Spring has sprung here in the Northern Hemisphere, and it's spring cleaning time! It might be time to rotate out your old pages, freshen up your tabbed sections or give your leather binder some treatment. With big summer plans on the way, now is a good time to get your planning system ready! Friends in the Southern Hemisphere have winter on the way with busy times for work and school. Now may be a good time to jettison old pages and prepare.Do you do a seasonal clear-out or spring cleaning for your binder?
And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss anything ring-binder related!
I clean out my binder (pages) every Saturday morning and plan for the week ahead. As far as leather care, I do that once a month.
ReplyDeleteI clean out old pages when I have a few months in a paper clip to make room for new pages. Usually I have 3 or 4 months WO2P at a time so as not to overstuff. And I'm a change binder for the seasons/mood kind a girl so I'll redo my whole set up each time I swap binder. Haven't had my leather binders long enough to have to treat them.
ReplyDeleteSummer (when school starts here) is my favorite time to redo the inside of my planner because the shops are full of fun stationery and new calendat pages.
I 'clean out as I go' and have just had a more major re-ordering, although it wasn't seasonally-motivated. I learned this last week that DavidCo have recently published an updated guide to using GTD with paper organisers, which incorporates some quite good and far-reaching changes, so I've been adjusting my system to match their suggestions. Result - a wholly reinvigorated and much improved (in my opinion) way of working, plus new designs for some of my internal forms. Having said that, I've now taken delivery of a further 400 sheets of Davinci 6.5mm lined paper, so I'll probably be using that for a while once I've used up my stash of Cotton Cream. After *that* I'll possibly be using a local printer to guillotine decent quality A4 to FF Personal size (3 up on A4) and punchign with my KW Trio. Cost including paper c. £8/750 sheets. Filofax cost £3/35 sheets.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone wants to buy the guide it's $10 from DavidCo, by PDF download.
Do Davinci make grid paper, David?
DeleteI can't see it on the website.
DeleteHi Natalie
DeleteI'm afraid I don't know. I use Jetpens as my supplier, you could try their website. I know plain, 5mm rules, 6mm ruled, monthly and weekly schedules are available, beyond that I don't know. There may be other suppliers who can help fill the gaps if the range is available from the manufacturer.
The Davinci range is on Tomoe River paper stock, which is superb quality, very light weight but will take any fountain pen I've yet tried, without show-through or bleed-through. It lacks a little in strength around the punched holes due to the very light weight, but I would think going over to Davinci would increase the capacity of the average binder by up to 100%.
JetPens in the USA?
DeleteI really like Tomoe River paper.
Yes that's the one
DeleteI received mine in about ten days, with no trouble at all. The total bill was just on £20 which I don't consider bad for 400 sheets
DeleteHaving moved from A5 to Personal, I'm busy filling my new-to-me Filofax up.
ReplyDeleteOne advantage of using a second hand, no-fill Filofax is that the preconceived notions of what I need are not there.
Coloured paper? No, not unless it's yellow.
Addresses? Four sheets, no tabs needed.
A year of diary? Nope, I'm starting from mid April.
Hi Natalie
DeleteHo are you finding the move from A5 to Personal? Is it working for you? What binder and divider set are you using?
At the moment I am in a second (or maybe third) hand Personal Kendal, but I'm not really happy with the ring size.
DeleteI'm a ruthless pruner, and for a while found Slimline rings big enough. What I'm after is a yellow Compact Finsbury. It has to be yellow - it makes me feel as though anything is possible, because there is sunshine on my desk. And the compact Finsbury is good for ring size. I keep an eye on Adspot so I'm hopeful there will be one eventually.
The dividers are swanky black ones, but I'm considering an alphabet set - the kind which come with Slimlines and where you write on the divider itself and kill two birds with one stone.
Out of interest, when I was going from Personal to A5 I purchased a Red Finchley because at the time it had the smallest dimensions and small(ish) rings. I previously had a Zipped Cuban and it was like a brick in my bag so when I decided to go A5 the Finchley was purchased on the basis of weight, dimensions and ring size, and a good choice it was I think. I succumbed to a review of the Adelphi A5 which would be my current choice, but the absence of a clasp drove me mad within the day, so it languishes. I had hopes of a Luxe but, alas, the expense is just that little too much for my budget so my Finchley remains my daily Filofax, and it's not really a chore!
