I Love Post-It Notes

I love Post-It notes.  I have them in ever size, from small to large.  I have them in pink, blue, lavender and even the traditional yellow.  I have them in solid colors and imprinted with someone’s logo.  I have them in different shapes:  squares, rectangles, and hearts.  I have them stuck everywhere and I use them in ways I’m sure the inventers had not anticipated.

Knowing my addiction to Post-It notes, I thought a fun blog would be describing the 101 useful ways to use a Post-It note.  Instead, while researching more uses I found a brief history of the little scraps of paper.  Did you know they were made by accident?

In 1968, Spencer Silver worked at 3M with a focus on creating an extremely strong adhesive for the aerospace industry.  Instead, he created an incredibly weak pressure sensitive adhesive that no one could find a use for. That is until Vice President of Technical Operations for 3M Geoff Nicholson, a member of a church choir, kept losing the small pieces of paper he’d place in a hymnal for markers.  He wondered if the adhesive, weak enough to be peeled away from almost any surface easily, would be the answer to his problem.

Almost seven years after Silver's original discovery they could finally market a saleable product.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Still the road to these new sticky-backed papers was not an easy one until the Post-It frenzy hit Boise, Idaho.  Huge samples of Post-It notes were given away to anyone who would take them as a sort of bribe to get them to try them.  And the town wanted more--they loved them! 

Today, Post-It notes are in the Top 5 of bestselling office supplies.  They’re number one in my book! 

So maybe another day I’ll look into the 101 useful ways to use them, but until then you can say you know how they came to be.