I recently picked up a new Moleskin to take to meetings in place of my somewhat tatty ‘classroom’ style notepads and soon realised it’s too late, I can’t go back.

£7 Moleskin verses 60p ‘school’ notepad

It was around two years ago when I switched from Moleskin and Moleskin-esq notepads to plain old basic classroom style notepads.

It’s just paper

This wasn’t a deliberate change. Story goes that I was out of notepads for a meeting and had to buy something new on-the-run so I hopped into a local stationary supplier and picked up the simplest thing going.

Soon my love affair for these cheap somewhat disposable notepads started:

A recent collection from the past 12 months

They may look tatty but these agile little notepads are better than a Moleskin in many, many ways:

• Malleable and easy to hold
• Lighter and thinner
• Cheap (60p each!)
• You can make as much mess as you like

Going back to a rigid, expensive and “premium” Moleskin notepad feels all wrong. It’s difficult to hold, heavy and unwieldy and the paper no longer “feels right” and worst of all I find that I judge myself on any mistake or bad sketch I make as if I’ve desecrated the paper!

My advice – ditch the Moleskin, free your notes.