review: paperchase diary refill

Here is the promised review of the Paperchase 18 month organiser refill. This is what the pack looks like: 

Now for the main part of the review. I will start by showing you what this pack consists of. These following pictures haven't been colour edited so that you can see the true colour of these inserts. They are a standard white but the paper thickness is better than the Filofax white paper.

First, a personal data sheet. It doesn't cover as many bases as the Filofax version (as that has sections for a National Insurance number, driving licence number, passport number, etc) but it is definitely functional the way it is. 

The tabs that come with this insert.

Though arguably not as 'sophisticated' as the Filofax tabs, these are still pretty and 'young' looking so would appeal to
the younger audience of organiser users.

Next up, some calender refills. There was one for 2012 and also one for 2013.

Further to this, there is no need to buy any year planner inserts as these are also included (see on the right):

As if I needed more confirmation that these inserts were for students, there are timetable inserts too:

And yet another year planner (seriously?! How busy do they think students are?! But to be fair, at Imperial College, they do work you like dogs, hmm....):

And the diary inserts themselves!

At the back, name and address inserts:

Spare ruled notepaper:

More notepaper, but this time squared:

Pink coloured notepaper (I really wanted to steal this but I just couldn't bring myself to!):

And finally, blue coloured ruled notepaper:

Before I embark on an evaluation of these inserts, here is an example of the paper quality. My sister wrote some stuff in using a standard 0.5mm Muji gel pen and here is how it looked. There was no feathering or bleeding and the paper does seem to be of a decent quality!

And a close-up of how it looks on the other side. Minimal show-through!

Honestly? I think Paperchase are onto a winner here. If they bring out their own diary inserts in a cotton cream colour, I think I'll be onto these like a dog is onto a bone. The paper quality is excellent for the price and what you get for the price is extraordinary! It cost my sister £5 for this pack and to be honest, that is a complete and utter bargain when you consider how much all this would cost if you were to buy it from Filofax (remember that diary inserts, tabs, address inserts, spare notepaper, year planner inserts are all sold separately).

Have you ever tried these Paperchase inserts?

goodies from moo-t; cable tidy, page markers & memo notes!

Tidying my room (back in late August), I realised just how useful some cable ties could be. I have cables for my Kindle, my iPod, my phone, my camera charger, my external hard drive and this list just never seems to end! Having seen some Rilakkuma ones somewhere, I was on the hunt for a retailer that sold them at a reasonable price. And I found one! Moo-t. Before you think this is a sponsored post, it's not. I'd never heard of this site before but Google search threw the site up when I was looking for these said cable ties.

And here they are:

I don't tend to read product descriptions (my bad, I know!) so I didn't realise they came in packs of two! I ended up ordering 3 of each type, so ended up with 18 altogether. At least I know my cables will be tidy, right?

Now, the next challenge was to get my spend up to £20 to get the free postage.

Then I saw these cute memo notepads. It comes in a box (this next picture is of a really poor quality, apologies!):

But more on those memo pads later...

And then I added these to my basket: some Rilakkuma page markers - aren't they adorable?

And to my surprise, when the order arrived, Moo-t kindly added these two pens to my order:

Honestly, I think they may be my new favourite online store to peruse when bored...

The Moo-t business card.

Now, another look at the memo notes:

Personally, I think they are too cute to use! They don't seem very practical as the whole memo note consists of a cute face so I think the aim is to write all over it - something I can't bear to do! I have no idea if these will come in handy for me at all because of how cute I think they are, but who knows! :)

And I wrote on one with the pens that were added into my order. I love the pens! Not only because they are Rilakkuma ones but because they write well. They are black gel pens and honestly, if I needed stationery, I would probably order these. Here is how they look on a memo pad...