DeleteStill A5 is still a tiny bit large for me, convenient as it is for inserts and self-printing. My ideal is B6 paper inserts, but apart from plastic binders in S.E.Asia, I've yet to see anything in that size.
So to keep the A5 Finchley less than a brick, I tend to clear it weekly. But it is only ever a couple of pages. Everything else is absolutely essential. Isn't it always?
Dead right there Amanda - i have an insane desire to have *all* my info with me *all* the time, so it takes some effort to get my Hampstead Personal to accommodate it - but I'm getting there! As you say, regular and constant clearing out of redundant material is essential.....
DeleteJust a suggestion for keeping your Filofax slim. I use a coloured ordinary page as a divider and use a stick on label as the index marker. This means that the divider is actually an essential part of the planner and not simply a 'blank' sheet of cardboard. I do use a couple of standard dividers to distinguish sections but I've managed to keep it to three - being Diary, Business and Reference.
DeleteFor example under 'Reference' I have a coloured page with an index sticker that says 'Finance'. That page has a list of bank accounts and details (encoded of course!) and then any other finance matters - records of purchase etc - go behind the coloured 'Finance Tab' page.
This post is timely because it seems that spring engenders cleaning and tidying one's house, yard, and planners of course. I bought some washi tape to use in making a few pocket folders for my notebook that is similar to the Midori one. I did not have any before so I hope it does not lead to a huge collection. I used the tape to secure the sides of the pocket. I have some fold out pages that accompanied an insert. I will use the front side of the pages to track a few things. I am maximizing the space on inserts and note paper because of the limited space in my compact Luxe. I am using fold out note paper in my Luxe.
ReplyDeleteMy Spring Cleaning to do list includes the care and feeding of my Maldens! I'm new to the Malden family and well now I have four (uh oh), how can I best take care of the Malden Leather ? Also I have a Personal Connaught (Real Nubuck Leather) FF in Black....any suggestions on care for that beauty ? Thanks all !
ReplyDeleteOK, rant time. I've just seen advertised on eBay a 'Malden Vintage Pink Filofax'.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the vendor is a victim of our post-1990s liberal education system and can't be expected to be able to define 'vintage' ('something from the past of high quality', according to the OED), but while I'm no expert on release dates of various FF models, this can't be more than about 5 years old at most. Even if it is 'of high quality', it must be 'from the past' in *roughly* the same sense as yesterday's dinner or last year's film releases. OK, we can consider a film released last year as being 'vintage', but it might be wiser to let history run on and deliver its verdict before rushing to judgement..
Another example of words being misused in the name of making a few pounds (or dollars) is 'artisan'. Basically, if you're a baker and charge £1 for a loaf of bread, you can now label yourself an 'artisan baker' , triple the price and hope to clean up at the expense of other illiterates with more money than the sense to see they're being parted from it under false pretences.
Isn't it time we started leaving messages for these eBay sellers politely (or not) informing them that adding 'vintage' to the title doesn't increase their chances of a sale, or especially of a high end price. Rather it just shows them up as being charlatans, and illiterate ones at that.
OK, rant over........
LOL David, I believe Filofax actually called that colour Vintage Pink.
DeleteHeather, if that is *actually* the case I stand corrected. However, then we have to consider the semiotics behind *why* FF would do that. Given the definition above, it's hard to see how a colour, in and of itself, could be defined as 'vintage'.....maybe FF's marketing wallahs are themselves the victims of the aforementioned liberal education.
DeleteGive me the OED, not to mention the much-maligned times tables, any day......
David, I need to support Heather. The term vintage belongs in this case to define the colour pink not the binder itself. The colour aims at an old interpretation of pink that sets itself appart from nowadays bright coloured shades of pink. Said that it could also go with the colour name rosé -so I believe the Marketing untinded to add some nostalgic meaning to it.
Delete*Intended*
DeleteAlways funy to work with a touch pad keyboard.
I return to the OED meaning of 'vintage' as 'something from the past of high quality'. 'Vintage' doesn't *just* mean 'old' (or I'd be vintage for sure!), it means 'something of high quality' as well. Can a colour be 'of high quality? I guess beauty really *is* in the eye of the beholder.
DeleteI find this bending of definitions in the name of modern marketing-speak rather tiresome, so I'm off to get my ducks in a row, run a few ideas up the flagpole and see if they will fly and generally see if we can all get on the same page.
If FF can adopt meaningless jargon, so can I.......it doesn't make it right.
I clean as I go.
ReplyDelete