For all that I’m an unrepentant notebook addict, with way more notebooks than I could ever use in my lifetime, I sometimes actually find myself looking at someone else’s collection and feeling a little judge-y. This happens mainly on Instagram where I’ve seen various people displaying shelves full of 5 or 10 or 20 Travelers Notebooks, each of them stuffed full and blinged-out with lots of charms and clips and pen holders and whatever. I find myself thinking “it’s a refillable notebook, you’re supposed to keep using it, not just start a new one when it’s full.”

And yet…

There are a few reasons why I kind of get it.

Travelers Notebooks come in lots of colors and they’re always releasing new limited editions and I can see why someone might want to collect them all. I personally have never quite caught the Travelers Notebooks bug, so I don’t have that desire. But if there was some other refillable notebook that was always releasing interesting new versions, I could see that I might be tempted.

Filofaxes were my thing back in the 1990s, but there was no online culture feeding the need back then. They released new models on a regular basis, but there wasn’t the same kind of hype about limited editions dropping. That didn’t stop me from buying several. Mostly this was just a search for perfection– I loved my first one, but I found myself wanting something a little different. I tried other versions, seeking a certain shape, thickness, leather texture, ring size– some je ne sais quoi that kept me trying more. There were times when I was using two Filofaxes simultaneously– one as a sort of wallet and planner, and one as just a notebook, or various permutations along those lines.

Then I stopped using my Filofaxes and stored them all away in a box. I’d still buy a cute little looseleaf binder once in a while, just because I still loved them, or to review on this blog, but I had completely switched to filling one Moleskine after another, as well as other similar brands of hard or softcover bound notebooks.

But recently I was having another moment where I wanted to start using a refillable looseleaf notebook, and I looked through my box of old ones (see my “shoebox tour”) to see if I could revive something that I hadn’t used in a while. But I realized I had to start afresh with a Filofax I’d never used before. The old Filofaxes that I’d abandoned now seemed like little time capsules. They were each different, with odd snippets of notes or clippings tucked in pockets. They brought memories back, and prompted curiosity about things I could no longer remember. I couldn’t just clear out all those old contents and start those notebooks over again now.

So I’m making peace with the idea of having too many refillable notebooks. Leather Filofax notebooks like these are at their best when they’ve been used and worn in and loved, but I think it’s ok to let them become “finished,” and move on. It’s not just the contents that you might want to archive, sometimes, but rather the whole bundle, the whole object. Revisiting these old notebooks is a lot of fun, and I’ll share more photos of them soon!