Honestly, I never thought any site would replace Artbox as my favourite cute stationery retailer but Moo-t is definitely giving it a run for its money. Delivery was quick - dispatched on Saturday, received on Wednesday (it was a bank holiday on Monday) and I found a discount code online too which made it doubly worth it. And the best part? These products have lived up to my expectations once they were in my hands :)

Please note: I bought these back in late August so the discount code I used may no longer be valid (in case you were wondering :) )

Also, one of the cable ties I received was faulty and when I told them, they gave me a refund for it. And then, a few days later, I received another package from them apologising for the faulty item and in this package, they had included the cutest keyring ever, and an ear cap! Honestly, I wasn't expecting this, nor did I think this was necessary but if anything, this just proves how great the service is. Please take a visit to their site as I'm sure that, if you're like and like cute items, there will definitely be something that takes your fancy!

minimalism and decluttering

After finishing university and on my move back home, I realised just how much crap I had amassed in all aspects of my life. Papers that I no longer needed, pens and other stationery, clothes, shoes, bags, jewellery (all cheap stuff from high street stores such as Whistles, Topshop, ASOS, etc) and toiletries that, if stacked from top to bottom, would probably reach the moon!

I decided, there and then, that now is as good a time as any to start afresh. I've always wanted to live a minimalist life but as a person, I'm naturally a hoarder so this would be a challenge that I would relish! Who doesn't love a challenge? And what better person to prove wrong than yourself? Right? Right.

d e c l u t t e r i n g

Decluttering is the first stage in the quest for minimalism. I have tried the Thriving on Less challenge but I didn't stick to it. I think it was because the rules weren't made by me. I didn't make it a personal challenge and for that reason, I think that, if any of you want to do something like this, you need to make things personal. By all means take the stuff that sounds good from other people's ways of decluttering, but some bits of it will work better for you than other bits.

I will now run-through each aspect of my life that I decluttered:

1) my room

My desk (it needs replacing as I've had it for, believe it not, close to eleven years!) after
decluttering!

This was one of the hardest bits. Having collected so many things just because they were 'sentimental', I had a room full of crap. First things first: to weed out this rubbish. If I hadn't looked at something in the past year or if there was no longer a use for it, it was either binned, recycled or donated to charity. Although it is tempting to hold onto something with a view of using it in the future, unless you can most likely see yourself using it, it needs to be chucked into one of those three piles (bin, recycle, charity).

Through this, my room is now such a great place to work and sleep, I actually enjoy being in here! This just means that getting out of bed is now harder than before, but I don't see that as a problem.

The trick here is to do the decluttering in stages. Do one massive one, then do a smaller one in an area previously done. Then do another area that had also been previously done. By doing each area a multiple of times, you end up finding rubbish you had not found before. Having done this myself, I believe decluttering is a process with stages, not one that can be achieved in one go.

The key is to declutter on a regular basis.

2) online

I swear I had near on 1,000 bookmarks on my laptop. Weeding through these was a tedious process and not one that I would like to replicate. I now have about 50, if that? And I look through them once a week to see which ones have been used enough to stay and which ones need to go.

With Facebook, I had several hundred friends on there. People I hadn't spoken to in over a year, people who I would probably never speak to again, all these people were deleted. Although this seems harsh, I felt this was the best thing to do. If I ever saw them again, I'd be friendly still - just cos I've deleted you as a friend on Facebook does not mean I hate/dislike you! It just means that I want less clutter in my life and for me, having so many friends is a form of clutter. Plus, the people who are my closest friends will have my email or phone number, and for me, that's all that matters.

3) clothes, accessories and shoes

After the declutter, and also after I re-arranged it so that clothes were sorted into what type they were, how formal they were and also by sleeve length, etc!

I am a bit of a shopaholic. There, I said it. But now that I don't have a reliable source of income, I have realised that this habit just has to stop. In order to do this, I had a good look at my wardrobe. I created a database (so geeky, I know) of all my clothes, shoes, bags and accessories and well, I had more than enough. As a result of this, I have sold quite a bit of it on eBay and though some of those pieces I will miss, I hadn't worn them in over a year; or I had just forgotten about them! Not good.

4) stationery

I re-assessed just how many pens and other stationery stuff I had and well, I won't be buying any for some time I don't think. Until my stocks run low, the stationery I currently possess should be enough to last me a good year or so!

5) toiletries

Having already posted about saving money by stocking up on non-perishable items, I feel this is slightly contradictory. I have so much of it, yet it would be stupid to throw it out! I think this is the one area of life where clutter is ok. After all, we all need shampoo, deodorant and toothpaste!

