(Another) New Organiser

I received a new binder recently…

It’s A5…

It’s pale green…

It has six rings…

It has pockets and card-slots…

From a (reasonable) distance it could be mistaken for the jade Finchley.

It isn’t a Filofax.

WHAT?

That’s right.

It isn’t a Filofax. It’s a Mulberry.

But hang on, don’t Mulberry do all kinds of weird ring spacing that means nothing else fits in them so you’re forced to buy their really expensive inserts?

That’s what I thought. But it’s not (entirely) true.

WHAT???

I bought an A5 Mulberry (which they call Planner size) and… the hole spacing is exactly the same as the personal filofax size.

I realise that this might not be news to some of you, but it was for me! The belief that the ring-spacing was unique had put me off getting an A5 Mulberry for as long as I have thought about buying one. I then saw one on eBay that was going for a song and decided to bite the bullet. I could always get a single-hole punch if I really couldn't face buying Mulberry inserts...

Then the night before it arrived I was emailing my friend Gerard about it and he told me that the spacing was the same as the personal filofax. I didn’t quite believe it could be true, but then, it arrived, and he’s absolutely right!

So, here are my initial thoughts about it.

It’s been well used. I don’t know if the previous user loved or cherished it, but it’s pretty battered and has obviously seen a lot of work. I don’t mind that. Despite the wear and tear, the quality shows through. It would have been nice for it to have been in better nick (but then I wouldn’t have managed to get it for £30! Yes, I did say it was going for a song.).

Front cover

Back cover

Inside the back cover there is a gusseted zipped pocket, lined with the same tartan material you can see next to the rings, with a full-height pocket behind (also lined with the tartan material).

Inside back cover

The inside front cover has four cut-edge credit card slots and an ID window with a pocket behind. The back of that first piece of leather is brown leather (I think – though it might be vinyl). Behind that is another pocket, the reverse of which is lined with suede and then a full-height pocket behind that, which is also lined with suede on one side (the reverse of the leather) and the tartan material on the other.

Inside front cover

Lies flat as a bat

It came with a few inserts, but I probably won’t use them – they’re a bit tired looking. And anyway, the huge bonus is that I can make my own A5 inserts and use my decent hole punch to make the holes, rather than having to use the hateful, poor quality atrocity that Filofax produce for their A5 hole-spacing. I can even interleave personal pages in if I want to. How happy am I??

Proof!! Personal paper in the Mulberry planner

So, yes, it’s a bit worn and it seems to have had a bit of a hard life, but it’s brilliant for me!

What do others think?? Like? Interesting but not for you? Dislike??

The 10 Stages of Filofax Addiction

1. You get a filofax
2. You dip into Philofaxy and read a couple of posts
3. You start reading Philofaxy most days
4. You can't wait for the next Philofaxy post and are impatient for Saturday Web Finds to arrive
5. You have more filofax-related feeds on Google Reader than anything else
6. You are "enabled" and buy a second filofax
7. You "enable" someone else into buying a second (or third, or more) filofax
8. Your two filofaxes develop into "a collection"
9. You have more filofaxes than it is sane to have
10. Your "collection" becomes a habit

It started with a kiss...

…but that’s another story. ☺

This story involves me converting my husband to using a filofax!!

Yes, you read that right. DH, the man who teases me mercilessly about my filofax habit, is now using a filofax!

It started with him wanting a little book to keep track of shares and I suggested that a pocket filofax with a set of A-Z indexes and lined notepaper would be perfect.

He grudgingly agreed.

I retrieved the pocket Cavendish out of The Drawer of Filofaxes and Inserts and set it up with A-Z dividers and notepaper and he was happy.

Then, our work-place decided that they would no longer provide a diary for the staff, leaving hubby searching for a small pocket-sized academic diary.

[Hmm… I think you can all see where this is going…]

I suggested an academic, week to view diary for the pocket filofax (we both work at a university). He hummed and hawed….

…and grudgingly agreed.

Then he wanted something to mark where the diary started. I offered a diary divider but he was eyeing up my Today marker in the Holborn so I found him a Today marker for the pocket from The Drawer of Filofaxes and Inserts.

Then he wanted something that lay flat as a bat. He doesn’t want to use the filofax as a wallet, so he didn’t care about the pocket along the back of the Cavendish, or the zipped pocket on the back cover, so I gave him my pocket Portland instead.

He loves it.

Well, that might be overstating it a tad and I don’t see him voraciously reading Philofaxy any time soon, but, he does see the appeal of small, leather bound organisers where you can move paper in and out and keep a diary in there.

I keep telling him it’s a slippery slope but he just laughs.

Let’s see who is sniggering in a year…

☺

I designed my own diary for 2013

Having settled on my ideal layout for my diary, my mind turned to 2013.

My preferred layout (it now turns out) is to have a week to view, but with a to-do list in the view, as well as the days. Having browsed around on Filofax (why DON’T they have all their products available on all of their sites??????) I saw this layout:

(taken from the French Filofax site)

Well, I have no problem having my diary in French, but it would be nice to reclaim some of the real estate taken up by the calendar in the right hand page and to make the right-hand page have to-do instead of lines.

So, armed with Steve and Ray’s source files (see here or here) and a Word file I created myself, I set about designing a diary for 2013.

I can’t quite work out the printing on both sides of an A4 set-up and I am quite happy to print direct onto pre-sized paper, so my Word file was designed around printing on personal-sized paper.

I’ve also considered printing onto plain cotton cream paper and like the cotton-cream diary being in brown type/ink rather than black, so I incorporated that and made mine brown too. I sent an early version to my friend Gerard who gave me good feedback and also sent me some nice fonts. A bit more fiddling with it all followed and…

…ta da!!

This is the final version:

The diary has appointment times (I have small enough handwriting to cope with the line spacing of 0.4cm); Saturday and Sunday are the same size; the right-hand page has to-do checklists; the type-face is clean and modern (thank you Gerard!!) and the brown lines and type give a softer effect than black/grey. I printed this out on straightforward filofax plain paper as I don’t have any cotton-cream, but I will probably used cotton-cream ultimately.

What do people think?