Guest Post - Filo Tips - Amanda

Thank you to Amanda Moore for this guest post. 

A lot of these have been mentioned occasionally on the Philofaxy site and elsewhere. I hope my own list will help people with their 'Filo-Adventures'. I've run these tips successfully in my personal and my A5.

1. Folding is your friend:

Folding your inserts can create quick guides for drawing, to do lists and for most writing tasks that require margins or proportions. For instance, a central fold divides my week to an opening and gives me appointments on one side of the day and tasks on the other side. A quick fold converts a blank page into a To Do list for instance.

2. Play with papers:

Philofaxy printables are fabulous! I found 70gsm photocopy paper which is fractionally thinner than the 80gsm you usually find. Whilst not Filofax thin, it is very serviceable and a fraction of the cost. I also hunt the Bargain Stores looking for good quality paper journals that might suit for notes, finance sheets and so on. A quick trip to most printers (in Australia I use 'Officeworks) and a few dollars for them to guillotine and you have piles and piles of inserts. 

3. Fitting it all in:

Of course a good hole punch is a 'must have', but you might prefer a single punch if you're more patient than I am. There are links on Philofaxy for the Rapesco punch which is excellent.

A single hole punch is indispensable for those jobs where the portable plastic punch is not strong enough or your Rapesco is at home. I use mine to make plastic dividers from plastic envelopes as well as to punch other inserts. It saves hauling a heavy six hole punch around everywhere. Mine sits in my 'emergency' bag inside my handbag and is barely noticeable.

4. My stationery drawer:

I use a plastic Filofax Credit Card insert for spare labels, stickers, postage stamps and so on. My mini-stationery cupboard. It holds quite a lot and also encourages me to not carry too much! Of course there is the wonderful suggestion of a 'Dashboard' for sticky notes as well. 

5. Find your sections quickly:

I have collected a number of Filofax page markers over the years and I use three currently: One for my month on two pages, one for my daily pages, and one for my current project. It's easy to remember to count in 1,2, or 3 rulers to open instantly at what is required.

6. Easy Tax Time:

Keep your eye open for the right size envelopes for your planner and you've instantly made a collection of dividers with pockets. Easy to label and useful for reference materials and notes. I use a standard size envelope to hold the month's receipts. I number receipts and list them on the envelope with number, item and price. A new envelope monthly keeps all my tax receipts in place.

7. Two or Three Filofaxes in one:

I make my own dividers, using 230gsm card. I make a few that are 'full width' meaning as wide as the standard divider plus tab. They run full length and allow me to have 3 sections in my Filofax with smaller tabs within each section. I use Washi tape to colour code the edges. 

I use these Section Dividers to separate my Diary section, my Projects section and my Information section. (and my information section is a set of Filofax A-Z dividers that I use for all those references we tend to collect.

 

I use a white cardboard so that I can write significant events or items on them. For example, my 'Diary' section divider lists the big events that occurred during the year. For example, "1 July - New Car arrived". This means I have a quick reference to look back for important dates and information. So if I go to July 1, I'll see dealer's contact details, impressions of the day and so on. Likewise I have projects listed, start and finish dates and context etc.

8. Those pockets:

Filofax and other brands have a bewildering array of pocket styles and sizes, and rather than fill them up with bits and pieces, I use them to hold custom paper and plastic envelopes. I find it easier to pull an envelope out rather than a collection of reference material that I then have to sort through. A bit of Washi tape and trimming can colour code references such as, 'mad money', prescriptions, spare business cards, etc. This is also a useful way to deal with budgetting if you follow the 'envelope' system. Make the envelopes the right size and bill paying is a breeze.

 

9. Saving it all:

With every phone also a camera, it's easy to back up your planner. Just take a photo of the page or layout every time you have essential to remember information and email it to yourself. You'll probably never need it but it only takes a few seconds and it's peace of mind. For the actual pages, at the end of the year I use plain old ribbon wound through the holes and tied up nicely. I hole punch some new cardboard covers to convert my planner into an archived diary. A strip of tape on the spine gives me a label, and I have an easy reference for the year.

