Cool Tool Drool: A Grown-Up Pencil Case for Professionals

As professionals, we often need to carry around a bunch of stuff--pens, pencils, paper clips, binder clips, reading glasses, correction fluid, sticky notes, permanent markers, highlighters, charging cords, lip balm . . . and on, and on. (It can be a little dizzying when you do an actual inventory of your mobile office supplies.)

And if all those doodads and whatsits and objet métier aren't properly corralled, we can waste a lot of time tracking them down or, quite possibly, replacing them (only to find them later in that extremely safe and extraordinarily logical place we put them in).

I was plenty tired of tracking down and replacing, so I began the hunt for a decent pencil case. My requirements were fairly simple, I thought:

• big enough for all the stuff I needed to carry around, but no bigger
• an internal zippered pocket, large enough to be useful, for items I didn't want banging around loosely inside the case, like sticky notes and fountain pen cartridges
• made of a tough but pliable material that would be forgiving should I need to overstuff the case occasionally or retiring should I need to cram it into a tight space (i.e., a hardshell case? hahaha no.)
• aesthetically pleasing, at least to my eye
• reasonably priced, since a decent pencil case is just a pencil case and shouldn't cost as much as a really nice meal or a concert ticket

After an inordinate amount of time spent searching, I stumbled across the Rough Enough Multifunction Tool Pouch/Pencil Case (the link will take you to amazon.com). Below are some photos of my everyday carry (including my Gamma Ray glasses, reviewed here), with a few final comments underneath.

This bad boy meets all of my requirements and even adds a few perks: a handle (far more useful than I thought it would be at first), paracord zipper pulls, light padding all around, a soft internal lining, and a smoothly operating zipper that opens just far enough around the spine so that the lid will lie completely flat when open.

​As you can see, it's big enough to hold a lot of stuff, without crossing over into why-bother-I've-already-got-a-messenger-bag territory. Regarding aesthetics, although I'm generally not a label guy, these have panache, and I feel pretty sure folks wouldn't mistake this case for theirs in a busy café; regardless, the labels could be removed easily.

I promise I'm not one who tends to gush about pencil cases, but this guy is utterly fantastic. If you lie awake at night contemplating whether a perfect pencil case can exist in an imperfect world, the answer is yes. Now get some sleep.


Kerry Smith is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.