It goes without saying that at least one notebook has always and will always be part of my every day carry— EDC for short. While I might go for a 20-minute walk in the neighborhood without a notebook, at all other times, I have to have one nearby. But lately I’ve been having some serious dilemmas about how many and which notebooks should be part of my EDC.

First of all, how do we define EDC anyway? I work from home, so most days I don’t have to carry anything too far! I’m talking about the notebooks I have closest at hand for constant usage. I carry them around the house every day, so they’re almost always in the same room. When I go out somewhere, I like to keep my bag relatively light, so depending on what I’m doing/where I’m going, I might not carry the same full set of notebooks in my bag… but that’s part of my dilemma.

Over the years, my habits have morphed from just carrying one notebook to carrying several. In the 1990s, the one notebook was a Filofax that also served as a wallet. Then it was a Moleskine sketchbook, used for all sorts of jottings, while other info, appointments, etc. were maintained in an electronic organizer. At some point this turned into two Moleskines (or similar), usually a squared notebook used as a journal and logbook, and a sketchbook strictly for drawing. Then a dated planner entered the mix, for logging and jotting important dates. When the dated planner became a Nolty, it became my home for logging, noting appointments, keeping short term lists on each weekly spread, and long term lists in the supplemental notebook in the back.

For the last several years, I’ve settled into a solid habit of 3 EDC notebooks: the journal, the sketchbook, and the Nolty planner. But I kept having this hankering to add a looseleaf notebook into the mix, and recently the Filofax Guildford Extra Slim has joined my EDC bundle.

It fits in really nicely, in a physical sense. It’s exactly the same size as the rest. I’ve filled it with Plotter inserts, so it’s aesthetically pleasing in terms of the colors and page layout, and I can use fountain pens without having to worry about bleed-through.

The dilemma is that this feels like a lot of notebooks now. It’s a nice handful, but a bit chunky! And somewhat heavier and bulkier than ideal for my bag. I find myself wanting to be a bit more minimal. But what would I leave out?

I want to continue to keep a journal in a bound notebook. I like being able to go back to a bound notebook that is specific to a date range. But maybe I could just leave it on my desk or nightstand and confine most of my journaling to those moments? If I wrote notes in the Filofax and wanted to save them, I could remove those pages and attach them at the appropriate place in the journal.

What about the sketchbook? Lately I haven’t been drawing every day. But I feel like I should be! I don’t want to combine sketches with my journaling, as I like being able to show people my sketches without also exposing my private musings. And I want a certain kind of paper for sketching. My current sketchbook is also just very nice to hold– it’s one of my older Moleskines from the early 2000s when they were so well made with zero overhang.

Could I leave out the Nolty? A lot of what I write in it is logging food, exercise and other habits, which I could record at the end of each day, but I also use it for lists and planning. I keep some of these notes in the Filofax or my journal, but I really love the format of the Nolty and the feel of the leather cover. I don’t want to give it up.

At the moment, the Filofax is what seems redundant. The notes that I’m keeping in the Filofax could go somewhere else, mostly in the Nolty. But I’m thinking that maybe for 2024 I will not set up the Nolty with all my usual long-term lists. Keeping those in the Filofax may work better because if I run out of space, I can just add pages, rather than having to skip elsewhere in the supplemental booklet. If I wasn’t carrying the Filofax, I could use the Nolty as a sort of in-box for all the things I want to add to long term lists. I don’t like the inefficiency of having to jot something down twice, but the reality is that I end up having to re-copy whole lists every couple of years anyway– I tend to use the supplemental notebooks for two years but by then the long-term lists are running out of space or have too many obsolete items, so I end up re-writing them in a new booklet when I start a year in a new Nolty planner.

I also keep some long-term lists and all my appointments in my phone, which makes a lot more sense for these kinds of things in many ways. But that’s not much fun for a notebook lover, is it?

The best thing about using a Filofax or other kinds of leather refillable notebooks for an all-in-one system is that they break in and get better over time. I also enjoy that about the leather Nolty planner. Leather binders can last for decades if they’re well taken care of, but nice ones are expensive, and not as replaceable as a Moleskine or Nolty. My Guildford Extra Slim seems to be quite a rare model and I can’t help worrying that I’d never be able to replace it if I lost it. This is probably an unreasonable paranoia given that I don’t think I’ve lost a notebook since 7th grade. It’s also unreasonable because I have several other really nice refillable notebooks that I’d be happy to have an excuse to use on a daily basis!

My dilemma comes down to choosing between my enjoyment of staying organized efficiently using a notebook best suited to my purposes, and my enjoyment of just… using lots of nice notebooks, just because. Every day carry is not necessarily every day use for me. And maybe every day use doesn’t have to mean every day carry? Either way, it’s every day admiration and adoration of all the things there are to love about notebooks!

So for 2024, my every day carry will probably continue to be 4 notebooks on a pretty regular basis, but I’ll allow myself some breaks. They’ll always be with me around the house, but when I go out, sometimes I’ll just carry the Nolty, or maybe add one or two others depending on my plans. We’ll see how it goes! Who knows, maybe I’ll find a fifth notebook that I can’t be without…