Lessons Never Learned

Why is it that I never learn my lesson when it comes to my planner?  I have been faced with this situation before—I tried Franklin Covey inserts, tried trimming them so they would fit nicely in a personal Filofax.  In the end I didn’t like how the repunched holes took up more writing than I had anticipated.  I abandoned the idea altogether.  But that didn’t stop me from trying again.  I didn’t learn then, and I didn’t learn now.

A while back, I decorated my monthly tabs with scenes from a Vermont calendar.  This worked very well—I love them, love looking at a new scene each month.  And since that worked so well, I wanted to decorate my tabbed sections in a similar fashion.  I tried this once before as well.  That resulted in my compact binder being too bulky and my not being able to turn the pages with ease.  So I removed those tabs from my compact binder and added them to my household Malden.  However, those tabs were decorated with thick cardstock-type paper, so of course I had the brilliant idea to use regular paper type sheets instead.

To cut the paper to size, I used the same method I did for both my Vermont monthly tabs and the previous section tabs (see links above).  What I was left with was some very nice tabs.

Fronts

Backs

Here they are individually, so that you can see the details.

Contacts front

Contacts back

Writing front

Writing back

Notes front

Notes back

Projects front

Projects back

Lists front

Lists back

Calendar front

Calendar back

I love these tabs—for the most part, they all have the same color scheme, which goes nicely with all of my binders.  I was very excited to use them.  But of course, in the compact binders, any extra paper means less space and less room to turn the pages easily.  I used these tabs for a day or two.  And while I still love them, I cannot use them for the compact binder.  I will hold on to them just in case I ever need or want to switch back to the personal size binder and can use them again.

I might be able to get away with using another Vermont calendar for the tabbed sections.  I am returning in late fall, so maybe I can snag a second one, this time with different photos.  But I’ll see what happens when I get there.  I just may need to accept that I can’t put any extra fancy items in my compact.  I’m a little sad about that, but that is the whole purpose of using the compact to begin with.  And since I have grown to adore the compact size, I’m not willing to give it up for a few sheets of decorated paper.