Project: Reorganize

A few days ago, I pondered how a busy new father could possibly find time to go buy certain pages for a certain Filofax, despite certain commitments that make life certainly difficult.

So I ordered them from Filofax. It took a while to build up to that, because I am a really miserly fellow, and I hate paying shipping charges. If I can get something on Amazon, that's great, because I can always find $25 worth of stuff to buy and thereby get free shipping. (Although even Amazon comes with its hassles: I accumulate cardboard Amazon boxes like some people collect stamps. Our trash people will take them away only if I break them down flat and tie them up. Ergo, they sit in the house for weeks.) Filofax, paleolithic corporate entity that it is, charges old-fashioned shipping fees.

But I bit the bullet. Yesterday, I received: (i) a bunch of personal-size financial/checkbook register pages; (ii) a 2007 calendar (for the A5); and (iii) a 2008 vertical planning insert.

All I can say is: Woo hoo!

Now the migration of all my financial matters out of the A5 and into the Personal can proceed forthwith. Now I can schedule things in 2007. Now I can notate events, vacations, and other especially important matters as far ahead as 2008.

The A5 is really bursting at the seams, because the packrat side of my brain thinks things like these: "Let's shove the whole 2007 calendar in there. Also, I really need to know the 2007 vacation schedules for all members of the European Union, so better keep that in there too. And what the scientific community has subtly altered the formulas for converting between various measurements? I can't leave out those pages from the new calendar."

This brings me to one of my main criticisms of each Filofax I have used. When the binder is full, or nearly so, I have a great deal of trouble opening and closing the rings. Sometimes I have to remove a big section of the planner in order to get an adequate grip on the rings. I don't find the little chrome nubs on the top and bottom of the ring mechanism very useful at all. It would be wonderful if Filofax could convert these nubs into a smooth, easy system for opening and closing the binder. The current set-up is generally inconvenient, but it's particularly inconvenient for me, because I use a Jot Pad page as a "floating" to-do list from week to week. So every Monday, I have to move the page to the next week. Dammit! I cannot be troubled on a Monday morning to fiddle with difficult mechanical contraptions. This is why my son will learn to curse before he learns to say Mama and Dada.