How Many?

I've just done an 'audit' of my full collection this past weekend. There is a very important matter to address when assessing the size of your 'collection'.

Now you might think how many is that.... eleven across by six down, sixty six, but there is only 21.251 really.

How did I manage to get to that number? Let me explain in more detail with the aid of this table.

My photo of the full collection above doesn't make it easy to work out the relative size of each organiser, but they divide in to the different sizes as shown in the second column of the table.

Looking in the third column you will see I have used A4 as being '1' and then each size below A4 has an 'Equivalent Value' scaled from the page size with a slight 'fudge' factor to allow for Compact and Slimline having smaller rings... hmmm I need to introduce a similar fudge factor for 'Compact A5' to get my 'Philofaxy Value' even lower!.

I digress.... You then multiple the Number Owned by the Equivalent Value to get the Philofaxy Value and then just add up all of those values in the final column to get the Total Philofaxy Value for your whole collection.

Yes, I know 66 is a silly high number to admit to owning, but I did buy the first one in 1986 over 34 years ago.... that equates to less than two a year... 1.941 actual organisers per year, on average. We will not plot the actual growth of the collection over the years, especially in the last 10-15 years!! I like the figure of less than two a year!

If you want to find out what your Philofaxy Value is click here. (Excel file). The original idea for this unit of measurement goes back several years to an earlier post.

The Collection

Once upon a time a man had a big collection of organisers... he had so many he didn't quite know how he had got so many and why he had so many....

That would be sort of funny if it was just a story.... but there is an element of truth in it... somewhere!

I am frequently asked 'So what does your collection actually look like Steve'...

Well in May 2009 it looked like this:

That's right just three... two Finsburys (A5 and Pocket) and my original Winchester from 1986...

By the end of April 2011 almost 2 years later it had grown to this:

Starting at the bottom working upwards, A4 Classic, two A5s, two personals, the Winchester of course, a slimline, two pockets and a mini.

Remember in May 2010 I had moved to France and I was now blogging full-time, that is where things got sort of out of hand... !

By May 2012 I had got a bit of a soft spot for the Malden model...

Moving forward to 2013, things had got so crazy that I had several attempts to take photos of the complete collection, but none of them were that good, but after a lot of mistakes and a lot of trial and error I managed to take a photo of all of them:

So having worked out how to take this picture, which is in fact 4-5 photos stitched together in software, I was content that I could repeat the exercise in future.

Get to 2014 and I needed a spreadsheet to remember what I had got or hadn't got! The photo taken above in 2013 was done when my dear (understanding) wife was in UK... and the opportunity arose this last weekend for me to attempt to photograph the collection again whilst she was in UK.

You will see what I mean that it takes quite a bit of organisation. Our normal dining table starts off like this:

But becomes a little chaotic once I've brought them all upstairs from the office in our sub-basement

I then start to put them in to a sort of size order on our garden bench outside, last year they fitted easily... err not so easily this year!

I started off by putting the pockets and other smaller sizes in front of the others.

That didn't look quite right, so I removed the non-Filofax brand ones, all 7 of them!

They are from left to right, DeVilliers, Launer, Van der Spek, Second Thousand (VdS) Gillio Mia Cara, Van der Spek Standard, Gillio Medium Amica

So then I had a little bit of a rearrangement and adjustment, getting them to stay up right isn't easy, because the white board you can see behind the organisers isn't the full length of the bench it gets moved around as the camera is panned through the 5 photos (letting out all my secrets here!) and I eventually managed to squeeze them all in...

And to save you counting... there's 45 there in total.. eek!

Why so many? Shouldn't you consider getting rid of some? Do you use them all?

Yes I have had all these questions. firstly the ones not in daily use do all fit in to my assigned cupboard in the office.

My intention is that they will never get more than can fit in to this cupboard. There's a little scope for a few extra ones! But there is also some scope for one or two to find some new homes.

But why so many? Well if I wasn't writing about them on a daily/weekly basis then certainly I wouldn't need anything like the number I have. I've found that having a range of models allows me to do more accurate comparisons to new models when I get them for review.

I don't keep all of the review samples or the ones sent to me... goodness if I had I would need two cupboards! I have my favourites of course, ones I love using, ones I'm very fond of because of their design or how they were obtained and I would find it difficult to sell/giveaway some of these extra special ones.

Dare I mention... there's another one about to join the collection... another Van der Spek! And of course you will get to see that one when it arrives. And the dining table is back to being tidy again... just in time for Alison to arrive home again today... you won't say anything will you....

Mama's Family

Here are the Filos that currently organize my life. In future posts, I'll delve deeper into how I use (and fail to use) them. At left is the black A5 Finsbury Filofax that I keep on my desk at work. It holds a full year's one-day-per-page diary and, currently, not much else. The red A5 Belgravia in the middle is my personal everything book. It has a weekly calendar (vertical, just like the one in Philofaxer's A5) and tabs for various kinds of lists and notes. The turquoise pocket Finsbury is what I carry with me everywhere and currently sees the most use. It's my only wallet as well as my analog PDA (I'm a reformed Palm Piloteer, but that's another post entirely). And it's become my failsafe tickler. If I want to make sure I see or do something, in here is where it goes. That's why, as you can see if you look really closely, this week's spread bears a post-it, a jot-pad note, and a peel-off B&N coupon stuck directly on the diary page. The coupon expires soon, and although I may never use it, I want it to be in my face.