Guest Post - Filofax Compact Setup - Sally S

Seeing my old post about my pocket Filofax reappear on FFAF recently I thought I would post an update on my setup. Things have changed!

After using a pocket Filofax for a number of years the page size finally became too small for me. My reading glasses are not always to hand.

I have generally preferred smaller rings so trying personal compact seemed the way to go…so far it is proving to be a success.

This is the setup in my compact Holborn.

The pockets usually just hold sticky notes and tabs.

At the front is a clear flyleaf which I use for sticky notes holding reminders and important items on my to-do list, then a number of list pages such as medium and long term to-dos, shopping lists, items I am waiting for etc. I keep a separate daily to-do list which is thrown away when completed.

The next section (so-called although I have no dividers, just an occasional tab) is my diary. I did consider the week on one page format which will fit on the rings. However, a quick analysis of my diary entries from previous years showed that only about 30% of days contained an entry. Therefore it seemed a waste of ring space to have a bigger diary than absolutely necessary. I am using a month on two pages. There is enough room as the only things I tend to record are birthdays, anniversaries and appointments. I can fit up to three entries per day in the space available. If I need more room I use the top and bottom of the page for notes.

I also have a Philofaxy year planner for a general overview.

The next few pages are contacts…both addresses and mobile numbers.

After this come my Christmas pages which are currently mostly empty, just headings.

Then a few more notes pages…my book list, Filofax wish list (not that I need any more), etc.

I also have a world map and London Underground map, only occasionally referenced. Not really necessary but I just like having them in my planner.

A few sheets of spare paper are kept at the back, then finally a top opening envelope which holds ring reinforcers, Filofax jot pad sheets and scrap paper.

All in all this format is working well, with enough room on the rings to fit in all I need and is so portable.

Thank you Sally for sharing your set up with us.

Filofax A5 Compact - Ring Size Change

I didn't spot this change, thanks to Tim Edwards for spotting it and sharing it the other day. 

When Filofax originally released the A5 Compact Heritage it was fitted with 15mm rings, these have now been changed to 20mm rings. 

Attached to the description on the Filofax website is this note: 

I also noticed that they appear to have dis-continued the other A5 Compact size organiser from the Chester range. 

How Compact is Compact A5

I was asked recently about how I manage to use A5 for all of my planning requirements. Also how do I manage to carry around an A5 (when I need to) and what I use on a regular basis.

L-R Top row: Chameleon A5 , VdS Custom A5, Holborn A5 
L-R Bottom row: Chester Compact A5, William Hannah A5, Heritage Compact A5

Naturally I try to use what I already own. I had a look through the Filofax site to dig out their size information and came up with the following table it was quite surprising. 

Model	Holborn A5 Clasp	Lockwood  A5 Clasp	Heritage Compact A5	Chester  Compact A5	William Hannah A5
Height	235mm	230mm	233mm	235mm	222mm
Width	185mm	195mm	185mm	178mm	168mm
Depth	35mm	40mm	28mm	25mm	35mm
Ring Size	25mm	25mm	15mm	15mm	20mm discs

I have certainly used the Holborn, Heritage and Chester in the table above. I have a Lockwood, but it is the Zip version rather than the clasp version. 

I have included the William Hannah A5 Notebook, which whilst it is a different system, it is as capable of being used as a planner as easily as a ring bound organiser. It is narrower in overall size because the disc system takes up less space in the spine of the cover. 

Out of the above selection the Holborn A5 clasp is a winner for me, with it's excellent internal layout, I get around the single pen loop by using a Lamy Multi-Pen, which has a pen and pencil insert. 

My A5 Custom Van der Spek is my most used A5, it has similar dimensions to the Filofax Lockwood listed above and it is fitted with two pen loops. 

Slightly older now, but the A5 Chameleon from about 10 years ago is another A5 organiser worth considering with 25mm rings and two pen loops, the rear inside cover has a notepad slot as well. The size is the same as the Holborn A5.

