Filofax for the summer; a new little baby!

Summer comes every year, right?

And every year I get my bag of choice for the summer out and fill it with the stuff of summer.

The wet wipes in a small packet for cleaning the inevitable mess.

The sun cream that will spill over the inside of the bag and empty the mini wet wipes quicker than a bad smell empties a full lift.

And the umbrella for the inevitable wet day.

This is England.

And usually my back creaks with the effort of carrying all that and my beautiful (love it still) Matt Malden. 

And all the time I worry that the sun cream will spill on him, or the wet wipes will bleach out his colour.

I do love my leather Filofax, and I know a battered Filofax is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, but just occasionally I don't want to batter it more than is necessary.

So I gave in to temptation and got me a plastic Filofax.

A Patent Pocket size in Duck Egg Blue.

It's a very pretty shade of blue; more subdued and delicate than baby blue, but definitely a blue. In Dulux colours you'd be looking for Duck Egg for sure.

There is an elasticated pen loop, so no problem fitting my Bic 4 colour... and what a colour complement I found this week!

The front has two card slots and an open flap pocket that fits enough in for use as a notepad/planner but probably makes it ineffective as a wallet without major investment in plastic inserts.

Talking of investments, I invested in Filofax Love's beautiful Matryoshka top tab dividers. I think you need top tabs in a pocket Filofax, or any that has smaller rings. I don't know sizes of rings, but the information is out there somewhere, so leave a comment below if you know!

 I bought my Filofax off Ebay and it came with an 18 month diary, so I'm good until December 2015. It was a multi- language diary which takes up a fair bit of space, but I like having a lot of languages around (no Danish, undskyld)

I'm using the white To Do pages as my planning inserts, for packing lists, book lists, films etc. Sashiko lets you choose your own divider names so I chose the ones that fit my planning system; Diary, GTD, Lists, Home and Ref.

Two plastic pockets hold some stickers, labels etc to help pretty up the pages. I don't do a lot of decorating on the move, so these two little packets are enough.

 It's a slimmed down system, but it might just work. I love my Thor charm. It's from a Kinder egg. We (the Princess and I) ate about 26 eggs in a weekend to try to get one. We have 4 Green Goblins and 3 Spidermen and one -- only one-- Thor. No Loki, though. He is the only one we didn't get.

 There is a pad pocket at the back, which can be used to hold pieces of paper. I miss the full width back pocket that other pocket sizes have, but not enough to spend mega bucks on a leather pocket.

It's wipeable, unlikely to get too badly damaged in the bag over the summer, small, light and very, very well used. So far the Summer scale down has worked for me. Come September (or perhaps October) it will be time to change up again to make space for the inevitable C*r*s*m*s lists.

But for now, the Filofax has a definite charm. And such a Kidston vibe. (forget Kate Spade and her chi chi leather folder, I still want the oilcloth red polka dot one!!)