Overall, though I sectioned my life into these pigeon holes, you may find that other categories work better for you. Tackle each one when you're in the right frame of mind. After uni, I found that a fresh start would be ideal and so I was in the mood for a month or so! However, it might not come so easy to you, and that's ok. Minimalism isn't going to happen overnight (in fact, I'm still adjusting to it).

m i n i m a l i s m

Some of you may realise that I already tried a Minimalism challenge. My goal was to minimalise spending for a year and I think I achieved this. My wardrobe did not grow considerably in size (one new piece a month or so, and all in sales!), my weekly food budget was cut down to £30 on average (I once spent £50 on a food shop - all healthy stuff - and the week after, I only spent £10! And the week after that - £15. I found it was okay to deviate slightly from my budget as long as the average works out.

The question now is, why be a minimalist? Well, Ikea seem to have this down to the T. They have made it look fashionable but that is not why I want to be one.

For me, I have looked far too deeply in material goods as a teenager and I wanted to appreciate other things more. Having nice clothes and wearing a beautiful handbag on your shoulder is all well and good, but I realised that my family, friends and happiness matter more to me. This attitude has saw me through the past few months where I only bought one article of clothing in four months. For me, this is a bit of a miracle and although I sound quite fickle here, this is definitely progress for me. Like I said, I'm still adjusting and learning what it means for me to be a minimalist.

Overall, a simpler life with less has made me realise how 'rich' my life is without so many material goods. I feel happier, less clouded with bad thoughts and much more satisfied with everything.

That is why, this time, I feel this challenge will be a successful one.

all stars guest post: imy from imysworld!

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting a guest post from Imy of Imy's World. Not only are her blog posts a pleasure to read, her videos are too (seriously, I've watched every single one) and also, she is so lovely. I've not met her yet in person (though I would love to - hopefully at the next Philofaxy meet?) but through Twitter, I feel like I already have met her! Doing it in real life would just be a formality :) 

Anyway, Imy's done a comparison of the Compact size vs the Personal size. As some of you may know, I'm very tempted by the Compact size at the moment - a Compact Osterley to be exact and as a result of this, Imy very kindly suggested doing a post to compare the two. 

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I promised the wonderful Paperlovestory a blog post on my review between compact and personal, I cant really talk much about the pockets as the pockets will be different on any Filofax, but still, I will show you the difference in size and tell you my thoughts.

Thank you  lovely for letting me post here!

So here are the Filofax I will be comparing, it is the Personal Amazona in black and the Compact Regency in brown!

First of all I will show you some pictures comparing the width from the back and side…

As you can see there is quite a difference in thickness of the empty binders (I kept them empty to just show how they differ easier).

The Regency is a lot softer and more bendable so it’s a bit narrower still.

Here is a comparison of the amount of paper you can fit in the binders when they are stuffed to the maximum, on the left is the paper I had in the Amazona, which is all my spare inserts, instead of keeping them in the packets.

On the right is the inserts I use in my Regency, which is still a lot more than you should probably have in a compact, but I need a lot of stuff. I will explain the reason why I am still in a compact in a minute!

The best thing about the compact is what you will see next, the difference in ring sizes!

As you can see from the two pictures above the compact rings look so much smaller, they are exactly 0.8mm smaller than the standard Filofax rings which are 23mm, the compact rings are 15mm, which is tiny! But it is amazing how much they can hold for such small rings!

Because of this difference in ring size it has a more comfortable writing position as they do not stick up as much and it makes it more like writing on a flat notebook, it is so amazing, I love the difference in writing with the smaller rings, but it is looking like I will have to up size to a Personal again as I am needing to use too much in my Filofax, but I am going to try and last out in the smaller rings as long as possible!

Thank you again Paperlovestory for letting me guest post on your blog!!!

I really love your blog and I like to check it daily for new posts!!!! 

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So, now the question is; personal or compact? Compact or personal? I think I may just have been converted to the Regency too! I didn't like it much on the Filofax website but after watching Imy's video on it, and also seeing it in 'real life pictures', I think this may be the Compact I plump for. Especially if I can find it on sale like she did :)

Thank you for agreeing to do a guest post on here, Imy :) If you haven't already, do check out the post I did for her in return :)