Guest Post: There and back again – a (possible?) journey back from A5 to Personal - David P

I’ve been a more-or-less happy A5 user for a number of years. The demands of business have always made me favour the larger format (but not Deskfax – that’s WAY too big for me!). 

However, over the past few months I’ve begun to sense a ‘pull’ back to the Personal format which I haven’t considered for a while- largely for reasons of portability, but also aided by a number of good ideas harvested from Neil and the Flatability vlog (if you’re not familiar you can find it at https://www.youtube.com/@Flatability. Neil is pretty much exclusively a small-format vlogger and his posts have made me reconsider what might be possible without carrying over a kilo of leather and paper around with me (I especially notice this when I’m travelling for business, and at weekends).

However, just as my considerations were gaining momentum, Filofax dropped their enormous spanner in the works by launching their 2025 diary refills, all of them covered with QR codes taking up valuable space (especially important for the smaller formats), ruining the aesthetic, and linking to an app which I neither want nor intend to use – ever. So that was a dead halt to my plans for a transition to Personal size – or so it seemed.

I suspect this is a dilemma which many Personal size users are facing, so nothing daunted I decided to do some research and see what is ‘out there’ for those of you who would like to continue in Personal (or move to that format, like myself), but who don’t want to use the new Filofax inserts with the QR codes.

Here are the results of my research.

I must add that I’ve not (yet) bought any of these inserts, so I can’t comment on paper quality (although I’ll make some general comments), but if anyone decides to take the plunge, maybe you can post a comment and let us all know. It’s certainly clear that the end is not yet here for Personal format refills, and I hope this may be of some use to you. 

All of the links are from the UK, because that’s where I live, but you ought to have no trouble finding other sources who will ship worldwide, and from whom you can order without difficulty.

Budget refills

I was pleasantly surprised to find several budget diary refills available via Amazon. For example,

Orgnizme 2025 Weekly Diary Refill Personal Size, Week on Two Pages

https://amzn.to/3N8zPW3

This looks to be a fairly basic Wo2P layout (with lines, which is my personal preference), and possibly contains a good deal more than just the diary pages. For the price, I would expect paper quality to be less than ideal – but it’s a very reasonably priced option.

NBplanner 2025 Week on two pages Personal size organiser refill

https://amzn.to/4gQN23d

No lines this time, but again a very reasonably priced option for the price conscious.

Collins 2025 Week to View Personal Organiser Refill (PR2700)

https://amzn.to/3BuNTqe

I had no idea that Collins, long established leaders in the UK stationery market, made organiser refills, but here it is – paper width 1mm wider than the standard Filofax Personal width of 95mm, in case that matters.

Elephant Planners W02P

https://shorturl.at/Ys2OK

I’m not familiar with the Elephant Planners brand (something to do with ‘never forgetting’ I guess, and this didn’t seem to be available on Amazon, only through eBay. But certainly, another option.

Now I’m aware that all of these are W02P options, and it looks to be a LOT more difficult to find DPP options at these prices. So, if DPP is your preferred option, it’s going to be a difficult year. However, let me also introduce you to three if my favourite suppliers at more premium prices.

Cloth and Paper https://www.clothandpaper.com/

8Lotus https://8lotus.co/

Rosie Papeterie https://rosiepapeterie.com/

I’ve bought A5 refills from all three of these suppliers in the past year, and they are all excellent quality – albeit more expensive than the budget products above. But if planning is something you take seriously, then as David Allen says, you’re more likely to use a system that pleases you aesthetically and structurally, and which you enjoy coming back to on a regular basis. So, you may want to spend a little more and indulge. All three of these suppliers ship worldwide and provide a number of different layouts, some of them quite unique (I’ve been using an A5 Wo2P layout from 8Lotus for a while now, and I like it a lot). 

Of course there are other suppliers out there, but these are three that I’ve used personally and can vouch for in terms of quality and good delivery times.

I hope this may help those of you who are feeling ‘lost’ about what to do for 2025 in Personal size. There are lots of additional resources, and this is just a starter guide – so if you ‘make a find’ or have a personal favourite which you want to share, please feel free to comment below.

Happy hunting!

Thank you David for a detailed dive in to choosing inserts aside of Filofax ones and printing your own from Philofaxy.