Guest Post - Archiving Solutions.

At Philofaxy we like to help businesses both large and small in our scope of interest.... ring bound planners of course. 

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. 

Archiving and Storing A5 Inserts

At this time of year my A5 organiser needs to go on a diet. This year more so than other years I've had more and more appointments popping up in the next year as early as June 2024, I was getting appointments for 2025, at first I just used my simple year planner, but as they multiplied I needed something with more detail. 

In the end I got to August and started thinking about my inserts for next year. The result of which you will see in an earlier post. Basically my usual inserts with a little bit of a tweak to the design.  

Once printed I wanted to get them in to my organiser. I had to archive the first 6 months to get them in. My Van der Spek 35mm Customs have been retrospectively fitted with 30mm Krause rings. This makes them more manageable but obviously it reduces their capacity a little, but makes the full organiser less of a brick to carry!

For the past few years I've been using other A5 organisers to store my past years of inserts. I have them going back to 2017 and before then. I also have some years of personal size inserts when I was using that size as well. 

Using an organiser is an obvious but not the cheapest way of storing your inserts and spare inserts. I decided to look for an alternative so that I could get back my organisers for normal use. 

It's not difficult to find suitable boxes, a visit to your local stationery store or supermarket with a handful of pages will quickly find a size that will work. I have done this for most sizes. I have some small plastic drawers I use for a lot of my spare pages, blanks etc. 

Don't just think of looking in the stationery section, also consider looking in the food storage and household sections of any shop. There will be something that fits the bill. 

For my previous years inserts I thought using something that held them in the right order would be a useful solution. 

I discovered that Filofax still makes storage binders which are a simple plastic cover with posts to put your pages on. They do these in A5, Personal and Pocket size. 

I also discovered some cardboard A5 organisers with a 6 ring mechanism, they did them in packs of 2 for quite a sensible price. 

I ordered some and they arrived and despite them only having 20mm rings, I was able to just about squeeze 3 years worth of inserts in to each one! 

Now they aren't easy to turn the pages when they are this full I know, but for occasional access they will be fine. I also like that they aren't made of plastic. 

I've ordered some more so I have a future supply of them available as well! 

How do you store your spare pages and/or previous year's inserts? 

What to do with last years inserts?

For some people part of the 'New Year' ritual is to swap over their diary inserts. Taking out last years and inserting the next years.

That said a lot of people do this on a rolling basis, archiving past weeks/months and adding in future weeks/months. They always keep 6-12 months in their organiser at any one time, with a split of say 3 months past and 9 months future, but the length of time and the split between past and future is a personal choice of course.

It will also depend on the type of inserts you are using and the size of rings or the capacity of your organiser to hold the amount of paper you need.

What ever camp you are in, what do you do with your old inserts? Some people archive them, but I have heard of people that shred them.

Personally I archive mine in an old large ring A5 Finsbury, it can hold 3-4 years worth of week on two page inserts comfortably.

A cheap and simple alternative is to use 'Treasury Tags', they come in a variety of sizes and lengths and they keep pages securely together, you simply pass them through the holes of the organiser pages and you can still turn the pages easily etc.

My archived inserts help me pin down dates in telephone records and dates to look for photographs etc. 

Whilst keeping your past inserts doesn't take up much space, you can decide how long to keep them for.

I still have my 1987, 1988, 1989 inserts from when I first started using a Filofax, they make fascinating reading! I was using my Filofax more as a journal than a planner, but I didn't really know the difference back then!

What do you do with your old inserts?

Archiving Your Old Diary Inserts?

I know not every one keeps their previous years inserts. I don't know what the proportion of keepers vs recyclers is. 

I have been keeping my diary inserts for many years. I still have my 1987 personal size inserts!! The ink is a little faded now, but still readable. 

A typical week of a young radio engineer in 1987!

I keep my past inserts in spare organisers, although you can get purpose made storage binders. But you can repurpose VHS tape storage boxes for Personal or Franklin Covey Compact inserts! 

