24 July 2009

Two Great Finds

Back in the day, my first post on Philofaxy was an anonymous reply requesting information on 6-ring storage binders for Personal size pages. I prefer to use ring binders instead of the post-binders that Filofax has available for archival pages. I like to be able to open the rings easily to retrieve pages or move them to a different binder. And to be perfectly honest, I think the Filofax archival binders are too expensive, at least for my budget.


About five years ago I found ring binders at Tschiffely Pharmacy at Union Station in Washington DC while I was on my way to work one morning. I had been searching for binders for some time so I bought all six they had, for about $4 each. That was the last time I ever saw those binders in a store, and I have been searching for them ever since. Meanwhile my storage binders filled up, and I resorted to doubling-up past years of pages to share binders. Periodically I did an internet search to see if anyplace online has binders available, and recently I finally found some! A new website called Wards5and10.com has ring binders for Personal size pages, as well as some other small sizes of binders (which may fit Pocket size Filos, I haven’t checked the measurements but if you are interested it’s worth a look). Ward’s also has tons of other office, school and art supplies at great prices. I haven’t perused the entire website, but it is huge and definitely worth a look.


My second great recent find is the Filofax Organizer Stickers. These are little round icons with symbols such as a palm tree for vacation, a car for car maintenance time, airplane for travel, etc. They are great for sticking on the day when the event happens to make it stand out as I am flipping through my book. The stickers are also small enough to stick in the day squares of the month view calendar, if you wanted an overview reminder at a glance, and then have the details on your daily page. The stickers themselves are on a plastic page in Personal (which is multi-fit for A5 also) or Pocket size. I have only found these stickers at Filofax.co.uk in the accessories section, and as far as I know they are not available in the US. I was extremely pleased to find these, because I had been looking for some calendar stickers but the only ones I could find were, for lack of a better description, very “mom-ish.” The Filofax ones are understated and could certainly be used by men as well as women.


Have you made any great Filo finds recently?

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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous24 July, 2009 09:36

    I have had good success getting 6 ring 1" binders for the personal size at engineering/surveying stores. Rite in the Rain makes a poly binder that is adequate and National used to make them which was my preferred brand as it was a good quality cloth binder. I haven't seen them in a few years now so maybe they no longer make them.

    As yet I have not seen anything for the pocket size, which I would like. It is not a big deal since I use the pages that fit either modern or the old 4 ring pocket, and at the end of the year integrate those into my personal archive. Works just fine.

    Laurie, I agree with you that the Filofax post binders are way over priced and a real pain to use. I bought 1 years ago, and that was all I needed to see.

    Crofter

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  2. Vidya24 July, 2009 14:22

    I love to poke around stationery shops. There aren't too many left, but luckily there is a good one about ten miles from my house. I've had good luck finding the regular binders for both my Personal and pocket organizers, as well as finding very inexpensive notepaper, both ruled and blank.

    For 2009, I bought a six ring organizer at Barnes and Noble in February, it was marked down to $2.99 and I am using it to archive my 2009 pages. I think I am going to start doing that every year.

    I also find lots of inserts at Kinokuniya bookstores, but there are only a handful in the country. I found some pages for my pocket wallet/planner that are in Japanese but the graphics are so adorable I just had to have them! :-)

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