Wow, it’s been a while since my last “using now” post. I can’t say I have any totally earth-shattering news to report about the daily carry notebooks I’m using but there is one new item that wasn’t even on my radar at that time.

First of all, I suppose the concept of “daily carry” has been a little weird for the past few months due to the COVID-19 lockdown. When you rarely even leave home, the main place you’re carrying your notebooks is just from room to room. And for me, in the first few months of lockdown I barely carried anything with me when I did go out, figuring it was better to travel light and have less to worry about disinfecting. (Though I did think about whether I should be disinfecting my notebooks!)

Nowadays, I’m back to carrying a small bag when I go out on errands. I bring my Nolty Efficiency Notebook Gold and sometimes a squared Moleskine. The Nolty has my shopping list in it, so that is really the only one I need, but the Moleskine is what I’m using for my general scribbles and journal entries and notes so I kind of like having it along.

I continue to always have a Moleskine sketchbook going, but that generally stays home these days, unless I’m going for a hike somewhere and might want to sketch a view, in which case it’s probably the only notebook I’m carrying. I’m also using my Nolty Daily Book for brief notes about my day along with a simple drawing, or maybe a sticker or something pasted in.

When I am home, as I mostly always am these days, I have all four of these notebooks and a pen nearby, carrying them around the house as needed. So I think they truly count as daily carry notebooks. At one point I also started carrying around a Moleskine Watercolor Notebook, but that seemed like overkill so I’ve gone back to generally leaving it on my art table with all my watercolor paints. I have another watercolor sketchbook in process there, an old one from Pen & Ink.

On my desk, I also have an old Kikkerland Writersblok notebook that I use for notes for a French class I’m taking via Zoom, and an Appointed notebook that I had used at my old job where I now occasionally sketch out garden or home project ideas if I need a larger than pocket size page. I am also still using my old A3 size Moleskine sketchbook occasionally for larger drawings– it’s currently propped up on a tabletop easel.

That pretty much covers all the notebooks I’m using these days! I am definitely feeling like 4 primary daily carry notebooks is a bit much. Since the Nolty Daily Book isn’t going to be produced for 2021, that will get me back down to 3, I guess. I’ll really miss having a daily diary, even though I have often been feeling like the two diaries are overkill. There is some overlap in how I am recording things, and I wish I could streamline my diary/planner/journal method, but there are also very good reasons to have separate notebooks. Maybe by January 2021 I’ll be ready to try a new approach!