I manage purchasing and facilities for a 45-person company. I place somewhere between 60 and 80 orders a year, and I get asked a lot of questions I never expected to answer—like how big a Trader Joe's tote bag is. The 3M questions come up most, so I've grouped them here alongside the other FAQs that land on my desk.
What's the difference between 3M weatherstripping and 3M strip caulk?
People use the terms interchangeably, but they're different products. Weatherstripping is a barrier—usually foam tape or a vinyl V-seal—that you install around a door or window. It blocks drafts when the surface closes against it. It works best on uniform gaps where the seal point is consistent.
Strip caulk is a soft butyl rope that you press into the gap by hand. It never fully cures; it stays pliable and keeps flexing as the building shifts. That makes it better for irregular gaps—cracked window frames in an older building, seams that move with temperature changes, that kind of thing.
When I first started in this role, I assumed weatherstripping was the fix for everything. I bought a case of foam tape and sealed every drafty window in the office. By the second winter, most of it had peeled off. The strip caulk I applied to the same windows is still holding. The lesson: let the gap decide your seal, not the product label.
How do you apply 3M strip caulk?
It's simpler than it looks. Clean the surface first—strip caulk won't grip well on dusty frames, and anything greasy will make it peel later. Then unroll the strip, press it into the gap with your thumb, and smooth it down. That's basically the whole process. I sealed three office windows in about 20 minutes last January (the original 1980s caulk had hardened and cracked long ago).
A few things I learned the hard way: don't stretch the strip while applying it. It likes to sit in place, not under tension. And check the label to see if your specific product compresses or simply sits in the gap—the two types behave differently after installation. One more thing, and this will sound obvious: don't get it on your clothes. Butyl sticks to fabric, and you'll be explaining that to your manager.
On pricing, the store-brand sealant rolls are cheaper per foot, but I've seen them pull away from the frame within a year. The 3M version costs a bit more up front, but I haven't had to redo a single window since we switched. The cheaper quote ends up costing more in labor alone.
Are 3M Command velcro strips strong enough for office mounting?
For most office jobs, yes. The standard Command velcro strips hold up to four pounds on smooth surfaces, and the heavier picture-hanging strips go up to about ten. I've used them to mount routers, power strips, a small whiteboard—and my personal favorite, a coworker's framed photo of his dog, which has stayed on the wall for three years.
Surface prep matters more than people think. Wipe the area with rubbing alcohol, let it dry completely, then press the strip firmly for at least 30 seconds. Doing that turned failures into successes for us.
The standout advantage is clean removal. When we reconfigured a meeting room last summer, all the Command mounts came off without leaving a mark on the paint—which saved us from repainting two walls and earned me a rare compliment from the landlord's property manager.
Where they don't work: textured walls, wallpaper, rough finishes. I gave up trying to bypass that limitation with stronger strips. You need mechanical fasteners for those surfaces, and that's okay.
Where can I get the QSC TouchMix-16 manual?
The official manual is on QSC's website as a free PDF. Go to their support section, search "TouchMix-16," and look under downloads. If you have the TouchMix app on a tablet, the built-in help system covers most of the same content for the functions you'll actually use during an event. The app is also where firmware updates show up, which have fixed a few issues since the mixer launched. I'd also recommend checking the "read me first" PDF on the same download page—it covers mixer basics like resetting to factory defaults, which came in handy when someone changed every setting before a client presentation.
The gain staging chapter is worth reading before your first show. I spent an afternoon with it before our company town hall, and it saved me from the classic feedback-during-sound-check moment. The rest of the manual is dense, but skimmable. My honest take: the quick-start section is more useful day to day, so print that page and keep it near the mixer. I keep a copy in the AV cabinet next to a roll of 3M Command strips (which, predictably, are what hold the power strip above the rack).
What size is a flyer?
In the US, the standard flyer sizes are 8.5 × 11 inches, 5.5 × 8.5 inches (half-page), and 4.25 × 5.5 inches (quarter-page). The half-page is the sweet spot for events—big enough for readable text but small enough to hand out without annoying people. For print, the industry standard is 300 DPI at final size, which means a half-page flyer should be about 1650 × 2550 pixels.
The most common mistake I run into is designing on screen and assuming print will look the same. It won't. Body text under 12pt is going to strain eyes. I learned this in 2023 when marketing ordered a rush half-page flyer for a trade show—it looked fine in the PDF preview and came out almost unreadable in print. We redid it at 14pt and the new version worked.
Quick pricing note: some print vendors quote a low per-unit price and then add setup and PDF-check fees at checkout. I always ask what's included before comparing quotes. The total usually matches the transparent printer's price anyway.
How big is a small Trader Joe's tote bag?
I looked this up for a colleague once and ended up measuring one myself just to be sure. A small Trader Joe's canvas tote is roughly 11 to 13 inches wide and 12 to 14 inches tall, depending on the production batch. The insulated versions run smaller and boxier—closer to 9 by 8 inches at the base. (Yes, this is a real question people ask the office manager. No, I wasn't expecting it either.)
If the underlying question is "can I ship something in a Trader Joe's tote bag"—people try this a lot with marketing samples—you can, but canvas bags don't protect the contents, and the handles create awkward bumps that make taping harder. I've seen boxes arrive with the contents damaged and the tote covered in grease stains from the box cutter. Use a proper corrugated box and 3M heavy-duty packaging tape instead. If it fits in the tote, it fits in a small box that costs about a dollar. If you really want to reuse the tote, wrap it around the outside of a taped box as a decorative sleeve—that keeps the bag clean and the contents protected.
Which 3M tape should I use for packing boxes?
For general shipping, the 3M industrial packaging tape has been my default for years. It's a hot-melt adhesive that bonds quickly to corrugated cardboard and holds up in cold temperatures—important for us because our loading dock gets chilly in the winter. I compared it to a cheaper generic brand in 2024, and the generic's adhesive failed on roughly one in three boxes stored overnight in the dock area.
That failure rate translated into damaged shipments and unhappy clients. The cost difference between the two tapes was about 15 cents per roll. I'll pay 15 cents to avoid repacking a box and sending a replacement. The real math isn't the unit price—it's the total cost of a failed shipment. When a client receives damaged goods, making it right always costs more than what you saved on tape. In the same test, the cheap tape was harder to apply, too—the roll didn't unwind smoothly and left adhesive residue on our hands. I've been managing this kind of purchasing for five years now, and the pattern holds across almost every category: the cheapest option rarely is, once you factor in rework, returns, and wasted time.
