Here’s another shoebox full of notebooks from my collection. This one has most of my Filofaxes and other refillable looseleaf notebooks.

First, here’s the Filofaxes. I used 4 of these on a regular basis during the mid to late 1990s. (See Pocket Filofax, Early 1990s for details on the burgundy one.) These older ones all say “Made in England,” and a couple of them note that they are made of calf or kid leather. The burgundy one and the black one at top left are the old 4-ring style, but they don’t have a style name stamped on them. The other two black ones have 6 rings, and are the pocket “Chelsea” style. The one in the box is a 2009 Guildford Extra Slim that I couldn’t resist buying because the slim, small ring Filofaxes without the snap closure seemed rare at that point and for some reason I just wanted another one. (Do I need a reason? ) But the leather is much more flabby, just nowhere near as nice as the old models. It doesn’t say where it’s made, but I’m guessing it wasn’t England. (The only current Filofax model in the pocket slim size is the Lockwood, which has a MSRP of $102, but can be found on Amazon for $49 in Navy and $77 in a discontinued taupe/black.)

Then we have 5 assorted vinyl covered looseleafs from the 1980s and early 1990s. I bought these at various five and ten, stationery and office supply stores. The orange one marked “Astronomy” is the oldest. I guess I thought coloring it silver with a metallic marker made it look more space-y, but the cover itself was originally all orange. (There are a few additional photos of it in this post: Random Notebooks from My Collection) The one with the textured cover in the upper left of the photo dates to junior high and high school in the early 1980s. It was made by Top Scholar in Hong Kong. There used to be stiff cardboard inside the covers but I sliced the vinyl open and removed it because I wanted it to feel more flexible, more like the leather Filofaxes that I wouldn’t be able to afford until later in life! It has a lot of snarky notes about my classmates that I find really embarrassing now. Good thing I marked it “PRIVATE KEEP OUT!” The other 3 notebooks in the bottom row are pretty generic and weren’t used as much, though I think I tried to utilize one of them at my job for a while. (see Notebooks in My Office, which also featured one of the leather passport holders below, with a Clairefontaine notebook inside.) (You can still get basic pocket size looseleaf binders like this, from Mead and other brands, and they’re cheap. I have some listed in my Amazon “Refillable Notebooks” list for as low as $7 each.)

Here’s a few other leather and faux-leather notebooks, all of which would have been bought in the early 1990s. A couple of them are passport holders that I bought to use as notebook covers. The nicest one was from Coach (upper right in photo), which fit a certain Clairefontaine notebook perfectly if you trimmed the cover to be a little smaller than the pages. The second nicest passport cover was from Banana Republic, bottom left. In this one, I inserted a ring binder system mounted on plastic that I removed from some other notebook– probably a Filofax, as it has 4 rings, not 6. (This has me wondering if I really sliced apart an actual Filofax, back when they were pretty expensive! I doubt it…) I filled it with Filofax inserts and it ended up being one of my favorite “Filofax” notebooks of all. Bottom right is another passport holder, made of not very nice leather. I don’t remember where I got it and I don’t think I ever even put a notebook in it. Maybe it was actually a notebook cover that had that 4-ring binder in it originally…

I never used the little Bree looseleaf (middle bottom row) but it’s a cute slim size. All the paper has that weird grey squares design on one side, and is blank on the other. There’s also a Dayrunner cover (top left) that I think originally had a calendar and address book inside. But I moved the calendar to a kind of cheesy faux-leather cover from the Limited (top middle). And somehow, for some reason, I rebound some lined notebook paper in with the address book. It looks pretty terrible but I must have put a lot of effort into figuring out which spiral notebooks had holes that would align, and then bending the wire-o binding open and shut. Someday I’ll have to do a post called “Stupid Notebook Tricks.”

Then we have two little Japanese looseleaf binders by Maruman (one included in this review: Japanese Notebooks from Kinokuniya). The one with the clear plastic cover is a great size, but the cover is kind of stiff. The rings in both of these binders open via an unusual sideways hinge mechanism. I don’t know why JetPens doesn’t stock these, but you can find some versions in different sizes on Amazon.

There’s also a Moleskine Color-a-Month diary, the Kolo Essex Travel Book (available on Amazon) and a really odd notebook from my childhood. A neighbor gave it to me because I coveted it and probably kept dropping hints about how much I wanted it to be mine. I can only imagine what a pest I must have been to any adult who happened to own a cool notebook! But it was a weird size, so I trimmed down the cover and then covered the ugly green vinyl with paper. I’ve never seen refill paper that would fit rings like this. I used it a little when I was 13 years old, and starting to babysit. Probably my favorite thing about babysitting was having something new to write about in my notebooks. And more pocket money to buy notebooks.

This shoebox represents most of the refillable notebooks that I own, except for a few more recent acquisitions that will probably end up in this box eventually if I’m not using them actively. I loved using my Filofaxes back when I only kept my calendar and addresses on paper. Even when I switched to using a Palm Pilot, I still used a Filofax as a notebook and wallet, but then when Moleskines came along, I completely stopped using looseleaf notebooks. I keep wanting to bring some kind of leather looseleaf notebook back into my daily carry but haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet. But I’ll have lots to choose from when that day comes!