My Every Day Carry (#EDC)

It's been a while since I shared my set-up with you, so I thought I'd give you all a quick look at what I'm using at the moment.

I need my EDC to have everything in it. There's no point me having a separate wallet and diary/notebook, because I'll forget one or other of them when I leave the house! But, I need to have something small enough that I don't wreck my back carrying it around! I'm somewhat in awe of people who merrily lug a well-stuffed A5 Filofax or planner around with them. Despite the fact I do always appear to have an enormous handbag, my EDC is pretty small.

For a long while, I'd been using my undyed extra wide pocket from Meadowgate Leather, which is slowly turning the most delicious caramel colour. But this week, I've changed out of that and into another Meadowgate Leather cover that I bought from a Facebook group.

Pocket TN from Meadowgate Leather
with extra width

Creating a week + notes diary for my Traveller's Journal

In my last post I said I had been trialling a week + notes diary, mocked up in a (hateful) Moleskine cahier, to ultimately use the system in my glorious Stamford Notebook Company's Traveller's Journal. The eagle-eyed amongst you will spot that I hate Moleskine cahiers as the paper is stupendously terrible. Instead, I have used a Rhodia cahier. Infinitely better and cheaper than the (hateful) Moleskines. I got mine from Cult Pens (no affiliation, just a happy customer) and reviewed them here.

There are 48 pages (96 sheets) per booklet - not enough for a full year, so I opened the staples at the centre of two books, removed some sheets from one and slipped them onto the staples of the other, so that there were 54 pages in the book, then closed the staples back up. Then I trimmed the whole booklet to 12.5cm using a rotary cutter.

After trimming (R) - clip is just to hold the book closed for the photo

Now, call me picky, but the Traveller's Journal has rounded corners and now that I had trimmed the book, it had squared edges, so I bought a cheap 10mm diameter corner cutter and punched all of the pages and the cover so that the book now has rounded corners.

After the corners have been rounded

Inside, I will divide each page into 8 blocks and on the LHS have the 7 days of the week plus a 'tracking' block (as indicated in the trial version - see here). On the RHS I will have 6 of the blocks labelled with life-areas and the next actions for that life-area noted in the block; plus an 'other' block and a 'next week' block (again, as in the trial version). The week + notes diary is to be used in conjunction with a day per page plan and I will use either another squared Rhodia cahier or a lined one for that. I have trimmed all the Rhodia cahiers I bought and rounded their corners, in readiness!

What do people think?

Trying something new (ish)

Now, don't get me wrong... I still love my Filofaxes. I'm still in the scarlet Adelphi and am intending to stay in it until the end of the year at least.
But...
I am also running in parallel another system to try and a) use my Traveller's Journal and b) see my week a bit better.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about a home-made week plus notes diary for the TJ (see here). I mocked that up in the (hateful) Moleskine cahier and have now mapped out the rest of the year in the (hateful) Moleskine cahier. (I'm only using that because I'm trialling this. In the final version, I will use a Rhodia instead).
On the LHS, I have the page divided into 8 blocks - 7 for the days of the week and 1 for tracking things (same as I had in the blog post).
The RHS is the side which is going through various iterations while I find what works. Like the LHS, it is divided up into 8 blocks. I've pretty much settled on labelling the blocks with 6 main life-areas, an 'other' and 'next week'. In the life-area blocks I have next actions for projects within those life-areas; in 'other' is a list of other things to do this week (that don't fit into the other areas) and 'next week' flags up important things that are just over the page (because we all know that I am incapable of just turning it over and having a look. I know... but know your character, huh? I know I won't turn the page, ergo I have to write a summary of it on the one before).
My diary is a bit too private to show you a filled-in version, but this is the basic layout:

'Other' will almost invariably be in the box to the left of 'next week' but the other 'life-areas to block' mapping has been a bit fluid and hasn't quite settled yet (hence not being filled in).

I bought the day stamps from eBay and also spent a bit of time working out the best layout of day name plus date before finally settling on the day being in the top left and the date in a circle in the next box along.

The (hateful) Moleskine cahier is 13cm wide and 21cm tall and each block is 6cm wide and 5cm tall, leaving me a little space to write the date range in, in red.

I've been using this layout in conjunction with time-boxing on a day per page scratch pad - a reporter's notebook using a sheet per day. The sheet is divided vertically, with times pencilled in down the LHS and a list of tasks/space for random jottings etc. on the RHS. In the space on the LHS, the day is divided up using time-boxes with each box being labelled with a life-area. The idea is a) that I spread my time over all the different things I want to do and not end up doing just one or two in a week and b) that I work on the next action for that life-area project during that time-block and if I reach the end of it, I tick it off and start on the next one in that life-area. If I don't finish it, I still try to make myself move on when the time-box topic changes. I can frequently allow a task to fill whatever time I have so knowing that I only have an hour or however long does make me concentrate on getting on with it, rather than dawdling about and spending all day on it.

I've liked the set-up well enough to have cut down some Rhodia cahiers (cheaper than the (hateful) Moleskines and MUCH better!), ready to make a full-year home-made diary for next year. More on that soon.

Haas anyone else been making their own diary for the TJ like this?

