Nan's 2012 Midyear Setup - Personal

In addition to the A5 I use for work, I have a Personal-size Filofax that I use as my wallet and daily planner.

This is the organizer that's by my right hand when I'm sitting at home or at work, and comes with my in hand, handbag, or gym bag every time I leave the house.

I started 2012 using the red Finsbury I've used most of the time since I bought it in 2006, carrying over the page setup I used 2011: DPP Diary; followed by a few leaves for FLYlady routines, task reminders, projects, financial, and notes behind a tabbed transparent flyleaf; and Slimline A-Z tabs for contacts and a few pages of lists and reference information.

Notice how I keep saying "a few."With the DPP, you don't have room for a full set of 6 tab dividers plus a set of A-Z tabs.

By March 2012, I was ready for a couple of changes. I was yearning to use my warm brown Finchley, which I haven't taken out for about 3 years.

Also, I was growing tired of having a jumble of things behind that one tabbed flyleaf. I was referring to the pages back there more than to what was on the DPP.

So I switched back to my brown Finchley, with Wo2P cotton cream paper and the following tabs:

• To-Do - Lists of things to do without a due date, with one page per category: Calls, Web, Errands, Home, etc. 
• Flight Plans - Daily to-do list, based on FLYlady chores.  
• Projects - One yellow ruled page per project. A project could be something like Christmas shopping, cleaning up garden, etc. 
• Notes
• Financial 
• A-Z Index - Contacts, shopping lists, directions, etc. 

This setup worked fine, and I really enjoyed the cotton cream paper, but I missed the extra space on the DPP. So I went back to the DPP and the Slimline tabs. My daily flight plan fits just fine in the right column on the DPP—no flipping back and forth! In the left column, I have room not only for appointments but their accompanying information...address, things to bring, money spent on the road (which is mainly what I was using the Financial section for). 

I'm loving the DPP setup in my new Ink Cuban. I use it for my wallet, too: the cash goes in the mesh pocket in back. It's the only thing I need to take when I leave the house. Behind the diary, I have a few white ruled pages and jot pad pages for ideas and reminders, since there are no tabbed sections. But most of the time, since I have the whole year in DPP, I can write everything right on the day where it belongs. 

So where will my longer-term projects go? That's the subject of my next post. 

1st April....

Today is a special day.... because it's Nan's birthday. Happy Birthday Nan, I hope you are going to be celebrating today and all weekend for that matter.

Have a wonderful day Nan, I hope everyone will join me in wishing you all the best wishes on your birthday and for many years to come.

Mama's Family

Here are the Filos that currently organize my life. In future posts, I'll delve deeper into how I use (and fail to use) them. At left is the black A5 Finsbury Filofax that I keep on my desk at work. It holds a full year's one-day-per-page diary and, currently, not much else. The red A5 Belgravia in the middle is my personal everything book. It has a weekly calendar (vertical, just like the one in Philofaxer's A5) and tabs for various kinds of lists and notes. The turquoise pocket Finsbury is what I carry with me everywhere and currently sees the most use. It's my only wallet as well as my analog PDA (I'm a reformed Palm Piloteer, but that's another post entirely). And it's become my failsafe tickler. If I want to make sure I see or do something, in here is where it goes. That's why, as you can see if you look really closely, this week's spread bears a post-it, a jot-pad note, and a peel-off B&N coupon stuck directly on the diary page. The coupon expires soon, and although I may never use it, I want it to be in my face.

Reporting for Duty

It's true! I couldn't stand to see a good thing die! However, I remember the conversation completely differently. I thought it was more like:

Nan: MY SELF-WORTH IS SO PITIFULLY LOW I FEEL THE NEED TO DO OTHERS' WORK FOR THEM, FOR FREE. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, LET ME RESCUE YOUR MISERABLE LITTLE BLOG AND LET YOU TAKE ALL THE CREDIT.

Philofaxer: WHATEV.

What is this lumpish, slothful disease that strikes as soon as one is associated with Philofaxy? I've let over 12 hours elapse after that gracious introduction, and it's only my first day! Maybe I can redeem myself by posting a nice big picture. Yeah...that's the ticket! I call this one "Study in red."



P.S. Yes, that's a Lime iMac in the background. I use it as a paperweight.

Philofaxer's Reign of Autocratic Terror Ends; Coalition Government Appointed

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one blogger to admit that he is a lazy and worthless lump of organic matter and dissolve his iron-fisted control over a once-promising blog that has fallen fallow, a decent respect to the opinions of bloggerkind requires that he should declare the causes which impel him to the dissolution.

One afternoon, as I sat around indulging my laziness and worthlessness, the idea for Philofaxy struck me. Filofax is sorely underrepresented in the world of bloggery. Moleskines, you can't escape. Temples to the cult of Franklin Covey litter the landscape. Pocket planners with gilt-edge pages sold near the checkout at Barnes and Noble may be more widely discussed.

(Plus, come on: Philofaxy is a really cool name for a blog. With a name that cool, its existence was inevitable.)

So I delivered Philofaxy unto the world. And a small but devoted crew of fellow Filofaxers took notice. And we cavorted in the fields of Philofaxy, and I pretended not to be a lazy and worthless lump.

But the truth has a way of revealing itself. It can no longer be disputed: I am lazy and worthless, and fully incapable of maintaining a blog devoted to a rich subject like the love of Filofax on my own.

Enter Nan.

One fine television-soaked day, an e-mail arrived in my in-box from a devoted but disappointed Filofaxer. She accused me of being lazy and worthless, and I said, HOW DARE YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THAT, and she said, WELL, YOU DESERVE IT, and I said: FINE. DO YOU WANT TO JOIN PHILOFAXY? And she said: FINE. YES.

At least that's how I remember it. But, in fact, I'm pretty sure it didn't go anything like that at all. Except for the parts about Nan contacting me, rousing my from my listless state, and raising the possibility of Philofaxy's resurrection. It quickly became apparent to me that Nan would be a huge boon to Philofaxy.

Nan's been chomping at the bit to Philofaxize, and I will leave it to her to offer her thoughts. As I discovered when I started this blog, Nan and I are not the only ones out there who love Filofax. There are others. Many of them found their way here. Many of them have surely left, thanks to my laziness and worthlessness. It is time to return. It is a new era.

There's no plan. There's no written constitution. There are no articles of confederation, incorporation, or faith. We're going to wing it, like the schizo-nutso-bizarro Filofax-users we are.

Now, I have some TV to watch and a sofa to imprint with the contours of my buttocks.