Guest post series - 'Filohax' No. 15 - Paul

Thanks very much again to Paul for this fifteenth instalment of his wonderful guest post series.
You can find all of the 'Filohax' posts here.   There is an index of all the previous Filohax posts here

Filohax wallet 

Do you know that feeling when you spot something that you know you need, but don't yet know why? That's what happened in a charity shop six months ago, when rummaging through the sad old wallet section, and saw an old calf skin wallet that was nearly Filofax personal format, but not quite. For £1 I thought it was worth sitting on for a while. The leather is uncannily similar to my favourite Winchesters and thin, with no stiffener or substrate. 

Then recently while passing my local handyman store, I asked if he could punch holes in thin leather... and before you know it, I've got a leather credit card holder/wallet for my Winchester EDC, and saved myself a hundred plus pounds on a branded Filofax one. 

 

 

It looks totally at home, and fits like it has been made for Filofax with the height and width dropping just short of the Winchester. Although not strictly credit card holders, there are two rows into which I can fit six cards - not quite enough for all my cards, but certainly my six most regularly used ones, with the balance stored in the Winchester's gusseted back pocket. It even has a small 'Real leather, Made in England' embossed in gold! 

 

Another major benefit of having cards / cash in the rings of your EDC is that, if you have to suddenly 'travel light' and can't carry a binder, then you just click the rings open and the wallet is in your pocket in seconds, no fiddling about getting the correct cards / cash for your needs. Yes, it adds a bit more bulk, but the trade off in losing inserts is worth the extra happiness this brings me...

 

Filofax Wallet

1. Do you use your Filofax as a wallet? 
2. Or do use a Filofax as a wallet and nothing else?

A slight difference in those two questions, the first is combining your wallet and your planner in to one organiser, and the second is using a Filofax just as a wallet.

Which size suits you best if you do use a Filofax as a wallet?

I have experimented with a variety of sizes to use a Filofax as a wallet and also combining a wallet and planner with a mixture of success!

Here are a selection of posts on the topic from the archive, there are more though!

• Filofax M2 as a wallet
• Filofax personal size as an organiser/wallet
• Using a Malden Personal or Pocket as a wallet/organiser
• Wallet Pockets
• Malden Mini - Wallet/Filofax
• Filofax Pocket or Slimline as a wallet?

   

My biggest problem has with using one as a wallet has been the carrying of coins, either the added weight of them, or being able to retrieve them from which ever pocket they are in. 

What has your experience been of using your Filofax as a wallet or using one as a wallet?

Filofax as a wallet?

Which Filofax works best as a wallet? It is a question I often see being asked.

However, someones comments recently got me thinking again about it from another point of view.

So what do you need when you are shopping?

• Money
• Credit cards, Bank cards
• Store cards 
• Shopping list
• Short list of essential phone numbers (optional if these are all on your mobile phone) 
• May be a monthly planner or year planner
• A few sheets of note paper may be. 

But does your 'wallet' Filofax need to be your planner as well? 

After the discussion recently I reached a conclusion that may be it shouldn't be..... why? As a wallet you want your organiser to be small enough to put in your pocket or in your bag. As a planner a lot of us need more space possibly. And obviously using an A5 as a wallet isn't going to look too cool at the check out? But it is an ideal size as a desk planner. 

Is personal size an ideal compromise? May be but unless you have some big pockets... or you carry your organiser in your handbag/purse or man bag, you have to carry it in your hand, not ideal when emptying your basket on to the check out? 

If you are going shopping do you need to carry all of your planner, information, addresses etc in your main planner with you? If a friend does meet you whilst at the shops and asks if you are available for coffee next week, you could have a facsimile of your calendar on a monthly or yearly calendar in your 'wallet' Filofax, or simply take a note of the details and offer to ring back when you get home? 

So may be an A5 or Personal for home use and a pocket or mini for shopping?  Personally I would favour a small ring pocket, slightly slimmer, 15mm rings would be more than big enough I'm sure. Credit card pockets are available in pocket size too, although I know people do make their own for mini size. 

See my video below from a few years ago, about using a personal size and pocket size Malden as a wallet.

