full circle: back in a filofax but this time, an A5 original!

Many moons ago, I wrote about my disappointment with the Filofax brand. There were many things: the ring problems, the paper quality, the leather quality, etc. Fast forward a number of years and I have decided to give them another try - mainly because my sister uses an A5 Filofax and has had no issues with hers. Back in the day, I preferred the 'personal' size but reflecting on my needs now, an A5 size felt like the better fit.

I compared the prices of current A5 Filofaxes and narrowed it down to a few options. I knew I wanted leather and something timeless and neutral in colour. It just so happened that this A5 Filofax Original in nude turned out to be the cheapest and I succumbed to ordering it from Amazon as I had a gift card to use, bringing the cost down further. This happens to be the exact same model as the one my sister has too and we're embracing being Filofax twins.

When it first arrived, five of the six rings were perfect. The top ring had a 1.5mm gap to it and I noted that pages kept catching on it so back it went. A replacement arrived a couple of days later and I'm pleased to report this one had no page catching issues though the top ring still looks a bit precarious.

The leather is a lovely patent nude with rough edges which I'm okay with. These pictures make it look lighter than it is - it is more of a true nude in real life.

On the inside, there is an elasticated section which can potentially hold two pens (one would have to be a slim one!), with two card slots and a larger full length slot for anything you choose. As always, I have made a dashboard at the front using the clear plastic that initially came with the Filofax. I have replaced the Filofax dividers with Smythson ones (more on the Smythson in the next few weeks). I prefer the thicker card of these Smythson ones as they feel a lot more durable.

Behind the first divider is a page with some essential info on and to-do lists.

Hiding behind the second one are budget planning sheets and notepaper.

Behind the third section is my planner which I have opted to get from Kikki-K. Let me just say, the paper is unrivalled. It takes fountain pen ridiculously well and the bright white paper is a nice contrast to the blue ink I have decided to use (Kyo-no-Oto Hisoku). There is a year planner, a month planner and a weekly planner within these inserts.

The month inserts have clean lines with a handy 'notes' section on the right side. Each box leaves plenty of space for events that need noting down.

At the top, I have used a Midori clip to denote which month we are currently in and of course, from today, I will be using number '5'.

The inserts themselves are minimalistic and have the bare minimum on them. My only gripe is that there is a slot each day for a 'birthday' which seems a bit excessive. However, I've found more than enough space for each day. Next year, I'll probably go for a week on one page with a notes page on the other side.

Going back to my old ways, I like to add in colour, stickers and washi tape :-)

The final section has a host of notepaper in too. I've got an assortment of notes in here and the one I've shown is what I need to finish this year in training (which runs until August 2019) and what I need if I decided to opt for Emergency Medicine as a career. This is so I can stay focussed with my eyes on the prize.

Unfortunately, I'm still finding the Filofax paper to be a bit shoddy on quality so I've resorted to ordering some 90gsm A5 plain paper to print on and punch myself.

At the back, I have a zipped pocket from Kikki-K, currently empty but will fill up in no time. There is also an A5 Tomoe River paper notebook (unfortunately, I've forgotten the brand!).

Though still early days in this Filofax, I am already preferring it to the Leuchtturm I was using. As much as I liked using a bound diary, it did irk me that I'd have to transfer information from one planner to another. I also don't like writing things down and then not being able to rip it out and shred/recycle it once no longer needed. Hopefully, this Filofax will serve me better!

how my planner is personalised

I've written many other posts about creative diary pages and here are the links to them:

March 2013 / / Keeping Creative Pages
July 2013 / / More Ways To Be Creative
June 2014 / / My Evolving Weeks
August 2014 / / Compiling A Travel Journey of Memories
October 2014 / / My Week Ingredients
December 2014 / / My Home Inspiration Journal

Today, I'm going to show how I've personalised my current planner :) This post is more pictorial due to some exams that are coming up in a few weeks but I still hope you enjoy it :)

Washi Tape

I write on these with either Staedtler Lumocolor pens in a superfine nib or a fine Sharpie. Washi tape is super useful for highlighting important events, or not so important ones if you look in the example below! I do like how tape can break up text and add a bit of colour without being too bright or overwhelming on the eyes.

Doodling

Another thing I like doing is adding in some shadowing or shading.

Little accents

Lines on either side of a title are something I probably use too much if you look back at my weeks!

Random stickers

Because, why not? (Life's too short to be too serious!)

Again, apologies for such a brief post with little substance but exams are a bit more important than blogging at the moment! :)

how to choose your binder contents

Did you get a new binder for Christmas? Perhaps you snapped one up in the January sales? I remember when I got my first one back in 2008 or 2009 (not sure which year it was now) and it was such a novelty that I wanted to put everything in it. Though I'm not using a binder this year, I thought it would be nice to do a post on choosing what to put in your binder as I wish I had something like this to guide me through setting up my first binder.