What can you fit in to 15 or 25mm rings? 

I have no difficulty fitting a full 12 months of a week on two page diary insert printed on Clairefontaine 80 gsm A5 paper. In 15mm rings I have to be a little more selective about what other pages to include, but I can carry all my essential information and some spare inserts in 15mm. 

I don't have to make this sacrifice with 25mm rings, I can fit in all of my pages with dividers etc in to that size without any difficulty. 

To carry any of these A5 organisers doesn't require a large bag, I use a small camera bag/messenger bag as my regular every day bag. It has an iPad slot in the back of the internal compartment. It will hold any of the organisers whilst still leaving me room to carry other essentials in the bag and without it getting too heavy on my shoulder. 

It helps if you review the content of your organiser on a regular basis making sure you aren't carrying around notes and pages you don't currently need, archive them if they are no longer required. 

I've focussed on the A5 size in this post, mainly because that is the size I'm more comfortable using, but the same processes can be applied to other sizes to use smaller size and thinner organisers to make your planner easier to take with you anywhere, so you always have the information and your diary to hand. 

Filofax Chester A5 Compact organiser - review

The Filofax Chester range has been recently released as part of the Established 1921 range to celebrate the upcoming 100th anniversary of Filofax personal organisers.

The Filofax Chester model name has been used before, but it looks nothing like this latest iteration.

Chester is a former roman city situated on the River Dee in North West England. It is also close to where I spent my childhood years. I lived about 12 miles (18km) from Chester, so I've visited Chester many times. It still has a medieval wall surrounding the centre of the city, and a wonderful zoo on the outskirts of the city. Therefore, you can imagine this model name has quite a lot of personal connections for me.

I'm very grateful to Filofax UK for supplying this Filofax Chester A5 Compact in brown for me to review and share with you.

The Chester range was released initially in Japan by Filofax, but thankfully they have added it to their web stores in all countries as far as I can tell.

The organiser comes in a sturdy cardboard box.

The pattern on the interior of the box matches the pattern used back in 1921. 

The leather has a very obvious printed pattern on it. The stitching is in a contrasting colour and it to a very high standard at 12 stitches per inch, that is equal to what I've previously measured on Gillio and Van der Spek organisers. A Filofax Malden is typically 7-8 stitches per inch. 

On the inside front cover at the foot is the embossed labelling of the model number and size in the usual way. 

Without any inserts and opened you can see the overall internal layout of the Filofax A5 compact. I think it is very practical and better than the Heritage A5 Compact. 

There are two pen loops provided, but they are not elasticated pen loops, therefore you might have difficultly finding a suitable pen.

I found pens over 9mm in diameter would not easily fit in either pen loop.

On other A5 organisers Filofax often make the left hand pen loop larger in size to the right hand one. With the Chester A5 Compact they are both the same size.

Despite the restriction on size, I found my Pentel P207 mechanical pencil and a Borghini V5/RE roller ball pen fitted the loops perfectly.

In addition to the pen loops there are 10 credit/business card slots available and two full height slip pockets, one 10cm in depth the other approximately 13.5 cm deep. These will be amply in capacity to hold various items of paperwork you might need to carry with you.

On the reverse inside cover in addition to the clasp and pen loop there is a full height zip pocket (19cm opening) and a full height slip pocket again about 13.5 cm deep, with the zip pocket being fractionally deeper. The zip clasp when closed can be tucked behind the leather of the slip pocket, a neat solution. 

The Chester Compact A5 does come with inserts, but it doesn't include a diary insert. On the transparent fly leaf there is a sticker which states: Want a Diary? Content excludes a diary, so you can buy the one you really want.

