Those Riddlesome Moleskine Stickers

If you're like me, you collect those little stickers that come with each Moleskine book. They're labeled "Quality Control" and they combine two aspects: color and design. I haven't kept track of which sticker comes with which type of book, but I have an awful lot of the little gridded ones, in green, orange and yellow. I have one or two of the other designs.

Stickers are fun. Who would throw them away? But the thing is, I don't know what they're for. I held onto them in a little ceramic teacup until I could decide on their function.

The first instinct was to simply lay them out on a piece of paper, organized by design, to have a large one-page collection of them, but I felt they should have a better purpose. My second idea was to use them to seal the backs of envelopes, and that would be sufficient but I still felt there was a reason for them I didn't perceive. In the back of my mind, something nagged that they should go on the books themselves.

Today I listened to that urge. I sorted them by design and laid them all out to see what I had on hand. Then I pulled out all my old Moleskines and looked at what I was using them for: date books, sketch books, work journals, travel journals, &c. Between those two aspects, I tried to forge some intuitive connections.

The gridded stickers looked like calendars, and I had the most of them, so they went on all my datebooks (except the one I keep on me and am still working on). Anything that looked like abstract scribbles went on creative journals or sketchbooks. The style that resembled calligraphy (to me) went on my writing journal, and the angular 90° overlapping design marked my travel journal, as it reminded me of Middle Eastern geometric design. My address book already had a sticker like a vintage envelope because I usually needed to find and use that promptly. I should've taken a cue from that system. Or maybe I did.

Now I still have some stickers left over, and my Moleskine shelf has gone from the austere all-black to a labeling system that announces the book I'm looking for. That actually was a real issue for me: sometimes I wanted to update my travel blog and it took several tries to find my travel journal for notes. I suppose I could even write the years on my past date books, for easy reference (though I do not recommend rereading old journals and date books unless you know for a fact you had a very happy past without any regrets).

Update: July 13, 2014
This update is long overdue, perhaps. Moleskine notebook covers feel like they're covered in thin, oiled leather, don't they? It's just coated cardboard, and the coating adds to the tactile experience of using a Moleskine notebook. However, the coating is also resistant to having things stuck on it, and these stickers are no exception. When I pull out these notebooks after a period of time, one of the stuckers will easily flake off, and though it can be reused anywhere else, where would it go? I no longer have any idea. Use them to close the flaps of envelopes, I suppose, or collect them all on a scrapbook page, but they can't be used to mark the spine of a notebook, I don't think.