My Pocket Notebook System (finally feeling organized)

All right, hello everybody. I hope you guys are doing well. Today I wanted to share my pocket notebook, my pocket filofax rings. I am about to take some of these pages out to make room for new ones for November and I wanted to show you how I have frankensteined this together. I have been trying to slowly start prepping myself for my 2026 setup and all the pages and layouts that I think I want to use moving into the new year and there's been a lot of frankensteining, a lot of experimentation in here and so I thought I would give you guys a flip through of that before I take them out and archive them. I don't have a specific plan for archiving right now. I think I'm going to just take everything and throw it in a box for right now until I get a specific archiving plan but that's not not a huge priority for me right now but I thought I would at least show you guys the pages before they go to the box. If you are unfamiliar, this is the Filofax Ranger in the pocket size. I got mine second hand off eBay. It is not an easy cover to find by any means. I have been searching for a cover like this for a year plus now that wasn't a billion dollars and I was able to find this one at a very affordable price compared to ones that I have seen lately. I know this cover is not super accessible but I do think if you can find one and you are in the market for one I would definitely jump on it because this has been the best cover that I've probably ever tried. I actually used to have the Filofax Ranger in the personal size as well so I knew that I liked this configuration for a planner but in the pocket size has just really been a game changer for me. So I'm currently using this as a wallet and a planner. I keep all of my wallet things in this front pocket here. I have my driver's license, credit cards, insurance, things like that up in the front so it's very accessible, easy for me to use on the go while I'm traveling in my everyday and that has been really nice and then everything else inside is my planner functional bits. I do have it decorated a bit just because I am someone who is aesthetically motivated but I do have some stickers and such in the pockets and then I have some pictures of my kids, my husband, and then our new puppy that we just adopted which I will throw a picture on the screen. I have this one that I printed out but we did recently adopt a mini Dachshund. He is just the sweetest little thing and we love him so much so that has definitely been an adjustment to our routine and our schedule but we are so grateful to have him. This is the opening kind of landing page when you get into my book and then when you flip this first page I have a grocery list that I am keeping so it's very easily accessible up here in the front and then my first section I would say is a lot of the long-term tracking. So I do have my index cards up here along with the tracker that I use for them but I also have an add to planner list, a reading tracker, and just things that I am testing and trialing when I move into 2026 and I set up my actual trackers for that. So a lot of this is just testing and I've got some random things back here but the one that I do use every day is my index card system. If you haven't seen this from me I will tag the video up above. This is where I am keeping track of all of my chore and cleaning task management. It's all based off of a book but I had seen a video done by Ellen M on this system and it just really clicked with me. It sparked something for my neurodivergent brain and it's really really been working out well. I think I've been into this maybe like four weeks now and I've gotten a lot done. A lot of things accomplished and I don't feel like I'm burning myself out so that has worked really really well. So I keep it up in the front just so it's easily accessible and easy for me to keep my eye on and then after all of the trackers back here it moves into my monthly calendars. I have made digital versions that I had printed out but I ended up just drawing in my own layouts and I actually think I like that a little bit more than printing some off. I think something about drawing everything in just gives it that really lived in scrappy feel and I feel like this is only something I would like in the pocket size. If you were to tell me to draw in my own monthly calendars in something like an A5 size book I think I would hate it but something about this tiny little notebook just makes it very accessible and not very intimidating. I don't even know if I'm actually going to print monthly calendars for 26. I might just draw in my own because I do really love the simple look of them. I currently just have October, November, and December in here. I have been marking off the days as they pass just as a way for me to be present in my monthly calendar every single day. It incentivizes me to come in here and just make sure that nothing has been added to my schedule that hasn't been moved into my weekly and just keep on track of my appointments and what is coming up in the future. After my monthly calendars it goes straight into my weeklies. I do have some testing and experiments back here. I have removed a few of my weeklies just because I was running out of room but I have tested some different layouts in here. This is the one that I'm currently using that I really really like and it is a week on one page with a blank grid page on the left side for notes and I'm keeping track of my appointments and events right here in this top section. So I've just made this bar calendar of the week up here and if I have an appointment or an event I mark it with a star and then I just list what that event is below. Right below that I have habit tracking and then my to-do list for the week follows that. So all my really functional planning things that I need to stay on top of is on this one consolidated page which I think has worked very very well for me compared to when I was trying to be more functional planning in my weekly spread in my cousin. I feel like it's just so much space that all of the things that I want to prioritize just get a little bit lost in here and this layout has been really nice. So this is the one that I am currently using and just tweaking a little bit. I also tried a vertical weekly in here because I saw Lindsay Scribbles do one and I thought it was so cute and then when I did it I hated it so I did not continue that and then I just moved back into this one but I've really really liked this spread and the same thing with my monthlies. I have been drawing them in myself and with the pocket size I think drawing the layouts is a lot quicker especially compared to something like the A5. I can draw this up and get this done maybe in two or three minutes. The majority of the paper that I have been using in here is paper from a notebook. Let me grab it. This is an old sterling ink grid notebook that I bought in 2023 I want to say. I don't even remember why I had originally purchased this. It has since become sort of a sketchbook for my kids but I had found it a couple weeks ago and I thought it would be perfect paper to cut down for my