Simone and I have been exchanging emails for a few weeks discussing her product ideas.
Around this time last year, as Eastern Iowa settled into winter, I received my first ring planner: a Filofax Original, personal size, in patent nude.
I was enamoured. There was something about the tactfulness of the rings, the squish of the leather, the lightness of the pages... It was sensational.
Such is the power of a new planner.
But a small shadow lingered behind my Filofax since the very first day: what do I do with those extra inserts I'm not using? I was too excited to figure out a good insert storage solution right away, so I did what we've all done: shuffled them into a box.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Fast forward a few months. I'd settled deep into my personal planner, even found some incredible Tomoe River Paper inserts for my monthly, weekly, and daily pages. But to my horror one morning, as I was rushing out the door to work, my planner wouldn't close. Chunky yet funky and not getting any skinner on its own, I sat down to remove some inserts that evening.
And here that little shadow peaked over the side of my desk, pointing at the pile of loose inserts now littering the tabletop.
I glanced at my bookshelf and ran my finger along the spines of my long-finished bound planners, archived for life, content to be flipped through periodically when I'm feeling nostalgic (which is often).
How do I harness that bound book magic with loose pages?
I took to Google and found every possible solution to the questions now burrowing into the brain: how do you archive ring planner inserts? How do you store filofax pages? How do you make them accessible for your future self?
The box method is popular, but it's not pretty and makes flipping through pages rather difficult.
Treasury tags are an option, though I'm still not entirely sure what those even are, and they seem cumbersome. I'm after ease, after all.
Loose binder rings... interesting! They certainly keep my pages in a flippable format, but they're a bit loosey-goosey.
Empty planners. My collection is very small, and I don't like having to cycle through empty covers when I want to use one that currently houses past inserts.
Cheap binders from Amazon. Did I mention my planner was stuffed? I wanted something with at least the same size rings as my Filofax, but it seemed like anything I got from The Zon helped even less than my proper binder. With a day on two pages being my optimal format, my planner was getting fluffier by the minute.
Archive binders. Oh! Hark! Hello there, beautifuls! Oh wait... there's only one of you? Made by Franklin Covey for their proprietary sizes? And it only has two rings? Eh... fine, I'll take what I can get.
Thus, we have arrived at my current archive: the Franklin Covey Compact Storage Binder. And somehow, despite the 55mm square rings and my near exclusive use of thin Tomoe River Paper, ten months later the binder is beyond capacity.
Sigh.
In the words of Peggy Lee, "Is that all there is?"
Surely, I thought, someone would have tackled this problem by now? Surely it can't just be me... can it?
Well, let's find out.
I created a short survey to send out to the ring planner masses on social media. Of the first 100 responses, over 95% say that at the very least their current archiving solutions could be better, with 46% stating that archiving has always been a pain point for them.
That was enough for me.
Yes, the rest of the data is interesting and you can read more about it here, but my mind was ten steps ahead, sketching designs for the custom ring planner archive binder of collective dreams.
Thus, Archive You was born. Actually I called it Planner Archive at first, but that didn't quite stick. We're barely off the ground and already having to pivot. Such is the exciting life of starting a small business, and such is the life I'm signing up for posthaste.
This is something I can do, and it's something the community needs, so here I am, answering the call.
Archive You Co's mission is to design, manufacture, and bring to market quality, accessible, and affordable ring planner archive binders by fall 2025.
You can keep up with the project by signing up for the AYC newsletter here, following us on Instagram, and keeping an eye out here on Philofaxy (where Steve has already lent great support!)
If you'd like to get directly involved in the project, head over to the aforementioned survey, which has an option to join our planner community focus group. You'll get to hear about everything first and give your opinion throughout the design and manufacturing process.
Thank you to Steve and the Philofaxy crew for giving me the opportunity to share about this project, and I hope you'll join me in this adventure.
Keep planning!
Simone
Thank you Simone, I am sure you will keep us up to date with your thoughts on your archiving products.
Simone, we're waiting with baited breath! Can I ask you to consider how the storage binder can be labelled? Currently I just use lesser binders but they all look alike - you'll need for users to label the storage ...
ReplyDeleteUntil recently I had random piles of personal size inserts sitting on shelves, but am grateful to Flatability Neil for mentioning that a standard size UK shoe box is almost exactly the right size for storing these. As luck would have it I had very recently acquired an empty shoe box, which I would normally have put straight in the recycling, and it's now serving as my storage for my personal inserts. Thank you Loakes and Brogue Trader in Exeter!
ReplyDeleteIn an even more serendipitous moment I discovered that a box which had held a pair of Loakes boots is exactly the right size for A5 inserts. Result!
I look so forward to this. I subscribed to your newsletter and completed the survey. Thank you very much.
ReplyDelete