What about you, what would your ideal solution be?

APATT* Nan's Filofax as Wallet

*All Personal All the Time

I've always been a fan of using my everyday Filofax as a wallet. Why carry more than one thing when you don't have to?

So in the Cuban Personal where I carry my diary and contact info, I was also carrying cash, receipts, and lots of cards. I loved having it all in one place, but the problem was the bulk:

Before

You can see how thick the cards and cash made the covers. It made the book hard to work with. So I moved the cash, cards, receipts, and a few pages of shopping lists into a Slimline Boston:

  

A pen through both pen loops holds the Slimline closed

The Slimline has cards in the front pockets, 3 pages of card holders, and a few pages of paper for notes. I was worried about leaving the house with something with no calendar at all, but I got over it. If I have to record an appointment or other memo, I write it on a jot pad page and put it in front of the cards where I'll see it. I feel safer having only one calendar—the one in my main Cuban.

So, what's the result for the Cuban? You can practically see how relieved it is to have less bulk to carry around:

Most days, I carry these two Filos with me, either in my laptop case (on work days) or handbag. For formal occasions, or when I'm just shopping and want to travel light, I carry only the wallet in a smaller handbag or purse. I feel like I have more options—including the option of lightening up!

Filofax organiser as a wallet

Using your Filofax personal organiser as a wallet it seems is not exactly a new idea! One of our readers John B sent in the scans of a post card he has had since the 1990's. Unfortunately there's no date on the post card.

However I did some detective work on the company and they were around in the late 1920's

Ludgate Co of 76 Hanover Street, Edinburgh, Scotland. Telephone: Edinburgh 25597. Cables: "Ludgate, Edinburgh"
1929 Advert as Loose Leaf Book Manufacturers. Also Postape, Scotia, Hanover and Lockfast Ledgers, Dunsol and Eclipse Thong Transfers. Pro. and Non-Projecting Post Binders. Prong, and Ring Binders, Memo, and Price Books. The "Aristocrat" of Loose Leaf Books. (Stationery Section - Stand No. R.106)

By 1942, they appear to have moved to a different address in Edinburgh.

Once again thank you to John B for sharing this with us.

Zip or Clasp?

I'm still experimenting with various organisers in pocket and personal size to use as a wallet/organiser. I've not really reached any conclusion yet as to which is my preferred option.

This experiment isn't just about what I like or what works for me. We all have different requirements, so the experiment is also looking at all possible options so we can highlight some of the issues/problems with different sizes and configurations.

I don't have many zipped organisers, most are clasp closure.

What is your preference Zip or Clasp? Please let us have your thoughts in the comments below.

Video: Using a Malden Personal or Pocket as a wallet/organiser

For your enjoyment/amusement...

Filofax personal size as an organiser/wallet

I love trying to solve peoples problems, helping them see solutions with things they already own or can adapt to suit, I think people sometimes call this 'up-cycling'

I have been continuing my research (sounds like a 'white coat' science project) in to using a personal size Filofax organiser as a wallet and as an organiser. Could I even take this big leap, well may be.

This 'research' has been a pet topic of mine that I've been playing around with now for a couple of weeks. It hasn't cost anything apart from time. I have been playing around with all the ones I have already. Thinking it would have to have big rings, ten zillion card slots to satisfy everyones needs.

I love it though when the solution or one I that I liked the best had been staring me in the face all along... it will I hope make you smile when you see what I'm talking about. But let's not spoil a good story shall we.

I want to take you on the same journey I've been on this last couple of weeks.  So put on your lab coat and step this way.....

So in true lab experiment let us outline the problem we are looking to 'solve'

We want a Filofax that can hold a typical number of pages with our diary and all the usual pages in it. My own 'personal fill' including the various dividers and A-Z tabs measures about 21 mm in thickness. We also require the Filofax to carry a typical number of credit cards (how many? see later), coins, paper money, id documents, drivers licence, health documents, passport, a pen. I know some of you might have additional things, but that is bound to be the case.

So at first I thought the obvious answer to carrying coins was to use my Filofax change holder, it has two zip pockets and fits on to the rings. The main pocket is gusseted so you can fit a reasonable number of coins in it.

