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Is there an easier way to remove pages from a spiral notebook, without all the mess?

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  • Define "mess", please. Are you talking about a) leftover scraps within the spiral, b) excess paper on the torn out sheets that needs trimming or c) sheets with missing bits because the paper ripped at the wrong spot like it can be seen at the top left of the spiral?
    – Stephie
    Sep 21, 2016 at 19:42
  • As Tetsujin mentioned, did you notice that the pages are already "kleen-edge" perforated to be neatly torn just between the spiral holes and the larger 3-hole notebook ones? Fold on the perforated line, put your left-hand finger at the edge of the fold, and pull top-right page corner toward the bottom-right page corner with your right hand. Leave the page stub in the spiral binding to help the remaining pages stiffen the notebook.
    – Stan
    Sep 21, 2016 at 23:30
  • It doesn't sound like it from your question, but if you want to remove all the pages at once, you can bend or cut one end of the wire spiral, then unscrew it from the pages.
    – Χpẘ
    Mar 28, 2017 at 0:30
  • Try a double fold? First, fold the page along the perforated line to the left. Then, turn the page and back-fold it along the same line to the right. Finish by pulling the page diagonally with your left hand while starting the "pull" from the top or bottom at the perforated line. Use your index finger to keep the tear starting from the correct spot. Try to leave the selvage with the spiral holes to keep the note book orderly.
    – Stan
    Oct 20, 2017 at 22:53

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You could try running a blade (knife, scissors, etc) along the spiral binding to make the break more consistent. This will leave the paper withing the small binding portion largely intact.

The problem as I see it, is that the paper tears in different directions. Sometimes an individual ring of the binding will tear through the paper leaving the paper on the full sheet. Other times it tears between two of the binding openings leaving the paper inside of the spiral. Since cutting to the edge of the paper from each individual binding would be tedious and still likely require trimming the final sheet, cutting in the other direction will be quicker and easier.

So you'd cut through all the binding holes leaving a strip within the binding (easily removed in one piece from an end of the binding). The rest of the sheet will need trimming to appear neat, but the result is that there are no small loose pieces to appear messy or linger among the pages/binding of the spiral.

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Many spiral notebooks (like the one I use every day) have Perforations all down the side along the spine. However that would still leave you with a 1cm(ish) line of paper remaining down the spiral.

However if you do not want that or your notepad doesn't have the Perforations, you can use a small blade and run it across the holes where the spiral goes through. That would allow you to remove almost all of the page in one go, and then simply pull the paper which is inside the spiral out. That shouldn't make much mess at all since if you cut down every hole, the entire side in the spiral should pull out in one go.

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Use a letter opener such as this to cut down the length of the page at the perforation.

enter image description here

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I just cut the pages off of the spiral binding with scissors, maybe 10 pages at a time. The scissor-cut edge of the page may be a little jagged, but for me it never matters.

A similar approach would be to use a utility knife, and just cut through a lot of pages at once. You'll need to draw the utility knife's razor blade along the same cut several times to make it through all the pages.

enter image description here

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Fold then tear down the perforated line.

enter image description here

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  • Have you tried this though? It works if you do a single page at a time, half of the time.
    – Insane
    Sep 21, 2016 at 12:16
  • Tried it? Daily. Maybe you need a stationery supper who can make the perf weaker than the spiral binding ;)
    – Tetsujin
    Sep 21, 2016 at 12:46
  • Try folding, then back-folding the perforated line to weaken it. Repeat as neccessary.
    – Stan
    Oct 20, 2017 at 22:56
  • (unfortunately) that depends strongly on the quality of the perforation. Worked on many of my notebooks almost all the time. On some it was tedious to fold many times.
    – pseyfert
    Oct 22, 2017 at 20:35

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