This week, I realized how grateful I am for my Filofax! It's always there for me when the unexpected happens and I have to make a sudden change of plans.
Why are you grateful for your Filofax? (Or anything else, since this is "free" for all Friday!)
24 October 2014
Free for All Friday No. 310
This week, I realized how grateful I am for my Filofax! It's always there for me when the unexpected happens and I have to make a sudden change of plans.
Why are you grateful for your Filofax? (Or anything else, since this is "free" for all Friday!)
With much comment that no Flex diaries have been available for many weeks and rendering it pretty useless, they've now promoting a "Flex compatible" diary product instead. Called "Perth" this diary is multi-language, plastic combed and bound, week on two pages and available in all three Flex sizes. Is it a Letts product or an import? Is it a sign of the way things are to go? http://www.filofax.co.uk/flex-perth-week-on-two-pages-xp3jmr-poc-36no.html
ReplyDeleteNow had chance to check. It IS a standard Letts diary refill that is being promoted as a Filofax Flex diary (complete with Flex branding on the webpage). I'm not sure about "compatible" though. The Letts Perth Slim is 166x82mm. That's supposed to be a direct replacement for the Flex 150x85mm... 16mm is quite a difference!
DeleteI would love to know what happened to the genuine Flex diaries...
Oh that's just silly!!
DeleteAs it's a FFAF I am asking how best to clean and nourish an Amazona, and what, if any, specific products are recommended? Thanks,
ReplyDeleteSteve
I would go for a neutral colour leather conditioning balm/creme. I use Wheelers Leather Balm, it is a natural beeswax product and it's available from Amazon if you can't find it in your local supermarket. It says 'Intensive care for all types of leather' I've been using it for a couple of years and it seems to work well. It's a fairly milky product so you don't need to use much of it. A 300 ml bottle lasts ages! Another product I've used is Autoglym leather care, it's intended for car leather interiors, which is why I had it! but is a richer cream liquid but it also works well.
DeleteThank you Steve. I, too, am a car care fanatic, so I shall probably try the Autoglym product. My main reason for asking was because of the Amazona's heavily textured finish, which I think is also padded, and almost "wet look", which I would be anxious not to damage.
DeleteI appreciate the utter planner peace. I made a binder which sports humongous rings, 6-7 cm´s of paper (with room to grow if needed), personal size paper, last quarter of this year´s WO2P horizontal view, two sets of WO2P for year -15 (I use two separate for individual purposes and for clarity and having them in one binder makes me skip and sing) as I use nex year´s diary several times a week already. This binder takes very little room on my desk (it being used mainly in horizontal- way) and it being brown rugged, thick suede and leather that I can toss about with rigor. If there was a Bear Grylls (sp?) tolerance of ultimate experiences meets ruggedness if Indiana Jones come to life as a binder, the creature sits comfortably in my desk.
ReplyDeleteEvery day is a joy to use and look at this amiable friend.
Also, I´ve accidentally found incredible conditioner of my pocket Finchley. The oiliest creme from our local pharmacist, I applied it to my hands before heading out the door, grabbed the Finchley and tossed it in the bag. Out and about I needed to pen down an appointment and reached for the Finchley. I wondered what had happened to it. It felt to smooth and so much softer than usually. Ever since I´ve lathered the oily creme on everything leather. Even the sofa, which has reached abnormal levels of softness.
Besides, it´s Friday and weekend is upon us after we still endure this afternoon.
Basically, I´m appreciating all over the place.
It has been 3 weeks since a rather large Lyndhurst A4 changed my day to day stroll through life. I have spent years with different systems / tools trying to plan my day, and I admit at times saying to myself a Filofax is not a ‘man thing’. Now every day is structured, noted, planned and reviewed and sitting here on Free for All Friday I can happily say I feel so much better for investing in big L.
ReplyDeleteStepping into the world of ‘Filofax’, after years of being a Moleskin fan, I end each day feeling less stressed, each day is reviewed, noted, planned and the next days are also just as well structured. Yes I still use an outlook calendar but I can manage both, all confirmed activities are copied down to the Lyndhurst. All my notes. programs, thoughts ideas, you name it, I manage to find a suitable, referenceable home in big L….
The additions have already started with self-made plastic separators (based on the std Today separator and take about 5 mins to make and cost effectively nothing) and several Word templates to cover programs / expenses / vacation planner / investments. I am sure I will find more over the coming months.
I find that having everything in one place – big L – is so much better than various notepads, online tools, laptops etc. Don’t get me wrong I am still a Techie at heart and cant live with access to the world via the screen, but at the end of the day, it is big L I turn to in the first instance as my base reference point…..
I am grateful for finding in the charity shop a slim personal Finsbury for £1.25 and a mini Domino for £1. Now I can try these sizes out for next year as I am changing to a Hobonichi Techo in an A5 Flex cover for a diary and will downsize to a smaller Filofax for notes. Just had to share that find somewhere it would be appreciated, as all my kids say is 'Not another Filofax...'.
ReplyDeleteI'm grateful that I can cut down and punch A4 decent paper into something which will fit a Personal size, so I don't have to use the fountain-pen-unfriendly paper Filofax produce ready to use; I'm grateful that I managed to find not one, but two Personal filos with 30mm rings for quite sensible money on eBay (a burgundy Winchester 5/4 and a burgundy Cavendish) and so far seem to be able to live with the smaller page size; I'm grateful for the realisation, quite suddenly and forcefully, that I actually prefer blank paper, not even any ruled lines, in my Filofaxes and the smaller the page the greater the need for blankness (although Rhodia quadrille is OK for some reason); and I'm grateful that my newly acquired TWSBI Mini fountain pen, which arrived this morning, fits in the larger of the two pen loops on my recently acquired Cavendish.
ReplyDeleteAbove all, I'm grateful that with a Filofax, I can at least be approximately productive and not spend my life running around like a headless chicken. Although I'm having a bit of planner fail at the moment (mainly down to me rather than the planner), since getting my first A5 filofax a few years ago they have provided a central point of coordination which has kept me organised through family funerals, house clearance, new kitchens, complete refurbishment of a house 170 miles from home, decluttering, wrangling a huge number of pets, depression, illness (both myself and my partner), multiple simultaneous work projects of multi-year duration while working mainly remotely from the office, and very nearly Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Above all I remember the expression on an assistant's face when, one day in September a couple of years ago, my partner and I walked into a kitchen supplier's showroom and I opened the black Ascot A5 to show him an approximate budget, detailed hand-drawn plan of the kitchen including measurements, outline project plan for the new kitchen and an itemised parts list for the kitchen units and other paraphernalia I had worked out we would need. Pretty much all he had to do was get someone to check my measurements, tell us how much it would all cost and place the order. Priceless.
Hello
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely blog.
I had a B5 -- remember those? I was a teacher, then a head of dept, and used all the business forms for meeting agendas a budgets. I still have all the stuff in the loft.
Now I am a homemaker, so I downsized to a Mini for my handbag. I like it, and it's much easier than looking for into on a mobile phone. There isn't much choice of inserts, but that makes life simple. My proper Filofax mini is broken, and I have a cheap imitation from Smiths. When I looked at the Filofax website, there seems to be very little in the way of Mini organisers -- are they being phased out?