With a wide range of inserts available from many brands, it can be quite overwhelming to decide on what you need and what you want. The best thing to do here is look at your current planner and write down a list of sections you currently have in it and used. If you don't use a planner, think about what you'd like in your planner, write it all down and then question yourself - would you use that section? Can that section stay at home instead?

This way, you can narrow down the stuff you really need to have with you when out and about. It's so easy to overstuff the binder which is, not only bad for the rings, but is also bad for your back as a stuffed binder can weigh as much as a brick if you're not careful. 

In the beginning, I would carry around a whole year's worth of inserts (week on two pages), a year planner, plenty of notepages (I'd guess at around 20-30), some addresses and some sentimental photos of my family. With experience, I've stopped carrying around the address inserts because I never used these when away from home, the year planner was redundant as I barely looked at it and I only needed about five sheets of notepaper at any one time! In terms of the diary inserts, I slimmed this down to just six months' worth which meant I could justify adding in a few sheets of inspirational quotes like I did last year.

Notepaper is an easy way to unnecessarily bulk out your binder so my advice here is to really think about what you're intending on writing down. Can you make do with five and then do a one-in-one-out policy? Do you have time for that? If you're reviewing your binder every week, this might be a feasible system but if you only have time to review it once a month, you may need a few more.

By removing bulk that you don't need to have with you at all times, you can personalise your binder by inserting quotes or inspirational pages. It can be quite monotonous only having the necessary inserts so it's nice to just add in something different.

To-do sheets are similar to notepaper inserts because it can be quite easy to put too many into your binder. I used to like having about fifteen at any one time but then I realised I only really used three lists: to buy (i.e. to save up for), to read and a blog post ideas list.

Something I really recommend is regularly reviewing your binder and its contents. I reviewed mine every three months where I would remove some diary inserts from weeks that had passed and hadn't been looked at for the last month or so - these inserts would be archived - and I would also review my notepaper and to-do lists at the back to ensure that everything in there was present because I needed it to be. Binders are heavy things - why make them heavier than they need to be?

It can be hard to guage how much you really need in your binder to begin with so maybe see how things go for the first two months and then tweak it from there. 

I hope you have found this post useful :) - I'm by no means an expert and can't give individual advice and a lot of this can be found through experience. However, a post like this was something I was looking for when I first purchased a binder so I thought it would be nice to pass on some things I've learnt over the years.

my week: the ingredients

For each weekly page spread, I try and make it a little more interesting by using other 'accessories' as you've probably seen each Sunday when I post my week :) Here are the 'ingredients' I use to jazz up my pages.

Stickers: from Hong Kong, Artbox and Paperchase.

For someone in their early twenties, I have a lot of stickers and I'm not embarrassed by this at all. I use these in my planner pages and also in my journal. I try and brain dump into my journal on a weekly basis as it gets rid of any thoughts that may be clogging my mind - so I can make way for more important things! Anyway, I digress. I've not bought any new stickers since my holiday to Hong Kong at Christmas - but to be fair, I have plenty anyway... 

Washi tape: mainly from Hong Kong and Paperchase.

Washi tape is something I'm a big fan of. Not only can it be used to brighten up planner pages that are too plain, it can also be used to make other things look pretty. For example, in the past, I've used them to make a pen pot and to decorate the spines of plain notebooks.

Sticky notes: from Artbox

Sticky notes are again something I try and use as often as possible in my planner. They help me highlight things without using a highlighter (as does thin washi tape) but they also come in handy for planning blog posts on. I do this by writing an outline of the post I want to write and then I can move that sticky note to another day if the post hasn't been written or I can keep it on that day if it has. For me, his makes blogging flexible and not a chore.

Pens: Muji, Pilot, Uniball, Zebra and Kuretake.

Finally, pens! Because the white Filofax paper isn't so great, I've really taken to the not-so-highly-pigmented Pilot Juice gel pens as they don't show-through and nor do they bleed. Again, the colours add a bit of interest to the pages and I like trying to use different handwriting styles when noting down something important.

All in all, these are the basic things you'll see in my weekly pages - in all honesty, I probably don't use every single thing each week as that would make for a very cramped week and would be overkill on the aesthetic front.

an updated Smythson binder tour

Now that I'm properly back in my Smythson, I thought I'd walk you all through the set-up with an explanation for each section. It's not much different from the last post about it but I'm focussing more on the pages towards the back in this post (whereas in the previous one, I focussed more on the pages towards the front).

At the front is the quote page shown in the previous post. I found it through a Google search but it says 'designed by Francesca Ramos 2010' at the bottom so all credit to her for making it. There are also page markers on the flyleaf.

I'm still using the Filofax white week-on-two-page layout. I'm still debating if I want to continue using it this academic year but seeing as the year has already started, I don't think I'll be moving to another planner anytime soon.

