A Glimpse into History

On one of this blog's most popular old posts, A Rock, a Hard Place, and Some Complaints about Each, we recently got a comment from someone who worked at the Filofax Head Office when the organizers were still lovingly handmade in England. The writer tells us eloquently what it was like to work for the company in those years, including visits from Grace Scurr, the woman who recreated the company's information from her personal Filofax when the original headquarters was bombed in 1940.

I urge all of you to light the fireplace, pour a snifter of brandy, and take a look at the post, which has a rich, lively comment thread as well as this exciting new addition.

For further reading pleasure, here's a New York Times article from Filofax's American heyday in the late 1980's when celebrities like Woody Allen and Diane Keaton were seen carrying their organizers everywhere.

Family Affair

A couple of readers have mentioned a new A5-size family calendar, so I had to check it out for myself. To find it at Filofax USA, click here, then scroll all the way to the bottom of the back and click Family Organizer Pack. (I assume it's available in the UK, too, but I wasn't able to find it on their Web site.)

When you click a new window opens listing everything that comes in the pack, plus an offer to get $10 off and free shipping on an A5 organizer. Presumably, the offer targets mothers who want the Family Pack but don't already have an A5 binder.

And the contents of the pack are yummy: Pages for school and sports info, shopping lists, emergency info, travel and party planning, budgeting, and (my favorite), a chore organizer! It also includes a 2009 week-per-2-pages calendar that has slots for different family members.

I can imagine you don't need to have a family to find this pack useful.

Free for All Friday No. 24

Time to talk about new organizers and formats for 2009, or anything else that comes to mind!

--Inky

A Blessed Event

In the comments for last Friday's post, a reader came up with the brilliant phrase above, comparing the acquisition of a new Filofax to the birth of a baby. (It's not the first time I've been accused to treating my Filo like a family member.)

A lot of people have been asking how I'm going to use this new organizer. Yes, I'm going to use it as my personal Filo in 2009. (The Daily Planner gave me both 2008 and 2009 diary refills.) I'm going to leave my current red Finsbury as is, and just copy any necessary information into the new Finchley. Well, except the phone number pages. Those, I'll probably just stick right into the new book.

I'm not doing a good job using my current tabs (To Do, Projects, Ideas, Lists, and Tel), so I'm not going to use the same set up in the Finchley. I'm going to stick with the built-in tabs and see what needs come up. So I guess I'm using the Finchley as an opportunity to make a clean break. The red Finsbury will be all set to go when I'm ready to go back to it. I may do so for the summer, when I prefer brighter colors to brown.

For now, I think we're going to get along just fine.

Free for All Friday No. 23

Don't worry, I'll soon post about my new Chocolate Finchley, of which I'm in awe. I've already taken pictures of it!

For now, hold forth!

—Inky

Streetwise

Not much happening in my Filofax life these days, but there's been some talk about maps lately, so I thought I'd share a map I bought from The Daily Planner earlier this year.

[Aside: One reason there's not much going on is that I'm still waiting for the current Daily Planner order I placed a couple weeks ago. My two emails asking to track the package have gone unanswered. I have no 2009 calendars yet. Grrrr.] UPDATE: I just got the Daily Planner package...by FedEx! They must have felt bad about the delay and expedited it. Thank you for good service as always, Daily Planner!

Anyway, I bought a Boston map, and got this. It's made of stiff, shiny paperboard. It's printed in Canada and updated as of 2005, although the outer packaging says "Made in U.S.A." Streetwise (www.streetwisemaps.com), which bills itself as "Originators of the laminated accordion-fold map," also makes larger maps that fold up the same way, without the Filofax holes.

I wish they didn't waste so much map space on their logo.

The reverse of the map has a street index and subway map.