The perfect A5 filofax notepad

I use my A5 ochre Malden and my A5 imperial purple Domino as my university filofaxes, for planning my dissertation and my essays. I have tried many different types of A5 paper in these filos, and finally I have found the perfect type!

I refuse to pay ridiculous money for Filofax-brand  paper; I use the lined paper that has already come with my filos, but I don't want to have to buy any more when I use all this up. So I have tried to find cheaper alternatives. I made my own paper using generic A4 paper cut in half, or my favourite, quadrille A4 paper cut in half- but I find that the paper quality of normal printer paper isn't very good, and my plastic Filofax hole punch tears the paper because of this.

Then I tried to use notepads or notebooks that were already in A5 size, where I could just tear the perforated paper off and punch it. The trouble is, when notebooks and notepads say the paper is A5 size, it often actually means the total size of the notebook is A5, but when you tear it away from the bound part of the notebook/pad, the individual sheet is actually smaller than A5, which means it sits badly in your filo. I tried this with the top-bound Rhodia No. 16 (unfortunately I couldn't get my hands on a No. 17 pad- maybe this would be a better size?) and the side-bound Pukka Pad A5 spiral notepad- so the height of the top-bound Rhodia is too short, and the width of the side-bound Pukka Pad is too narrow :( Although they both have lovely quality paper!! And I liked the Rhodia because it could fit into the notepad slot in the back of my filofax!

Then I found the Staples A5 Eco-Friendly pads. These are made of recycled paper, but are of surprisingly good quality! Previous recycled paper I have used has been of bad quality, where wet ink runs straight through the paper! But this paper holds my fountain pen ink excellently, no bleed-through, no show-through!!

 It's cheap- 2 pads for £1.69!! The pads themselves fit perfectly into the Filofax notepad slot, and best of all, the individual sheets of paper, when torn off from the pad, are exactly A5 size! 

I have just bought 2 more 2-pad sets, but I love this paper so much I think I will run through them quite quickly, but I don't mind because they are so cheap, I can easily buy some more!