My Filofax keeping me organised

Ok this is my first filofax post. Hopefully there will be many more to follow. I first had a filofax about 8 years ago when I used to work in a stationery department of a big department store. I fell in love with Filofaxes and I think I brought about 5 while I worked there.
I had forgotten about these until about a year ago when I was trying to decide how to become better organised, the Dominoe attracted my attention in Tesco's on offer which I purchased and attempted. This wasn't much of a sucess to me until I found my love of Philofaxy and Imysworld both of which have given me lots of inspiration and made me realise the importance of being able to customise this over some of the other organisational diaries out there.

I really wanted a much more grown up filofax and found this dusty one in my local WHSmith, I've never seen it advertised anywhere else or heard many people mention it, I had a money off voucher and ended up buying it for a crazy amount (about £35 when it should have been £90).

This filofax comes everywhere with me, it even has a space under my duvet at bedtime. (Heaven's knows what I will do when I find myself a man)

The filofax dividers themselves were pretty uninteresting so after rummaging around in my scrapbook papers I found some of this nice thick study ones and made my own, all of the dividers you will see are ones I have made myself, some with tabs and some with pockets on the back (not that I have actually used any of them) they all either have shiny gold on them or glitter! I love them all Inside the front of my filofax I have all of my store cards and my driving license (I'm currently living card free and only spend cash so this saves me carrying around an extra purse full of cards)

You can see I have typed up my new years resolutions, I Also have a table (on the left above) that is for all my sewing ideas, It allows me to write the dates, the idea and if completed. This stops me running away and making the newest idea in my head, and allows me to remember them for when I'm ready.

52 things in 52 weeks is also typed up. So I am always able to remind myself what the next weeks task is going to be to be able to purchase anything needed.

My next section starts off with my work timetable, being a teacher this is important to me, and allows me to work out when I have free periods during the week to do some office based work or when I can do my lesson planning during work time.

This timetable actually changes every term so theres no need to have this laminated although I did consider it. This is one of my favourite sections next, these are my to-do lists. I do have the filofax ones that come with all the filo's but I am not a fan of them at all, I always end up leaving the most important jobs to the end and get worried and stressed about not getting them done.

Therefore I have set up this table (that I have seen several other people using) that allows me to divide my jobs up into 4 different categories and helps me work my way through this.

Weekly food rota is a new section to me this year that my colleague at work (who is very new to filofaxes) designed and offered me a copy. Notice I have printed these upside down on the back. This has actually been done on purpose as I decided I would like to have the current week at the begining of this section. This means at the start of the week I can flip the paper over and have the current one looking up at me.

Brainstorms are an important part of my planning, for this I wanted something a little bit more exciting than plain pages. So I found clip art of a "brainstorm" (I know this term is politically incorrect but as its normally only me that sees them) I also have a list of 101 things in 1001 days, I've been considering doing this for a very long time, I'm not sure if its going to work for me though, I cant even fill 40 things I want to do in that time, so for now I think I will stick to the 52 things in 52 weeks

Finance section is helping me become incharge of my own money, hopefully aiming to become out of debt by the end of 2012.

Right at the back I have my loyalty cards that are infrequently used, and the zip wallet that contains spare post-its (very cute speech bubbles from Wilco's) stamps and index tabs.

For those of you wondering at the start of this blog - my supermarket trolley tag, a free one I picked up on a conference once, its a Womble. Saves me always digging to find £1 for the trolley if I go food shopping.

Here is a sneak peek of my next post, organising my paperwork, (None of this is new stationery everything I already had to hand)

Upclose of the boxes incase you can't read them.

Please let me know of anything that you would like to see, or anything in more detail. My next few posts are going to be the paper organisation and my brand new noticeboard I got for Christmas.

I also want to show you my work Filofax. Being a teacher we set things up a little differently, and I know I'm always searching the internet for ideas on how to set this up. So for all you teachers out there stay tuned!!!