Well, it has been months now and my Hobonichi Cousin planner and Van Der Spek Codex cover in red Janet Leather are still serving me extremely well.
The cover has stood up like a champ to daily handling and tumbling around in my bag. The planner and cover together are not heavy or bulky and everything I need is in one place. It is less bulky and heavy than my personal size ring binder with 30mm rings and regular paper was, even though it holds so much more. This is mainly due to the absence of rings and the lightweight Tomoe River paper, which is half the weight of Filofax paper.
It is no problem keeping my schedule in bound format, and I don’t even mind not being able to throw away my completed to do lists (which was always my reason for preferring rings) because there is so much space for longer notes, or even two separate columns of different notes (work + shopping for example) on the same page.
The two huge things which have made a difference are the lack of bulk/weight due to the thin pages, and the fact that I cannot overstuff it the way I overstuff my rings.
See my previous posts about this cover here and browse the Van Der Spek shop here.
Perfect timing Janet. We turned the clocks back last night, and this morning I had to deal with my cat Zoe trying to get me out of bed for feeding at 4:30am. I finally gave up at 6:30 as I really don’t like her to chew my hair! Once she was fed I turned on my iPad and went straight to this post. Not only was this a “planner” post, but I was definitely was cheered up by the lovely red color of your VDS Codex. I love how you “don’t do pretty” because I’m the same way with my planners that travel in my bag for everyday work.
I remember one day reading one of your blog posts where you mentioned that you used ring planners whenever you made lists or used data that you didn’t need to keep and using bound book format for things you wanted to keep and this resonated to me very much. I did try and still found that rings were too heavy to carry around, so I went back to limbo until I got an A6 Hobonichi that I use for my every day planning. I ordered a Cousin for memory keeping although I have the feeling that the extra monthly and weekly calendars are going to be superfluous in this context. I’m in a half mind to use the Cousin for both planning (weekly and monthly pages) and journaling (day to a page pages)… I have a Cousin Avec, so transport wouldn’t necessarily be a problem… Still, to have both sensitive and not so sensitive data in one book is making me wondering if this is the right thing to do… Decisions, decisions…