I found almost by accident that it's best to put this at the front of the organiser, with the zip side facing the inside front cover. This then leaves you a nice flat writing surface on the reverse side of the change holder to use instead of the lumps and bumps of the cards etc.

The leather on this is also quite stiff so I found it didn't really work on smaller 23 mm rings at all.

So then I tried it in a couple of 30 mm ring organisers, first my Cuban zip.

So plenty of capacity, secure in the sense of it has an all around zip, two pen loops, 7 card slots. The downside of using this particular model though is it is quite stiff and bulky too! But as long as I was never thinking of putting it in my pocket I would be ok. Well I do carry most things in a shoulder bag so that wouldn't always be too much of an issue for me. But I didn't stop there. 

Next I tried for full contents in the Cavendish, again 30 mm rings and a great internal layout. 

This felt more manageable and everything slots in ok. I was able to find pockets to keep everything and feel that is was secure and wouldn't fall out if I happened to turn the organiser over or mistakenly pick it up upside down.  The paper money is nice and secure in the smaller of the two back cover pockets. The coins are accessible in the shallow outside pocket too. 

So I thought that's improvement for sure on the Cuban, it also lays flat too. 

However,  one of the flaws of this solution and the Cuban to a lesser extent is that neither the Cuban Zip or the Cavendish are made any more, nor is the change holder, they stopped making those in the 1980's. It would be better if we could get this to work with a more recent model. 

When I was looking at the change holder in detail, I realised there might be a bit of a flaw in the design of it. The overall width is about 106 mm, of course a personal page is only 95mm in width, so the change holder is about the width of a tabbed divider.  This isn't too much of an issue with a typical personal size Filofax, but the modern day compacts and slimlines are slightly skinny on width, especially the compacts, try to put a pen in the pen loop and you find there can be conflicts with your tabs, unless the pen is quite thin. The change holder though doesn't bend out of the way like a thin tab. 

So if I was redesigning the change holder I would make it out of slightly thinner leather, and make the overall size slimmer too. say 93-94 mm that way is should stay clear of the pen in a compact. 

So at this point I reverted things in my set up back as they were, my wallet being my M2 and my organiser as my Gillio Amica. 

I wondered could I do away with the change holder all together. So I started looking at how many coins do you really need to carry. The variety and the numbers of each coin to make up different amounts. Now this will vary of course from currency to currency, country to country etc. But it is possible to reduce the number of coins to a minimum. Then if you can get these coins to lay as flat as possible, they take up less space. Reducing the number of coins also reduces the weight of course. 

I settled on about 8 or 9 coins being the number I would need and started to play around with a few ideas to hold them in place. One idea I found was to take a piece of card and cut round holes in it to hold the coins in place. It sort of works, but I would need to improve on the card and cutting a bit to get it to work well. 

A week went by and I was still pondering on a few issues before I came to any conclusion. 

Then late one evening, it suddenly dawned on me as I was looking for something else looking through my 'collection' in the cupboard. I had pulled out a personal Malden. 

The Malden of course as a thin full height zip pocket, I've never really used it much in the past. But when I tried it with my selection of coins it is a perfect size for coins. The notepad pocket in the back cover will take a passport ok and other larger paper documents. 

The card slots take most of what I need on a daily basis. 

The bank notes might be better in a zipped envelope but I will see how they fair. 

Overall with everything in it, it's quite compact and whilst it is heavier than normal, if you discount the additional weight of the M2 that I was carrying, then it works even better and there's now additional space in my bag again! 

Now I know a few of you already Maldens and other similar personals as wallets, but have you come up with any better solutions for a combined wallet/organiser?

Filofax Malden Wallet to Filofax M2

I've been using a Filofax Malden wallet for a couple years now, it's quite compact.

and the inside is quite nicely organised too

It has a coin pocket on the right and card slots on the left and this card slot section hinges to reveal two mesh pockets .

It also has other pockets including one on the outside and two full width pockets for bank notes. All very nice, but it doesn't have any rings I hear you say.... this is true... 

