Oh Baroque, how I love thee!

I don't know why I bother switching in and out of different filofaxes. It seems that I always, always end up coming back to one of the three Baroques I have. If life is normal, it's one of the two personal size ones I have - either the pink or the turquoise. Current squeeze is the turquoise one. If life is a bit quieter (ha... when??) I manage to downsize to a Baroque pocket.

So, why do I keep coming back to them?? Here we go. Read the list and weep, all of you poor souls who aren't fortunate enough to have one.

• They lay flat as a bat. No training, no persuading with heavy books and kitchen weights. Just open and BAM! Flat. As. A. Bat.
• The personal sized version has six credit-card spaces in the front cover. As I like to use my filofax as a wallet and organiser this is invaluable. There is also a zipped pocket there which I could use for coins, but I don't. Not because it's too fiddly, but because I prefer to use the pencil case hack.
• The pocket size has five credit card slots (though the zipped pocket is too fiddly for coins). The leather is supple enough to make getting cards in and out easy too. 
• There are 2 vertical pockets behind the card slots in the pocket and one vertical pocket in the personal size, always useful for paper money etc.
• The colour. Yeah, they did them in black (and I have one in pocket size) but my favourite is the turquoise. The pink is stupendously good too.
• Ring size. Okay, the personal size Baroque comes in standard 25mm rings, but the pocket version has 19mm rings. I've tried a 15mm pocket and I just can't fit all my stuff in there.
• The embossing. The outside is smooth, fine-grained, supple leather. The inside is a riot of embossed leather.
• Both the pocket and the personal sizes have a notepad slot in the back cover. Not that I have ever used them as that, but it's a really useful pocket for keeping receipts and so on.

I've begun to realise that however close other binders come to being 'as good as a Baroque', they aren't Baroques. And so, I am seriously considering breaking up the massive filofax party that has been going on in the bottom drawer of my desk for years and selling some of them. Most of them actually. Because however close they get, however much I hope they will work for me the way the Baroques do, they just aren't Baroques.