How I keep organised - an introduction

One of the things I loathe most is feeling disorganised and overwhelmed. I had a weekly paper planner through University, and then went digital with my iPhone. However last year I realised that digital just wasn't working for me, I had a lot more stuff going on and a lot more things to keep track of, so I went back to paper, and got slightly sucked into Filofax. That, however, is another story for another time...

Fast forward to January 2014 and I keep my life (or rather my tangled mess of a brain) organised with three things:

From left to right: Midori Traveler's Notebook, Filofax Cuban A5 and a Filofax Flex Lizard print

Each serves a different purpose but together they form my external brain, my means of planning, tracking and dumping all my thoughts in some sort of order. 

This post is more of an intro to these three amigos, so there'll be more in-depth posts in the near future but by way of introduction:

The Midori Traveler's Notebook is my planner. I discovered the Japanese firm Midori through facebook and a fabulous website: http://www.mylifeallinoneplace.com/. The MTN is a very basic concept, a piece of leather, threaded with elastic which holds one or more notebooks and inserts. I currently have three notebooks in there, all grid paper: a calendar (one month on each double page), a bullet journal (basically a brain dump with symbols to keep on track) and a goal tracker (I have lots of goals this year - yet another post to do). I also have a couple of file folders and zip pockets to hold loose things like my cheque book, stamps, etc.

The A5 Filofax is my home planner, and one of many Filofax organisers I've owned in the last six months (I currently own three others, and have bought/swapped/sold a lot since August). It has a weekly calendar of both mine and DH's activities, meal planning and spending tracking. It's also holds project planning and reference lists that don't need to leave the house with me. 

The Filofax Flex is the most recent purchase and I love it. It's a leather notebook cover and holds an A5 Clairefontaine (very fountain pen friendly paper) notebook which is my personal diary/journal. In it I write about my day but also doodle and draw, stick in things I've been sent, papers I've picked up, general prettiness. I'm participating in The Documented Life project, in a bid to be more creative in 2014 so my weekly challenges also go in here. 

Intro's over! Over the next few posts I will go into more detail about each and explain how I use them. Advance warning, they will be very picture heavy!