So with the contents of my wallet emptied on to the desk, step forward my latest find from Ebay... It was described as a 'Filofax Wallet' but you and I both know that it is in fact a Filofax Portabello M2 organiser. 

Seen here with my 'baby blue' Cross M2 you can read my post about that one here. 

They are quite different in their internal layouts, so for the purpose of comparison here is the inside of the Cross M2. 

It has a full width wallet pocket at the back as you would expect. On the left hand side there are the three card slots, on the right there is a gusseted pocket for coins, and a horizontal pen loop at the bottom. There's also a full height pocket behind the card slots. I've used this organiser in the past as a notebook it slips in a shirt pocket neatly and works quite well in that role. 

So moving on to the Portabello. 

So again it has the full width wallet pocket at the back. But there's no coin pocket, no pen loop either. Instead you have 6 card slots in total, these are equally split between the front and back with full height pockets on each one.

In both cases a set of 11 mm rings. Just to refresh your memory. M2 format is 103mm by 64 mm in landscape format, it is similar in size to the current Mini size which is 67 mm by 105mm, but that is the traditional portrait format with 5 rings, M2 as you can see is just 3 rings, but they are the normal 19mm spacing so any punch will work.

So moving swiftly along to. I put in my cards, and other bits of paperwork, along with my 'pocket paper money'

That all fitted in nice and easily.

I then added some plain and quadrille paper

I would use the pages for jotting notes down, shopping lists, noting down shop opening hours, model numbers etc The usual stuff when you are out shopping.

The next issue was coins... no coin pocket on this particular model, but I'm not so easily beaten.

In our collection of stationery I found this plastic holder, it is the right size and with a little bit of trimming to make the tab slot in neatly and three holes punched in it I have a coin holder.

I try not to carry too many coins, even in my Malden wallet it made it too heavy and slightly unbalanced. So this small number of coins will do me for most things to cover things like postage and the car wash.

I then had a look as to how to carry a pen easily. Not essential but it would be useful to have.

The Mini Filofax Pen I have I found you can slot the clip in to one of the full height pockets and that seems to hold it there well enough, or I could add a self-adhesive pen loop to the coin pocket.

Overall the is not much size difference between the Malden wallet and the M2, but the M2 has the added advantage of being able to hold paper as well for note taking.

I'm very pleased with the result, it's still quite compact in thickness too. As expected the coins are the bit that add bulk to the set up. This set up will mean I don't need to carry a small notebook as well as my wallet.

A big thank you Jane who spotted this M2 for sale, being described as a Filofax Wallet resulted in no other bidders and I got it for the starting bid price. So it pays to alter your search terms if you are looking for an M2.

Filofax as a wallet

Which Filofax works best as a wallet? It is a question I often see being asked.  During our Skype discussion yesterday, which I think must have been the longest one to date !! This topic came up once again.

However, having a live discussion about this topic got me thinking about it from another point of view.

So what do you need when you are shopping?

• Money
• Credit cards, Bank cards
• Store cards 
• Shopping list
• Short list of essential phone numbers (optional if these are all on your mobile phone) 
• May be a monthly planner or year planner
• A few sheets of note paper may be. 

But does your 'wallet' Filofax need to be your planner as well? 

After the discussion yesterday I reached a conclusion that may be it shouldn't be..... why? As a wallet you want your organiser to be small enough to put in your pocket or in your bag. As a planner a lot of us need more space possibly. And obviously using an A5 as a wallet isn't going to look too cool at the check out? But it is an ideal size as a desk planner. 

Is personal size an ideal compromise? May be but unless you have some big pockets... or you carry your organiser in your handbag/purse or man bag, you have to carry it in your hand, not ideal when emptying your basket on to the check out? 

If you are going shopping do you need to carry all of your planner, information, addresses etc in your main planner with you? If a friend does meet you whilst at the shops and asks if you are available for coffee next week, you could have a facsimile of your calendar on a monthly or yearly calendar in your 'wallet' Filofax, or simply take a note of the details and offer to ring back when you get home? 

