My Filofax Birthday

In July, I will be 1 year old in Filofax years. To celebrate, a little early to note, I bought myself a little present. What else but a brand new Filofax? A personal Osterly in brown. Very beautiful. I have decked it out in all new duds, natch: new cotton cream paper, which comes with it; tabbed dividers made from 'designer' duct tape sheets purchased from Target, and backed with ivory card stock; a brown Today ruler/marker; a personalized post-it dashboard with sticky notes purchased while on vacation in Hawaii, and some very smart beige-y, cream-y sticky tabs from Smash.

As I don't enjoy bright neon colors, I wanted my color scheme to be nice subdued earth-tone hues to match the planner. Throughout you will see browns, beiges, cotton cream, of course, a little black.

The only thing lacking is the perfect pen. I'm on the hunt for one with brown ink.

Personal Osterly in Brown

The customized dashboard

The handmade tab divider. 

The Today marker and a page from the Diary Section

A page from the Notes Section. I ripped pictures from a magazine
of some items that I need and swathed a piece of Smash tape over it. It's
the piece that says 'Need It!'

A page from the To Do Section. Standard fare

A page from the ASL (American Sign Language) Section. I hole punched a booklet
of signs for quick reference. I am a sign language interpreter.

A page from the Bible Section

A page from the Books Section. I have challenged myself to read 40 books this year.
Almost half way there!

A page from the OOTD (outfit of the day) Section. I created a template
to record everything I will wear for the upcoming week. No scrambling
around in the morning for something to wear! 

My business card holder

2012 Filofax Set-up

I have been looking forward to this day since around Sept or Oct '11 when my months-old Cuban Filofax began to lose its luster. I scoured thousands Filofax Flickr photos, and tried to emulate the random messiness of schedules, sticky notes, stickers, the more-than-occasional stray page, the explosion of color. It was all so appealing to the eye, so...interesting. I ended up with a schizophrenic amalgamation of other people's ideas.

In reality, I like my Filofax tidy. I like symmetry, order, and monochrome. What I did not like was Filofax's 'array' (I use that word lightly) of tab dividers. Making my own, I discovered that I am not an artist, and that too many colors and patterns turned my eye away from rather than to my Filofax, causing me to neglect its upkeep for days on end.

I was happy to discover these...

Dividers from Succes in navy blue, the most classic color in the spectrum, and incidentally, the same color as my car, and the cardigan I bought yesterday from H & M. I love these. They are a flexible, light-weight plastic(y) material (Succes calls it synthetic). I bought one packet of 5 dividers with symbols (365 for the Calendar section; a check-mark for the To-Do section; a pen for Notes; an "i" for Information; an envelope for Addresses). Because they did not have blank tabs in navy, I bought a packet of 3-letter address tabs to re-purpose for my own use. I flipped them over and re-labeled them with my Dymo label maker. My other sections are ASL (American Sign Language; I'm an interpreter); The Bible, to take notes when I'm at church or during my personal reading time; Finance, to keep track of spending; Lexicon-my word list. When I'm reading and come across a word with which I am not familiar, I look it up, write down it's meaning and try to incorporate it into my vocabulary; Projects, just projects; To buy - my shopping lists. I have different pages for different stores: Target, Marshall's, T J Maxx, Sephora, the mall, etc; To Read. lists of books I have read and want to read. It is prefaced with a quote by Henry Miller: "We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate;" To Wear. I made my own template to plan my outfits for each day of the week.
In the back is a top-opening envelope for receipts, and a card holder; in the mesh zippered pocket I keep paperclips (I only use the circle ones called Clipiolas) and stamps and such.
Other points of interest in my Filo:
*For the Calendar, I use the fold-out year planner and the wo2p diary. 

I pimped out my frosted "Today" page marker with a press on flower (if you read the prior post entitled 'On Filofax', you'll see that I also pimped out the fly leaf in my weight tracker planner). I like how this one looks like a climbing vine.

*In the Info section, I have a fold-out world map, which I refer to often.

*In the Bible section, I have placed a card that I received from my church which has our 2012 Year theme (Church to Live) and a sub-theme for each month. I laminated and hole-punched the card, and placed it in the front of this section.

*This is the template that I created to plan my clothes for the week. I print it on Filofax pre-punched paper.

*I use a navy blue Jet-stream Uni 0.7 pen that doesn't quite fit into the pen-loop, so I just hook it on.

*My Filofax is a Personal Cuban in Chestnut. It goes everywhere with me (except when I carry a smaller bag, but that's another blog),and holds its own against my iphone and Galaxy tablet.

*I only use Filofax Cotton Cream paper, as seen in the haul photo below.

There she is, folks. Ready for the new year...

On Filofax...