Once the planner pages end, I have another page of quotes from Leonie Wise - again found on Google images. I love these inspiring quote pages as all too often, being the workaholic that I am, I find myself not allowing enough time to relax or unwind at the end of the day. These quotes give me a few minutes to read through them and just not think about work for that time.

Now, onto the bulk at the back. I have a post-it note with ingredients for a fruit cobbler which I want to make sometime during this summer.

To-do lists are all over the place and I should've made a better effort to ensure that they were separated into categories rather than mix them up. On the above pages, there are films I want to see, beauty products I want to buy and try, thing I want to bake, places I want to eat at and also things I need to study. Having written these things down myself, I know exactly where to find what to-do (my memory is pretty decent which can be a bit of a hindrance sometimes).

I make quite a few notes but the notes I will be showing you seem to be more lists.

There is a list of books I want to read at some point...

And a list of all the restaurants I've been to in the last two years. I'm trying to reach 100 before the end of this year and I think it is safe to say I won't get there as I've only eaten at 54 in 104 weeks. I don't even want to consider how much money I've frittered away on dining out...

And finally, at the back is the return of my clear pocket which has pictures of sentimental value. In the secretarial pocket, there are some stickers that I use to mark things on my weekly pages.

For 2015, I may well be in a different planner - with The Planner by Seeso being the most likely one. However, I still have a few other options to peruse so we'll see...

my 2014 set-up

There is no Filofax Week Round-Up post this week as I am taking a brief hiatus! Instead, I have written this post on how I have decided to organise my life in 2014.

This year, I have a choice of using my Kate Spade, Smythson, Slimline Deco or Compact Metropol. I haven't decided yet and I do feel very attached to the Metropol...

As for diary inserts, I have opted for Filofax white 'week-on-two-page' inserts. Here is how they look:

I actually really like how the colours stand out on the white paper and although the paper quality is rubbish, the big spaces for the weekdays are something I definitely could have done with during the first term of medschool.

For notepaper, I have decided to use up some old Kate Spade diary inserts (2012 ones!). I have covered the bits that have date-related things on and although it doesn't look perfect, I can live with it as the paper quality is amazing! It seemed like such a waste to throw them out.

As with last year, I have opted to use some 'to-do list' inserts again:

Finally, I have also decided to use my iPad's Reminders app to keep track of the many things I need to do in various parts of my life. I thought I would give the app a go as I've been quite unfair on technology in the chance and I do like the design of the app. We'll see how this experiment goes...

All in all, I'm excited for 2014. Although my social life is pretty much non-existent due to a never-ending mountain of work every week, I am enjoying every second of it all and I think 2014 will be an even better year for me :)

How have you decided to organise your life in 2014?

how I set up my binder for university and why

My bag gets ridiculously heavy even on the best of days so I decided to move into a Filofax Compact Metropol at the start of term. My Smythson is currently sat on my shelf holding my 2014 inserts but unfortunately, I don't see myself going back to it anytime soon. 

Here is a tour of the Compact Metropol and why it is set up the way it is.

The first page is a quotes page that I found on Google images. On the left and in the card slots are some A6 notepages from Ruby and my Oyster card.

After this quotes page is a page where I've noted down the bus times. I commute to university from home (it's only about an hour on the bus at the most) and it's handy to know when the buses are as there are only four buses an hour.

The month planning pages follow this but I'm not finding them particularly useful if I'm honest. I've not really used them since the start of term and I'm considering foregoing them for 2014.

Here is evidence of a barely used October:

I have slotted in a flyleaf where I've put in a few strips of washi tape:

And onto the meat of the planner - the diary pages. I find that WO2P are actually working okay for me now that the term has calmed down and no longer subjected to countless 'Introductory' sessions. The planning space for to-dos is limited but as long as I am wise with that, it's fine.

As my course is a 'problem-based' one, I have a separate notebook for the problem-based-learning tutorials and then use a separate post-it note to write to-dos for those tutorials. The post-it note is stuck on the current page I am on in my notebook and I am finding that this works pretty well.

Another quote (again, from Google images):

And then a section for my to-do lists. I have gone through so many of these since the beginning of December!

And right at the back are a few sheets of notepages. This is where random bits of information are jotted down. In the next picture, I wrote down the netball fixtures for this season - but I've pixelated it out for safety reasons as I don't want everyone knowing who I'll be playing, where, what time, etc.

Overall, I've found that the Metropol is working pretty well for me. The rings are smaller and I'm not finding this too much of an issue; and with the organiser being made of PU, it is far lighter than my other leather binders. I also love the colour of it as it definitely brightens up my day when I see it!

I hope you've enjoyed this 'mini' tour into my binder and I hope I've explained (well enough!) about how it is working for me :-)