This is the first Filofax I ever bought, sometime in the early 1990s. I had not been out of college long and Filofaxes still seemed like the kind of expensive yuppie status symbol that I’d scoffed at… but then I got a job in a store that sold them, and I discovered that this pocket sized, thin, no-pen-loop version was available…  I fell in love. Fortunately, no one else seems to have felt that way about it, as it had been sitting in the store for long enough that I was able to convince the manager to mark it down enough that I could finally justify spending a chunk of my meager paycheck on it– I forget how much I paid, but I think it may have been around $50-60. But that turned out to be just the beginning.
Have you noticed already that the shape of this Filofax seems a bit atypical? A normal pocket Filofax is a more squarish shape, not that lovely 3×5-ish golden rectangle that I adore. That squarish shape is what this Filofax had when I bought it, but it drove me crazy. Since there was no snap closure on this Filofax, I thought it might be possible to alter it.

I have probably never felt more embarrassed about my notebook fetish than when I walked into a tailor shop and asked them to cut a quarter of an inch off the width of my Filofax. The tailor didn’t want to do it at first– he said more or less “this is a nice little notebook, why do you want to mess around with it?” I couldn’t admit that it was just because it was not quite the perfect shape, so I made up what probably sounded like an even stupider reason, which was that it belonged to my father and he wanted it to fit in a particular pocket of his briefcase. In the end, the guy rolled his eyes, decided he could do it, and charged me about $25.

The result was pretty good– there was a slight flaw on one edge where the tailor may have cut a little too far, but otherwise, it turned out just as I wanted it. I used it as my wallet for a long time, as I could fit a couple of credit cards in the back and tuck a little cash in the front.  As you’ll see in the photos below, I tucked lots of other things in the pockets, including a bandaid! Because the rings are quite small, I used a week-per-page calendar. I also kept some graph and plain paper in it for notes, and had a few other sheets with phone lists and to-dos. At times, I also kept a couple of maps in this notebook, but by the time I stopped using it the only other insert I had in there was a clear plastic pocket.

I loved this notebook– the leather is gorgeous and supple, and it really was the perfect size, so it just felt great in my hand. It still just begs to be fondled. I’ve used other Filofaxes since, but never one with such nice leather. I think the only reason I stopped using this notebook was that I fell in love with the Palm Pilot. Once all my appointments and addresses and even little memos and jottings had gone electronic, I didn’t really need a Filofax as much. I used paper only for journal entries and drawing, neither of which I wanted to do on loose-leaf paper. For the first few years of my love affair with Palm PDAs, my notebook obsession was in hibernation, and I felt no need to buy anything other than the occasional Moleskine sketchbook.

Every once in a while, I think about using a Filofax again– there are many things for which a loose-leaf notebook makes more sense than a bound one.  In the end, I think I prefer the permanence of a bound notebook. I have stacks of old Filofax pages wrapped in rubber bands– even if I bought those little storage binders that Filofax sells, they would never be as pleasing to look back through as a stack of old Moleskines. But I’ll never forget this Filofax– it may not be quite right for how I use notebooks now, but it served me well for many years.