Supplies for the Stamford Traveller's Journal 2: Rhodia cahiers

I've already blogged about the hateful Moleskine cahiers and how they will never make it into the glory that is my Stamford Traveller's Journal, but what else might go in there? (I was especially alarmed when I checked the Stamford Notebook Co. site and saw that they were only listing grid refills, and I know that the paper mill where they get their fabulous paper from has gone into receivership - very sad as it is fairly local to me! Are Stamford Notebook Company going to be short of fabulous paper????)

Anyway, in my last post, I said that I had bought some Rhodia cahiers for the TJ so let me review them with no further delay.

I bought both lined and squared versions and I got them from Cult Pens (no affiliation, just always had great service). At £1.63 they are even cheaper than the hateful Moleskines and much, much better!

The notebooks are simple stapled books with 48 sheets (96 pages). The size is 14.8cm x 21cm. The cover is vinyl and quite sturdy. I bought black covers but they also come in orange. The front has the Rhodia logo printed on it. On the back there is the logo again with underneath a description of the size and pages and at the bottom right, a bar-code. The outer corners are rounded and the paper is smooth, 80gsm glory. None of the pages are perforated, there is no envelope in the back and no page marker.

Front. It's actually black not grey!

Back. Again, black not grey

Lined:
Line spacing is 8mm with a 19mm top margin and a 15mm bottom margin. There are no side margins. The paper is crisp white and the lines are purple-grey. With a little persuasion, the books lie flat.

Grid:
Grid spacing is 5mm. The paper is crisp white and the lines are purple-grey. Again, with a little persuasion, the books lie flat.

Ink tests:
As ever, I tested how well the paper stood up to fountain pen. Read this and WEEP Moleskine. THIS is what paper should be like.
I only tested the lined paper and have assumed that the grid paper will have similar (if not identical) results.
The paper was very smooth to write on, there was no feathering, no bleed-through and almost no show-through/ghosting to the other side. My only criticism was that it was a bit too shiny/smooth for some of my pens that prefer the paper to be a bit more 'grabby' but generally, it was an absolute dream to write on.

Pen tests: front

Pen tests: reverse

Now, the observant amongst you will have spotted that the Stamford refills are 12.5cm x 21cm; the Moleskine cahiers are 13cm x 21cm and that these are 14.8cm x 21cm. The Stamford TJ is 14cm wide and so these hang out as they stand. However, following the advice given by Ray about cutting up Moleskine cahiers to fit in a Midori TN, I sliced up a Rhodia with a rotary cutter so that it was 12.5cm wide. My advice would be similar to his: take it slow and steady and do not move the hand holding the ruler over the book!

Here's the result with the grid booklet:

Original (L); trimmed (R) (clip is just to hold it closed)

All in all, these make excellent replacement booklets for the Traveller's Journal (and sliced a little narrower, would be excellent in a Midori TN too).

Moleskine large cahier review

I bought a fabulous Stamford Traveller's Journal (see here for my review) and wanted to try various other booklets that would be a close match in size, just to see what would be other potential options. I have already reviewed the Midori 013 insert (see here); today it's the turn of the Moleskine cahiers.

Size-wise, the Moleskine large cahiers, at 13cm x 21 cm are only a smidgen different from the notebooks in the Stamford TJ (12.5cm x 21cm) and so at first glance would be a natural possible alternative, especially as a three-pack can be obtained for about £6.20, making each notebook just over £2.

I bought both the squared and lined cahiers and in grey covers as the best colour to complement the red of the TJ.

As you can see, the three-pack comes with a label wrapped around the cahiers. Inside each three-pack is the usual booklet from Moleskine, outlining the 'history' of the Moleskine (nice idea; shame it's about a different notebook altogether...). I throw these into recycling because they are propaganda, but each to their own.

There are 80 pages in each book, with the last 16 sheets being (32 pages) being removable. The perforations are such that, if you didn't want to remove the pages, they wouldn't easily detach.
The covers are simple grey card, with Moleskine embossed into the card on the back.

Embossed into the back of the cover

There is a slip-pocket in the back cover. The corners are rounded. I note that the books are designed in Italy and manufactured in China.

Squared version:
The squares are 5mm x 5mm, with 41 full squares x 25 full squares per page.

Squared version

Slip-pocket in back cover

Lined version:
There are 31 lines per page with a line-spacing of 6mm. The top margin is 20mm; the bottom 10mm. 31 lines is nice if you want to have a line per day of the month and use them as some kind of diary. I have pretty small writing and so a line spacing of 6mm is no problem for me but for many, this might be a bit tight.

Lined version

Ink tests:
Oh boy.

Squared:

Front

Reverse

Lined:

Front

Reverse

There was feathering, bleed-through and show-through. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. The reverse is utterly unusable with any of my fountain pen and ink combinations. This is thicker paper yet behaves far worse than the Midori 013. If you wanted to use pencil or biro then you'd be okay.

Overall:
Epic fail on the pen test! If you don't use a fountain pen you could use them okay but otherwise...
Nice size, nice idea and if the paper were even marginally better I might consider using these for making my own week + notes diary. If I do, I'll be doing it in pencil and biro though!