So in my case that will be one I print from the Philofaxy collection 😏

They have included a good selection of other inserts for you to use:

• transparent flyleaf, 
• 1921 collection front sheet, 
• 1-6 number indices, 
• 8 sheets of cream ruled paper, 
• 8 sheets of cream dotted paper, 
• 8 sheets of cream plain paper, 
• 8 sheets of blue ruled notepaper, 
• 8 sheets of green ruled notepaper, 
• 8 sheets of pink ruled notepaper, 
• 4 sheets of to do lists, 
• 8 sheets of contacts, 
• brown ruler/ page marker, 
• top opening envelope

The rings are quite small at '15 mm' internal diameter, but from my experience of using the same size in the Heritage A5 Compact it is surprising what you can comfortably fit on to such small rings. I managed to get a full 12 months of Week per View diary inserts, plus all of the fill it came with, minus the 24 sheets of coloured paper.

The rings are quoted as being 15mm on the website I measured them at just under 16 mm.

They are the same PXR type rings as fitted to the Heritage A5 Compact. This means they are replaceable (if you can find a supplier), but they aren't easy to remove. However, the contrast to that is that they are very secure. I removed the top plate to check what type was fitted.

The size of the Filofax Chester A5 Compact is very similar to the Filofax Heritage A5 Compact that we reviewed back in 2016.  It measures approximately 18 x 23.5 cm or 19cm x 23.5 cm if you allow for the clasp and pen loops.

In terms of weight, the Filofax Chester A5 Compact without any inserts weighs 286g/10 ounces.

The Filofax Heritage A5 Compact without any inserts, but including the leather fly leaf weighs 279g/9.84 ounces or 211g/7.44 ounces without the fly leaf.

The Filofax Chester is also available in regular Personal size with 23mm rings and Personal Slim size with 11 mm rings and no clasp. Additionally there is a full range of accessories and writing folios in A4 and A5. 

See the Filofax Website for full details of the full Filofax Est 1921 Chester range

Again thank you to Filofax UK for providing the sample for review.

Malden Compact Zip Revisited

Have you ever had an organiser that you have bought, but when you started using it something wasn't quite right about it for you? So you put it back in the box and left it on the shelf for a while, may be even forgot about it.

However, a few months later you change something in your set up and that causes you to reconsider the forgotten organiser... you try it again and bingo it now works for you.

Well that has sort of happened for me, but it has certainly been more than a few months since I bought the ochre Malden Compact Zip from our old friends City Organiser from the shop in Bow Lane. Anyone who has been reading this blog for a few years will have seen my collection of Malden's and Malden accessories grow over the last 3-4 years!

I only have two compacts, the Malden Zip and a Holborn. For one reason or another I couldn't get on with the Malden one very well at first.

If you recall from my post in 2012, the design and layout of the Malden Compact Zip is the same as the Pennybridge Compact Zip. There is an outside slip pocket and a great internal layout with lots of card slots (14 in total!) a zip pocket. A single elasticated pen loop and another secretarial pocket in the back cover.

I've tried to use this as a combine organiser/wallet and to carry my phone. The phone at the time was my iPhone 4, which was a bit too thick and chucky to comfortably sit inside of the outside pocket. it had a habit of distorting the shape of the organiser, which I wasn't happy about so I stopped carrying my phone in it.

A few weeks ago I changed my phone for the iPhone 6, which although it is bigger than the iPhone 4 it is considerably lighter and much thinner.

With only 15 mm rings this might be a bit small for some people, but as a combine wallet/essential pages only organiser I think the Malden Compact Zip or a Pennybridge Compact Zip might work well with modern day smartphones as a companion communicator/organiser.

Reboot Your Filofax

Is it time to reboot your Filofax? No I am not going to go all technical on you.

I have been meaning to do this with my personal size organiser ever since Alison and I got back from the UK over a month ago.

So what does this involve? OK give yourself an hour or so to sit down at your desk or table.

Remove all the pages from your personal organiser. Separate the pages in to the different sections you already have.

Now go through each section and decide on the contents as follows:

• Keep: Pages you continue to need every day that isn't available elsewhere; 
• Archive: Pages that can now be archived; 
• Transfer: Pages that contain information you want to say transfer to your home organiser and that you don't need to carry with you all the time. 
• Update: Pages that you need to update, refresh. 

