There is something so practical about a spiral-bound notebook. It is nostalgic in the way many of us may have grown up using Mead college-ruled notebooks for our high school or college classes, maybe Five Star if we were feeling particularly flushed with cash. Even with a stationery obsession, I depended on these trustworthy albeit plain single-colored, simply hued books. But after many years of experimenting with notebooks, enjoying all that my graduate school bookstore (shout out to Seattle’s hidden stationery gem, the basement of the University of Washington bookstore) had to offer for both my many seminars and my quarterly teaching, I returned to the dependable spiral when it came to the culmination of my graduate study. I used a spiral notebook, buried somewhere in this home, to start thinking about my many ideas for my project. This long preamble is to say that I fell in love with the spiral notebook again thanks to the minimalist beauty that is mishmash’s Easy Breezy notebook.

Portuguese brand mishmash specializes in “everyday tools” that are first and foremost minimalist, but they capture a minimalism that is still playful and never boring. Like most of my new favorites, I found this through Greer, though this was an online purchase I made in the haze of pre-pandemic life. What is so lovely about this this wide-spiraled notebook is yes, of course, it’s perfect pastel-y hues, a lavender that is subtly bluish as well, with these life-giving bright mint spirals, with a substantial 180 pages. In its lavender version, the pages come in dots, for all my #bujo people; but, in a different color, it might come lined, or in boxes, or blank, offering all the forms for all the preferences. And to top it off, the spirals allow for 360 degree rotation. A pretty impressive, potentially perfect, and definitely useful spiral for any project on the horizon.