pocket. I have just been ripping these out one by one as I need them and then I've just been cutting them down to size. I don't think this is necessarily the true pocket size. I think the ones that I have cut are maybe a little bit bigger but they're not so big that they are overhanging on the side. It's just a little bit bigger than your standard pocket. My left grid page is really just for notes or any sort of daily logging that is directly tied to what is in my week. So I just make little notes of things that I need to keep in mind or I need to maybe refer back to later. That has been working really well. I have also tabbed all of my pages. I think these ones are the pastel version. I just got them off of Amazon because I've never been able to find them anywhere else but I think the colors are nice and soft and not super abrasive. I just use those to tab everything. They're adhesive so you can move them around everywhere but this pack is like three dollars I think and it comes with a lot so this could usually last me about six months. So that's how I have everything tabbed. Again those are my weeklies and then I just have a couple more pages ready for myself to draw in more. And then after my weeklies we get into my daily slash notes pages. I've really wanted this back here to emulate the feeling and function of how I have been using my daily pages in my cousin. And a lot of the notes in here have been work and art I would say but a lot of the personal notes or testing and experiments that I have been doing I've just wanted to continue practicing that and so this is the space that I have designated for that. So it is a lot of random experiments, trialing different things, basically you know whatever you could want to use a notebook for. It's really nothing, nothing super groundbreaking back here but I think in the past when I have used pocket or just rings in general I have always tried to make these pages super aesthetically pleasing and that's fine but I really just wanted no pressure back here. I wanted to just use these for whatever called in the moment like a notebook should you know and and just put my brain on paper. And that's what I've been doing back here so it's been a mix of things. I also have some daily logging brain dumping back here which has been really nice and originally I thought that the pocket pages would not be big enough for me to write down brain dump adequately or maybe it just wasn't wasn't enough space but I have found out that it actually is like a good size for me. I've been able to write down my journaling or my quick brain dumps and still have room by the time I'm finished writing. I think I was a lot more intimidated by this size being too small than actually trying it and it being too small for me and it's worked out really well and I think because I'm just cutting down pages from this notebook I don't have to be worried about running out of pages or not using enough and that's that's been the beauty of rings is you really just get to make it up as you go and there's no there's no pressure and really there's there's no limits. I believe I started using these pages maybe at the end of September so this is about a month's worth of daily pages back here. I think I have taken a couple out just to make room for things but it's been a good amount of space for me and I've been keeping my page bookmarked with this pencil board. This is a Hobonichi Tomie pencil board that my pen pal Tiana got me. I just cut it down to size. I hole punched it and then put slits in there so I can just move it in and out really easily. So when my book is shut and I am needing to just make a very quick note I can really just like grab it super easy and I like having this tab at the top just because it's very easy to access. The rest of the pages back here I believe are just blank grid that I have cut down for myself. You can see that the sizing is not consistent at all. I'm not being super precious with everything looking, I don't know, super uniform. So this is just a bunch of empty grid pages. This is a pocket that I have stamps and postage in here for for when I need to ship things out. I have this picture that I carried over from my cousin. It's just these little dogs that I drew that I really like and it reminded me of the dog that we adopted. If you guys have been on my channel for a while you've probably seen me draw this stinking dog. Every every planner that I've been into I will draw some version of this dog and then we finally got him so I feel like it's definitely a little bit of manifestation for us. So I moved that in here and this is my personal reference info that I have folded away and then back here I have this Leuchtturm pen adhesive loop attached to this pencil board that came with my sterling ink purchase. I just cut it down to size and hole punched it and then I just put my adhesive pen loop right there. It also acts a bit as a page lifter so my pages aren't getting stuck underneath these rings and I have just been clipping my pen in with the pen clip right here and it's been fitting pretty much perfectly when I have it in there. So the pen that I've been using lately is this Pentel Calm, Calmé in the 0.5 size. I got this in my recent trip to New York and I thought that the brown color was just really really pretty and I thought it matched the cover really well and I don't know, I think it fits pretty good in there. These back pockets I just have some random letter and icon stickers and then I have a couple more stickers up in the front but that's basically the guts and the bones of my pocket rings. Really simple, not really groundbreaking at all but I think it has been a little bit groundbreaking for me personally, especially as my everyday carry. This is something that I'm always referencing. It has helped me feel a lot more organized with my schedule and taking care of my kids and our puppy and our home and I've just felt a lot more in control of myself and my schedule and that is something that I was really missing with my cousin. I think I've always just tried to really marriage journaling and planning together which I think in certain periods of life I can do and I have done but for this period of life that I'm in right now I really really need that separation and I think having a pocket notebook or pocket rings is a really really good tool to utilize that. That is the pocket rings. I will have probably a bit of a different setup for 2026. I'm using a lot of the same principles in here but I will just set it up so it is a little bit more aesthetically pleasing for myself for my 2026 setup and this keeps moving and it's really making me mad. So that's what it's currently looking like but I'm sure it will look a little bit different once I get it ready for January. If you guys have any specific questions on anything that I have shown or mentioned please let me know in the comments below. I'd love to know how your books are feeling this close to the end of the year and how you're feeling moving into January. I hope you all have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much for being here and for watching and I will see you all in the next video. Bye!