As I mentioned earlier, I have a bunch of different notebooks that are dedicated to various work-related tasks— to do lists, special projects, clients, and so forth. But I can’t even begin to fathom how to count or categorize the other notebooks that are lying around the house.

Like many writers, I carry a notebook with me pretty much wherever I go to jot down thoughts and ideas or remind myself of things I want to look up when I get home. Most times, it’s a black engraved Domo Habana, which sits in my bag, but I have a bunch of tiny Clairefontaine and Moleskine staplebound books that live in smaller purses, too, along with a Memoriae that I keep in my backpack when I go hiking.

I don’t keep a journal, but I dedicate at least one or two other notebooks around the house to random non-work musings. And I’ve had an irrational fondness for those black-and-white Mead composition books since high school (awkward size! flimsy paper! but so clunkily charming, somehow), which I keep on a table near the armchair that’s in my office. Still, there’s never a single notebook that’s the *only one* I use at any given time.

One of the nice things about this distributed system is that I rarely “finish” a notebook, which means I don’t have to worry about whether or where to “archive” it (though I was quite impressed by Biffybeans’s crated collection). Of course, it also means I may have to hunt for a half an hour to locate something I’m sure I jotted down somewhere.

How many notebooks do you use?