In my case I was able to archive the first 6 months of the year diary pages. I discovered I had two year planners! I also transferred out my UK maps which I don't need here in France. I'm also considering dropping the need to carry a full set of names and addresses with me all the time, I would prefer to have that information at home and may be a smaller number of pages with just names and phone numbers on them.

The end result is that I've slimmed down the number of pages sufficiently to be able to try out using a Compact size organiser, including the De-Villiers that I received/swapped from Anita and Amanda.

I also think that having less pages will be more effective in the long term. Having more relevant information to hand will definitely mean that 'less is more' and I will spend less time looking for a particular page with information on it!

I realise over time the number of pages will gradually increase again, but at least with this system of maintenance I will be able to rationalise things easier in future.

How many months or weeks of diary inserts do you carry at any one time?

Minimalist Filofax

When you get an organiser it is very easy to fill it up with different pages. Of course the bigger the rings the heavier and bulkier it becomes. But how much of it do you really need on a daily basis?

Before you throw your hands up in horror at the thought of removing things, give it a bit of thought.

Now at this time of year a lot of people will have a new 12 months of diary insert already loaded. Some of us try to be more economical with the number of months we carry at any one time, a rolling 6 months or 4 months, sometimes the last month and the next 3 months. Updating the contents on a monthly basis.

Some people add in monthly pages and may be a year planner to supplement their daily or weekly pages for their more detailed planning.

As well as your planner pages what else are you carrying in your organiser? Do you need all of it all of the time?

OK lots of thoughts and questions. As you might know my main organiser is an A5 Filofax which tends to live on my desk, always open at the current week. I've reduced the contents of this organiser so I can use a mixture of A5 organisers with either 25 or 30 mm rings or at a push in the 20 mm rings of my Malden iPad organiser. So that one is fairly constant now.

However, I also use another organiser which I carry with me outside of the house. But what do I really need if I'm only away from the house for a few hours?

So this got me thinking, and I thought about not limiting myself to just personal size, could pocket size do the same task as the personal?

So what do I need at an absolute minimum in terms of the contents for a minimalist organiser.

I sat and looked through my current personal size set up, I removed the pages from the organiser and laid them out in neat stacks for each section on my desk.

I started off with just my week per page diary inserts and some pages of note paper. This left out all my contact information. This reduced the page count to less than 50 pages. Well within the limits of my slimline Holborn, shown on the left in the picture below.

I continued to try different combinations, and if I needed key phone numbers I could add in the A-Z telephone dividers out of the slimline and this would still fit in the slimline or the compact shown on the right in the photo above.

I was having too much fun rearranging things. Let's go a step further shall we. I had been sent a sample of a week per page + notes for pocket size. Things would be even more compact in that, even if the diary side of things might be a little limiting in terms of how many appointments I could comfortably fit on a single day.

So I'm going to try carrying the pocket set up when I go to French class the smaller size will certainly help in my bag which has to fit a large dictionary in it. The rest of the time I will see how I get on with the compact size again.

I will be restoring things in to my full size personal for longer trips away from home.

Comparing Compacts

As some of you will know, as well as being a big fan of Filofax and other organisers, I'm also a keen amateur photographer.

I've had a keen interest in photography for well over 40 years now. I've more or less taught myself how to do most things with my camera, mainly by taking lots of photos and learning from my mistakes. With conventional film photography, this was obviously quite expensive, with modern digital photography, it's only time.

When I acquired a Holborn Compact late last year, it gave me a chance to compare a conventional compact with a zipped compact (Malden Compact Zip). I have recently been using the Holborn Compact as my carry around organiser, giving the Malden a little rest! Both have 15mm rings so swapping the contents from one to the other was straight forward.

The other day, I decided to try and photograph these two organisers in a different way, just to test out some new photographic ideas, as well as showing you a comparison between the two organisers.

So without any more words from me, here are the pictures.

Of course if you have any questions... pop them in the comments and I will answer any of your questions.