So may be an A5 or Personal for home use and a pocket or mini for shopping?  Personally I would favour a small ring pocket, slightly slimmer, 15mm rings would be more than big enough I'm sure. Credit card pockets are available in pocket size too, although I know people do make their own for mini size. 

What about you, what would your ideal solution be? 

A Mini Solution - Guest Post - Lime Tree

A big thank you to Lime Tree for this Guest Post, which neatly follows on from the post last week on Pockets and Mini's used as wallets. 

Hi there lovely Filofax-lovers!

I decided it would be a good deed to raise my hand over here and share a love-post about the mini size Filofax.  AND to show you that it is possible to make a very good use of it!

It is a tough restrictive call, yes, no lying on that, but it is very very possible to do it. The lack of card slots is nothing to fear and I will talk about that in a sec.

Actually after I figured out the slots issue I ended up with three minis! Ooops! Hehehe. One Chameleon and two Finsbury.

So, many centuries ago when I was naïve enough to believe I was going to pick one size/model and stick with it, I was perusing the net and found a fun little DYI project.

I thought, “Aha! Great idea! If I decide to go with a mini size, I would certainly do that”.

Well, I decided “to go” with all sizes because I get into cycles, loving all and each one of them for different reasons at different times. Even thou loving all, I was never able to combine {for too long} a wallet with calendar, to-dos and such. So very early on my Filofax journey I decided to separate both.  I rescued from old dusty bookmarks that DIY project, *aham* got a new Filofax {I really needed for the DIY thingy} and got to action.

I was going to send you guys directly to that tutorial but I found out that the post is not available anymore.

Fret not, because it is a very easy project. I don’t have pictures of the process {cause I did it a long time ago}, but bullet points will get it done:

First the materials:

• Old business cards book
• Duck Tape
• Scissors
• Filofax-friendly whole punch

Here all them together {minus scissors that I forgot to add to the group}:

Instructions:

• Detach the business card holders out of the book.
• Cut a piece of duck tape a bit longer then the height of each card holder.
• Tape each card holder on the edge {where you will whole punch it} making sure that the tape folds to the backside to make it sturdier.
• Trim the edges
• Whole punch them

And Ta-daaaa! Extra card slots all ready to go! Here is how mine look like:

Now, in action:

I even have room to add more cards!

Card slots shortage all solved.

Ah! And minis are great to keep your shopping lists too! I have each of the stores I visit more often all in a designed tab. At home if I remember something I just write down under the store name. So when I am out and about and pass by one of the stores I have my list ready.

And mind you, I even have the option to choose between a zipped or clasp one. Hehehe. Both are GREAT!

This was only made possible because the Philofaxy community is just above and beyond amazing. Darling sweet Zoe was the one that found that preciousness and handed it over to me. Just like that! And I have been using it ever since. :) Totally perfect for the purpose! 

Besides the DIY project there are two other reasons this lovely Zipped Finsbury fits so well as a wallet:

1- NO Pockets! Yes, oddly enough I love the fact that are no pockets. There is only a tight one in front. Why I love a no-pocket Filofax? Because there is no room to tuck in a gazillion of useless receipts. The important ones I squeeze into the front pocket which forces me to always do something with them when I get home; log, file, etc. So the lack of pockets is actually a great way to keep it neat!

2- It is very sturdy, so it keeps its squeezable-yummy-round shape all the time. I love to hold it! It is very hand-friendly. Hehe

NOW! Best part! I have a “travel” mini-wallet as well - The Finsbury with a clasp.
I love that one too because of course, it is transferable, all cards and lists can be used the same way:

BUT it is “tip-friendly”. Meaning, on my daily routine I rarely carry cash with me so I don’t miss a cash slot on the zipped one, but in trips where there is always someone to tip, I do need that feature!

And there it is the cash slot handy and awesome:

And now both beauties together {because we all know that Filofax picture-drooling is fun!} :

So there you have it, my mini Filofax love-post :)

I have been using that system for months now and I hadn’t messed with it or wanted to mess with it!  How amazing is that? :D

One last shot {really last one, promise!} and I leave you guys with my warmest wishes of a great Filofax day to you all! ;)

Thank you for sharing these great tips and ideas with us Lime Tree.