Planner peace - by Anita

Looking back over the years since I purchased my first Filofax (a cherry personal Classic), I have owned many binders, and I have really enjoyed the variety that this has given me. However, as a minimalist at heart I've generally kept to a 'one in, one out' rule so that I have only owned a maximum of five at any one time. I do love looking at other people's photos of their larger collections though.

As time has gone on, I knew that I would eventually settle back down with just one binder, but I suppose I wasn't ready before as I had been enjoying trying out different models. For a long time, I used to use two binders together - a personal as my main planner and an A5 for planning projects and for when I wanted to write longer notes. However, I eventually sold my A5 as I just wasn't using it as my focus was always so much on the personal.

At one point, I did seriously considering moving over completely to the A6 size in my wonderful Mulberry. Whilst in some ways I do prefer the dimensions of A6 paper, I realised just how much personal sized paper I already have, so it seemed silly to waste that when I don't hate the size.

I have found my planner peace for quite some time now, but haven't written about it as I wanted to make sure that it was working! One important thing is that whatever I use needs some flexibility for my changing needs or for a little variety. I have been in my red Winchester since January 2017 and have recently sold all my other binders, which is such a relief. I admit that since moving into the Winchester, I have purchased a small number of others and moved into them, but have then immediately moved back out as I realised that I'd made a mistake.

This is what my planner peace looks like:

1) Pocket size Raydori kindly gifted to me by Ray Blake
I happened to mention on Facebook one day that I was tempted by the Midori Traveler's Notebook, but had never tried one and Ray very kindly offered to send me one free of charge. I love this one as it's a proper pocket size, instead of the normal Midori passport, so it will fit Field Notes, Moleskine cahiers or a pocket notebook. I tend to use the Raydori for when I need a change, or if I want something more portable than a personal Filofax.

2) Red Winchester
This is 'the one' and the mainstay of my planning.
I have two set ups that I can choose between and other than that, I don't mess with my system:
a) Getting Things Done based
b) Simplified set up - I am using this at the moment, but moving back to the GTD one would be very simple and would only involve moving into new sections.

3) A5 Leuchtturm lined notebook
I don't use this all the time, but will sometimes plan projects in here as it gives me so much more page space, compared with my Filofax. I also use it to make notes on any studying that I'm doing.

So, that's it!
I feel like I have the best of both worlds with using notebooks and a Filofax together, but my Winchester is the one that I mostly use as you can't beat the flexibility of being able to remove and replace pages.