Just before the start of a new school year, my father used to pull out all the class work and home work notebooks I used in the previous year and tear out all the left over pages from them. He would then cut all the pages to the same measurement and take them down to a binder to get it sewn and bound. This book would have on an average 300 pages, some of which were single rule, some broad rule, some double rule and some plain. This book then would be my ‘rough book’ for the new school year. A book in which I could do all math calculations, doodle, or write notes (when I forgot the main notebooks). It used to be the book I could fall back on.
But, of course this was in school.