Why do I keep mine? Mainly for reference purposes, a few years ago I was subjected to an ordeal that required me to be able to prove my location to a judge in a legal case regarding the care of my late mother. My old inserts assisted me in locating phone records and photographs for the relevant dates as well as serving as evidence in their own right. We won the case, our solicitor complemented me on keeping such detailed diary records! 

When you are putting your new inserts in to your organiser, think carefully about what to do with your old inserts. It doesn't do any harm to keep them. 

Go through them and make sure you have captured any essential notes for the forthcoming year. 

What to do with last years inserts?

For some people part of the 'New Year' ritual is to swap over their diary inserts. Taking out last years and inserting the next years.

That said a lot of people do this on a rolling basis, archiving past weeks/months and adding in future weeks/months. They always keep 6-12 months in their organiser at any one time, with a split of say 3 months past and 9 months future, but the length of time and the split between past and future is a personal choice of course.

It will also depend on the type of inserts you are using and the size of rings or the capacity of your organiser to hold the amount of paper you need.

What ever camp you are in, what do you do with your old inserts? Some people archive them, but I have heard of people that shred them.

Personally I archive mine in an old large ring A5 Finsbury, it can hold 3-4 years worth of week on two page inserts comfortably.

A cheap and simple alternative is to use 'Treasury Tags', they come in a variety of sizes and lengths and they keep pages securely together, you simply pass them through the holes of the organiser pages and you can still turn the pages easily etc.

Why keep your old inserts? It's a question I've been asked a few times.

'Just in case' is a fairly lame response I know, but I've had cause in the last few years to have to go back through my old inserts and journals to prove where I was on a particular day or week.

Without my diaries and inserts it would have been difficult to prove my whereabouts convincingly enough to satisfy a judge in a legal case.

No, I wasn't accused of anything bad honest!! It was more about proving I had seen my late mother many times and spoken to her at regular intervals, when it was alleged I had no contact at all with her after moving to France in 2010.

My archived inserts helped me pin down dates in telephone records and dates to look for photographs of us together either here in France or in UK.

Whilst keeping your past inserts doesn't take up much space, you can decide how long to keep them for.

I still have my 1987, 1988, 1989 inserts from when I first started using a Filofax, they make fascinating reading! I was using my Filofax more as a journal than a planner, but I didn't really know the difference back then!

What do you do with your old inserts?

Non-annual archiving

The wonderful flexibility of a ring-binder system extends beyond how you use it, to how you archive it too. For many people it makes sense to archive pages by year. If you haven't seen Patty's post on 20 years of her archived pages, go read it! It's amazing!

But for some people, it makes more sense to archive pages in other ways besides by calendar year.

For students, teachers and parents of school kids it is convenient to archive by academic year. That way all of your relevant class, activity and contact information for that school year is all together in one book.

I move internationally often, and the moves usually happen in the spring or summer so they don't correspond to the calendar year. So I archive by location. For example, we lived in Indonesia for 15 months, and all of my Indonesia-specific information is archived in one binder.

Similarly, you can archive travel information after your trip so all your destination-specific details, reservations, packing lists, leftover currency and coins, and local contacts are kept together. Then if you return to that destination all the relevant information you need is easily accessible.

When working on a big project, you can archive all the information relevant to it in one place. That way you have the entire timeline and related information stored together for easy future reference.

Do you archive your pages in a way other than by calendar year?

Mercilessness

In a comment to the previous post, a faithful and thoughtful reader advised being "merciless" in culling outdated pages, as well as those of marginal or dubious usefulness, from one's Filofax. I've been complaining about the bulk and stagnation of my 'faxes recently, so I decided to rise to the challenge. This photograph illustrates, at bottom, the amount of extraneous material I've extracted, and, at top, the lean result.

If I can do it, you can do it. Just doing my part for Philofaxers everywhere.