Guest post series - 'Filohax' No. 24 - Paul

Thanks very much again to Paul for this twenty-fourth instalment of his wonderful guest post series.
You can find all of the 'Filohax' posts here.       

 

The A to Z of maximalism vs minimalism

I don't know about you, but if you're a Filofax collector you probably have a set or two of the original Filofax A-Z tabbed dividers stashed away. You may even have them in multi colours too. I know I have, and being a traditionalist I've always quietly put the multi coloured sets away in a draw - 'for a time when I might need them'. I've never liked them myself - each to their own - but there's too much going on for my liking, too many letters, too many colours. 

 

That is until a happy accident gave me a good use for them - or I should say one colour in particular - the red one , with the letters E and F in particular.

Because I switch my one diary and a few other sections between work and home binders, the inevitable mistake crept into the daily ritual of swapping them over and somehow the grey 'E/F' tabbed divider went missing. A mystery. A real 'Twilight Zone' moment. I was at work and the only other set of A-Z dividers to hand was a coloured set, so I clicked the red 'E/F' divider in. 

A few moments passed and I suddenly realised I had created another little Filohax - in my work binder I keep Fire/Emergency protocols/info behind the 'E/F' tab, I had even previously made a red Dymo tab to highlight this important section (making it quick to find in an emergency). 

 

In replacing the lost grey tab it was serendipitous that the tab I needed was...RED! I dare not mention this to anyone 'in the real world' as they would suggest I go 'get a life', but I think you lot will understand...   

A-Z index dividers

A-Z index dividers have generally been used to divide your contact or address pages. With a lot of people using their smart phones for maintaining their contact lists these days, you might thing that the A-Z index no longer has a purpose in your organiser? 

They can of course be used to keep reference information filed in to alphabetical order. The information might not even be related to each other, random information that you need to keep to hand, but you are unsure which section it belongs in. An A-Z divided section might be just right for this type of application. 

Looking through my 'collection' of inserts I was surprised to see the variety of different A-Z index dividers there have been through the years. Here are six examples, there are plenty of others as well. 

Left to Right: Single letter A-Z (1990), Double letter A-Z (1985) Two/three letter Telephone number A-Z (2007)

Even in the same year Filofax offered different designs of A-Z index dividers. 

Left to Right: Coloured double letter A-Z (1985), Mottled effect double letter A-Z (1985), Different shades of blue double letter A-Z (2003)  

Do you have an A-Z index section in your organiser? What do you use it for?