Practicalmadness

BoingBoing is all about this fun gadget. Get this: there’s a $6 stapler doesn’t use staples!!!

Instead using the tiny pieces of metal that add up to lots waste, this ingenious little device joins your papers by punching a small, neat hole in your documents and folding the remaining flaps together for a secure binding.

Yeah, that’s great, except that I’m way ahead of you: I have been using just such a stapler for two years now.

I first found one in a stationery shop on Rue Chartres on the French Quarter in New Orleans. See, I just sacrificed some pretention points by not referring to it as the “Vieux Carré,” points I shall recover by mentioning that I bought my first Moleskine notebook on that trip and presently own at least six of them.

Anyway, the little thing is amazing. I used it on all my papers and stuff during both my senior years of college, replacing the gold-plated Italian paperclips I had been using during my sophomore-junior “rich bitch” phase. A phase that you would think was ongoing given my predilection for handcrafted Norwegian walking shoes and amuse-bouches at trendy Chicago restaurants. You would be mistaken; I like those other things because they’re awesome, not because I blow what right now would be an entire paycheck on them.

Back to the staple-free stapler, here’s a picture of mine:

And here is what a staple-less staple looks like.

Not only have I used and enjoyed my staple-free stapler for a couple of years, I’ve taken to giving them as gifts. I recently gave one to my girlfriend Emily, and will make them an integral part of all token gifts I give in 2005.

Link to Treehugger. (Via Boing Boing.)

Update: Sigh. Now Engadget’s covering this shit.