notes between the keys and clean them in one go.

Did you know? Sticky notes were created in 1968 but as an accident. The glue was supposed to be a strong adhesive.

3. Cord Organizer

Colorful sticky notes can be wrapped around the cords in your home office. Besides, color coding also helps in identifying the cords in a bundle.

It can be used as a whole or cut out into strips to tie around the cords.

4. Coaster

The sticky notes also come in handy when there are no coasters around, and you have to set a cup of coffee on your table.

It might be a temporary solution, but your home office table is now mark-free and clean.

5. Print Out

We can use sticky notes more creatively in-home office by using them to print. You can save the printer ink and use the printout for decorations. It’s an eco-friendly approach to decoration.

To do so, stick the sticky notes on printing paper and print over them; you can peel them off and use them where ever you want.

Can you Reuse Used Sticky Notes?

Besides being tiny, Sticky used notes can generate lots of paper waste. So, let’s go through some ways to recycle and reuse them.

• Write on both sides of the note to make a quick note or scribble something.
• Be artistic! Make an origami craft for your work desk or paper art for your wall.
• Use them as paper confetti or gift tags.

Else, you can also use re-writable post-it notes. Finally, we can use erasable markers to write on the whiteboard surfaces. You can buy them at Amazon.

How to Store sticky Notes?

Sticky notes are great task organizers, but how do we store them?  Here are some tips on their storage.

• Use a Sticky notes dispenser. They come in such adorable varieties, which can also double up as decor. Check out this cat post-it dispenser on Amazon.
• Use a memo holder to store multiple them.
• Please make use of old small containers or cardboard boxes to store them.

Drawbacks of Sticky Notes

Although there are many uses for sticky notes, they have some drawbacks. Below are some disadvantages they can cause:

• The glue in sticky notes is harmful when placed on paper-based surfaces like books. The glue solidifies, leaving an acidic layer behind. The paper will eventually fade and become fragile as an outcome.
• The color dye used to color sticky notes makes them difficult to recycle with white papers.
• Sticky notes do not stick when used more than once, making it easy to lose them, and important information is written on them.

Do Paper Sticky Notes Harm Laptops?

The glue used in sticky notes is a weak adhesive that does not leave a residue. So, placing them on your laptop will not pose any harm.

However, it is advisable not to place them on the screen as it can disturb and block the screen.

Also read Make your office more good-looking and cute.

Are Paper Sticky Notes Eco-Friendly?

Since sticky notes are paper-based and have non-toxic glue, they are biodegradable. Hence, it can be turned into compost, making it an eco-friendly option.

However, all paper waste negatively impacts the environment, most of which is during its production process.

Nitrogen dioxide(NO), sulfur dioxide (SO) and carbon dioxide (CO), and other harmful gases are released during paper production, which contributes to air pollution.

Therefore, if you are looking for an eco-friendly option, you can choose recycled post-it notes or digital sticky notes.

Final Thoughts

Sticky notes are a fun way of organizing tasks while working from home. It helps bring in the motivation required for working while making the workspace colorful and vibrant.

Simple efforts such as placing sticky notes in journals, whiteboards, folders, laptops, and doors can keep things organized for easily distracted and improve time management skills.

Also read Essential Things to Keep in Your Desk Drawer along with Sticky notes.