Creating a Commitment Calendar for 2015

Reaching Goals in 2015 with Customized Calendars

If you have plans for 2015, goals you want to achieve, then a customized calendar becomes more than just a place to write down  appointments, it becomes an outlook of goals you are striving to reach.

Fitness Calendar

Create a custom fitness calendar to stay on track with exercise regiment. Make weight loss objectives clearly defined—boost that New Year’s Resolution!

Finance Calendar

Getting your finances in order can be a daunting task. By determining your goals for paying down debt and mapping them out in a custom calendar, you create a discipline that helps you achieve financial freedom.

Creating Your Custom Calendar

1. Use a program such as Microsoft Publisher which already had calendar templates in place. You can customize them to fit any of your goals.

2. Bind the calendar. Use either a comb binding or wire binding to create a flexible calendar that can go on your refrigerator ( for fitness) or over your desk ( for finance) .

What Other Custom Calendars Can You Create?

1. A Bucket List Calendar-things you want to achieve in a year, places you want to go. Make them more than just wishes. Put them in writing!

2 Sales Goal Calendar- if you are running a business, giving your sales force obtainable goals with strong incentives can be a daily reminder of what they can achieve. Clarify those sales objectives in a calendar that hangs in their cubicle or on their office wall.

3. A Personal Best Calendar-If you are an athlete than reaching new benchmarks in a your performance can be very gratifying. Creating a custom calendar that gives you new personal best goals can help you reach the performance level you need for a marathon!

Need Help Choosing a Binder? Click Here

See How it Works

Why Do Teachers Need Laminators?

You may have wondered why so much extraordinary excitement and zeal is expressed by teachers over something as mundane as laminating. There must be a bevy of office supplies that would conjure more interest and joy, you would think. But the relationship between teachers and laminators is one based on practical need and the inevitable reality of teachers working beyond expectations to help offer students the best educational tools.

With the high cost of teaching supplies, many teachers are forced to find creative ways to offer learning tools more cost-effectively to their students. Many dig into their own pockets to pay for additional materials that are not covered by school budgets. Beyond that, learning materials that are acquired eventually wear out and new ones are needed. This is where laminators come in.

With the right laminator a teacher can produce learning materials that are durable and custom made to fit a class. Flashcards can be made on any subject and once laminated can prevent tears and spills that would destroy paper or cardstock flashcards. In the hands of children, laminated flashcards can be reused year after year, saving teachers and school districts on supplies. Creative teachers can also customize, making specific flashcard decks for special education students, or students learning English as a second language. But laminators can go beyond flashcards.

Teachers can create dry erase worksheets that can be drawn on, scribbled on or even spilled on again and again and then reused the next day!

Teachers can also create:

• Learning board games
• Take home craft projects that will not fall apart
• Lesson plans
• Name plates for student desks

The Best Laminators

New laminators currently available from Fellowes feature InstaHeat Technology, allowing the machines to warm up in 30-60 seconds, eliminating the typically long wait for laminators to be ready. In addition, the new laminators feature AutoSense, which automatically adjusts to changing pouch sizes so no manual adjustments are required. This feature is perfect for teachers who alter between card sized and letter sized lamination.

See the laminators that are available: New Laminators

Find Free Laminating Templates for Education: Download templates

Five Critical Pain Points from Desk Work

 Simply by not being comfortable or being in even slight pain can reduce your productivity. Oftentimes the worse thing we can do is get used to the discomfort or pain, making poor performance a necessary evil. Here are some common pain points from desk work and how to solve them


Back Pain

Slouching in your office chair eventually leads to back pain that may even linger long after you get off work. Good posture is really a solution ( your mother was right.) Additionally, effective back support can ease pains commonly in lower back from long hours of sitting.

7 Options for Back Pain Relief

Wrist and Arm Pain

Excessive typing, especially at laptop keyboards, eventually causes pain in the wrists and arms, which can lead to long-term painful carpal tunnel syndrome. Use ergonomic wrist supports for both keyboard and mouse to alleviate the stress on wrist tendons.

Select the Best Wrist Support for You

Foot Pain

Poor circulation from long hours of sitting can cause numbness and pain in the feet. Keep your feet well supported for long-term comfort. Additionally, high heels and business shoes long for many hours can start to cause pain. After all, they were designed for looks not comfort.

Choose Your Most Comfortable Foot Support

Need Comfort for the Home Office? Consider these sharp looking accessories:

Winter Allergies or Colds? Can You Tell the Difference?

Can you tell the difference between winter allergies and colds? Most people can't, which leads to the wrong treatment. If you are taking cold medicines for  your winter allergies you may notice that the cold doesn't seem to be going away. That's one sign you are suffering from winter allergies.

Here is how you can check your symptoms:


Winter Allergies                              Colds
 Nasal secretions                               Nasal secretions are discolored
are watery and clear

Itchy eyes and throat                        Chills and body aches

Symptoms persist                              Symptoms are gone in a week
for weeks

What Causes Winter Allergies?

Typically winter allergies come from the dust and air particles found in your duct system of your home. WIth the furnace running and windows closed, no fresh air gets into the house and dirt particles simply recirculate aggravating symptoms that you would normally associate with the spring.

Some Winter Allergy Solutions


1. Fresh Air: weather permitting, open some windows and let fresh air in and dirty air out.

2. Air Purifiers: If it's too cold to open a window, turn on an air purifier. They can safely removes 99.97% of airborne particles as small as 0.3 microns!

How to Select an Air Purifier

Choose one based on room size. Consider this model which cleans the air in a room of 290 square feet: 

For smaller spaces, consider this model, cleaning 105 square feet of air in your home.

What about filters?

Changing filters is easy if you have an air purifier with the right features. The AeraMax air purifiers have a Filter Change Indicator that lets you know when the filter needs changing.

Increasing Productivity by Just 15 minutes

It doesn't seem like much, but 15 minutes can be diverted to other tasks in the office or even contribute to a quick break by an employee. National labor statistics reveal that the average small office shreds about 15 minutes a day. This of course is time spent standing in front of the shredder, feeding paper into it, praying there are no paper jams.

Those days are over. With the new AutoMax Auto Feed Shredder, you simply fill the bin, close the bin, push the button and walk away. Think of shredding as being easy as filling your dishwasher at home.

The AutoMax is available in several sizes to suit various office sizes. Larger offices can benefit from the 300C with a 300 page shredding capacity--completely automatic, as well as the 500C with an even greater shredding capacity. Smaller offices can use the 130C or 200C with smaller sheet capacity but with the same automatic capabilities that saves you time.

See how it works:

Some of the features of the new AutoMax:

AutoMax™ 500C Auto Feed Shredder

• Features Fellowes® SureFeed Technology™ that allows for a truly walk away shredding experience
• Continuously shreds 500 sheets into 5/32” x 1-1/2” cross-cut particles (Security Level P-4)
• JamGuard System™ prevents shredding interruptions for jam free operation
• SmartLock™ engages with each shred cycle to protect confidential information
• SilentShred™ offers ultra-quiet performance for shared workspaces
• Energy saving Sleep Mode feature shuts down the shredder after 2 minutes of inactivity
• Innovative touch screen technology with back-lit LEDs
• Convenient pull-out drawer for front loading of materials to be shred
• 3 Start Delay options for starting shred jobs even after the work day
• Versatile, flat top for easy office integration and additional storage space
• 20 gallon removable corrugate bin
• For 3-5 users

See the full line of AutoMax Shredders: Productivity Starts Here