I am not one that likes a lot of bulk and clutter and useless items in my world. I only want what I positively enjoy and what it absolutely necessary. Two of my favorite material things are handbags and Filofax(es). Today, it's all about the Filo. I shared a little of how I use one of my organizers on the blog  Philofaxy, a source of daily reading for me, so I thought I'd post about it here as well.

I don't own shelves and shelves of planners as some of posters there do ( although I get trapped in a daze when I start looking at those shelves); I have four, one of which I gave loaned to my daughter when she graduated from college and became a professional. It's not really a Filofax, but more about that and my daughter's unfortunate attitude towards the Filofax culture later.

The focus here is my weight tracker Filofax. It's a butter yellow pocket Piazza which I purchased from Pens and Leather for a nice close-out price. I must say, it is beautiful!

                      As you can see, I pimped out the fly-leaf in the front with a beautiful press-on flower

                                     I keep the Weight Watchers weight record in the front pocket.                                           

This is the meal tracker from the Philofaxy Files tab. I plan my meals for the entire day and log it all in at once. If I change my mind for what I want, say, for dinner, I can just erase it and re-enter it, because everything is recorded in pencil.

I'd like to find a convenient way to keep my WW calculator with the Filofax. My first thought is to get a small pouch and put grommets on it and actually insert into the book, but it might look too bulky; or I might just hang a small wristlet onto one of the rings. We'll see.

My sections are: Notes; nothing specific, just notes; Information: here I jot down websites, recipes, tips on caloric and carb intake, etc; Points Tracker: this is where I use the Philofaxy meal tracker to capture the carbs, fat, protein, fiber and (I changed it a bit to suit my needs) the points value of each food item; and finally, Points Values: I use the Weight Watchers  points system to control how much I consume in a day. Each food item has a points value and you get that value by calculating the carbs, fat, protein and fiber. Once I know the value of an item, I jot it down in this section alphabetically, so I don't have to calculate each time I want to eat something. I use the address abc tabs for this purpose.

This Filofax is so tiny and lightweight, I just pop it into my lunch tote and carry it with me.

This of course is only my meal planner. I will post a blog of the two others that I use soon

On Fantasizing vs doing...

My Life is PERFECT. I have the job that someone recommended I apply for and when I called about it, the woman I spoke with liked what I told her about my experiences and told me just to email my resume. My home is beautiful and organized and run like a tight ship; my closet...oh, my closet! A large walk in closet that looks like a glam glitzy and gilded Hollywood starlet's dressing room. I have purses and shoes to die for. My office is perfect and peaceful and I'm in there every morning before work organizing my day, planning my life, and every evening (after my delicious dinner has been cooked and consumed and the kitchen cleaned to a shine), making sure all has gone according to plan, and each and every item on my to do list has a small, neat checkmark beside it.  My children, who are very nearly grown, are now cubby-holed into their own pockets of well-adjusted, well-educated and well-settled lives and my husband is faithfully there when I need him to be and conveniently gone when I'd rather be alone. I have plenty of appointments to me busy--lunches with friends, important meetings, which, by the way, I am never inclined to skip, and the occasional party invite,  for which I don a not necessarily new, and not exorbitantly pricey, though high-end and very fashionable outfit. I am as organized as my Filofax says I am.

That, folks, is the fantasy. I fantasize a lot. I have fantasies that are so far out of this world I'm ashamed that they come from my head. When I half play them out at home alone (does anyone else do that?), I get embarrassed to find my cat watching me. She always looks at me with this "I'm Way Better Than You" look anyway. I have fantasies that are so darn possible to become reality that I am ashamed to tell people that I have them for fear that they will ask why I haven't acted upon them.

The reality is, I haven't yet emailed my resume for that job I want; instead I sit languishing on a nice, safe job, going nowhere and not really enjoying the trip; my family, well, I must say, is not too far off from my fantasy, and on this day after Thanksgiving, I have some leftover thanks to give for that. My house is not organized and not necessarily beautiful. As for my office and the time spent there and the things that get done there...hmph. It's more like this: I get up in the morning, say a quick, too quick prayer, grab my lap top, sit on the sofa just outside the office in the family and read articles and look at pictures of office organization, and beautiful closets, and well cooked meals. Such is my life.

But not to worry... I am re-configuring my Filofax for 2012. I fantasize that it will help my fantasies become reality.

On Organization...

I have been on a quest to become an organized person since I can remember, though I am not a BO (a person Born Organized). I have read Organize...Today!, Organizing from the Inside Out, Getting Rid of Clutter, and countless magazine articles on the subject, yet I still struggle. Recently I tapped into fly lady.net to try to bring some order to my home and my life and some things, I am happy to report, have changed, even though I did have to blow a cloud of dust from my Control Journal yesterday. Will I ever meet all of her requirements? Probably not, though I have learned to leave my bedroom every morning with a load of laundry.