10. Wake up and Smell the Coffee:

 I find sitting in a quiet cafe with open Filofax and sorting out my life and tasks very relaxing. Taking time to 'smell the coffee' is always worthwhile. 

Some great ideas there Amanda, thank you very much for sharing them with us all. 

A-Z tabs

The A-Z tabs we get with our organisers are mainly intended to be used for names and addresses. Steve one of our readers has come up with an alternative use for these.

Ignore your computer or smart phone for a while, we are going off-line, off grid even...!  It is just you, a pen (or pencil) and your Filofax personal organiser.

Let us think for a moment about the various notes and ideas, bits of information we jot down in a typical year. In my case these can be fairly random, from how to change my watch from one time zone to another, to conversion formulas, to what frequencies local radio stations are on, which Mark Billingham books I've not read yet... fairly random stuff.

So you could put these notes on different sheets of paper, that would be a good start, and put them in to a section called 'Notes/Information' but you still have a random set of notes and information and over the course of a year,  these notes start to build up a bit.

Steve's idea is to file these notes and information sheets within an A-Z index, so in my examples above I would put:

• My watch information sheet in W
• Conversion formulas in F (formula)
• Local radio stations in R (radio)
• Mark Billingham in B (books or Billingham) 

And so on, now to make it easier to work out which section you have put things in Steve  suggests using a simple index sheet to list the information and which section it is in. I think this is a good idea especially if the number of sheets starts to grow in numbers/size. 

I'm certainly going to give this idea a try in my own organiser it will help to combine the notes and information sections in to some sort of regimented order. 

Reader Tip: Alternative A5 Paper

Thanks to Mike for sending this tip in by email. 

For many years I have been using a cheap lined book as a diary and planner, inside a hand-made felt-covered binder. With holes worn through the felt cover, it was time to either get my sewing machine out, and make another cover, or try a ringed A5 binder. When I found a cheap shop-soiled Filofax A5 Domino, I embraced the opportunity for change. It needed the elastic closure replaced, but coloured elastic is readily available, and replacement is a relatively simple task.

What to do for inserts however? Somewhere I read about “filo-frugality”, and with this philosophy in mind, I have a tip for everyone which appears to have been overlooked.

Since I was looking for A5 inserts, and did not yet have a punch, I began my search with spiral bound notebooks, looking for any that matched the Filofax A5 rings. I found that the yellow covered “Spirax” (Pelikan/Artline) A5 spiral spring bound notebooks are a perfect fit :

• No 570 200 pages 7mm ruled with “2 Note Pockets” A5 Note Book
• No 571 300 pages 7mm ruled A5 Note Book
• No 585 30 sheets 5mm squares A4 Graph Pad (fold the sheets along the centre punched hole to fit)

Also, the Esselte 43470 Spiral System Cards 50 pages 127 x 203mm (3” x 5”) “almost fit”. They need to be put in the A5 binder 3 to 4 cards at a time with the slight bow in the centre to be trained (stretch the holes). These cards have lines running perpendicular to the ruled pages above.

All of these pages have perforated edges which should not be separated. Use a pair of needle-nosed pliers to open the spring at each end of the notebook, and a pair of diagonal cutters to cut off the ends.

Unwind the spring, and remove as many pages as desired to the binder. Rewind the spring back into the book for storage. When placing the pages in the binder, count down five holes, and place the next hole on the top ring. The lined pages sit 2 to 3mm high in the binder compared to a genuine Filofax pages. Don’t overlook the useful cardboard end piece, the front cover, and the “note pockets” as useful materials. Also, the pages can be inverted to use both sides of the paper.

http://spiraxnotebooks.com.au/

http://www.pelikanartline.com.au/product-56570,spirax-570-notebook-side-opening-a5-200-page.php

It is quite possible that you will find something similar on the UK/USA retail shelves.

Thanks Mike for the tip, I will try this out with a locally bought notebook here in France!