My personal Filofax set up & hack (2013)

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know I’m a big believer of Filofax. I have 3 of them: a Pocket (used as a wallet), a Personal (for my -well- personal life and in my bag every day) and an A5 for everything business related.

They all have different organizing and today, I’ll start with my Personal one. It’s an old Filofax Classic in Cherry and except for some marks on the spine, it holds up pretty well.

• After a plain transparent dashboard, i have my Shopping List pages, so they’re easy to find when I run to the store. With them I also keep an updated Pantry List, to have some sort of idea of what’s in stock when I plan the family meals.
• Separated by some family pics, there the first agenda: a Month on two pages one, based on japanese planners. They give ma good overview of the coming months, big events that need planning, Bdays coming up, holidays etc. The last page is used a a color key for my meal planning (some small transparent post it notes bought in bulk at Hema)
• After that, my regular calendar starts. At the beginnning of every month, I have a Goals List, color-coded by the fields they relate to. (Orange for finding an appartment, blue for personal stuff, pink for family, purple for health & cooking, red for finances etc). Then comes my Day on two pages, also know as Day Planner (separated by monthly tabs). Bad thing: I have to fill in all the dates myself. Good thing: lots of space to write everything. They are prettu much self explanatory: Appointments & To Do speak for themselves. Don’t forget is used for everything money related: what I need to buy that day, how much I spent and also random very important things to remember. The facing page, all blank, is used for everything else. Book notes, conversations, gift ideas, anything. It’s my way of clearing my mind. The only recurrent thing on there are my meal planning post its: Yellow for breakfast, green for lunch and orange for supper. That way, if I change my mind, I just need to move the Post It to another day, since I would already have bought all the ingredients. Everyday, I keep the receipts of what I bought, use the Personal Hole puncher and keep them on the day I made the purchase. Helps when I do my financial tracking.
• After that are the color coded tabs. I used an alphabet tab that I covered with colored washi tape. Again, it’s the same color code as used in the Goals List. Currently, I have The Master To Do List in Yellow (all those things that don’t have a date fixed yet), Everything Blog related in green (2 different greens, I have 2 different blogs), Personal things in several blues (social life, book notes, lists, psychology), Family in pink, Health in Purple (I write down every flu, cold, medication and date + all my paleo recipes for quick referral), Orange for my appartement quest, Grey for travels and places to see and finally Red for financial.
• To finish, I have a transparent enveloppe with stamps, coupons etc (they fit in the financial section).

Every wednesday, I plan the coming week’s meals on the post it that I place on the corresponding days, then I write down on the Shopping List all the things I need to buy. Then I order everything on a web store and go pick it all up two days later. If I change my mind, I move the post it. As long as a Post it is written on, that means that I have the ingredients ready. I try to make it all paleo, but that’s for another post.

So, what do you think? How do you organize your Filofax? Does it help?