Saturday 11 February 2012

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!


13 comments:

  1. I have some of these, too. I almost didn't buy them because of past experience with recycled papers being rough as hell. These are superb, though. I'd love it if they came in yellow as well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hiya so these pads take Lamy ink ok? If so it sounds like you have found A5 Filofax paper nirvana...

    Lx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lucy, I don't know about Lamy-brand ink because I use other brands' ink, Diamine and Waterman using Lamy Safari and Al-Star fountain pens, but the paper takes these inks perfectly!!

      Delete
  3. Well that sounds like a good enough reason to me for me to try them out and let you know how the Lamy ink gets on (I'm obsessed with their turquoise ink at the moment in my Safari) I also might have accidentally ordered the Osterley A5 in grey from City Organiser due to their awesome extra discounts oops ;0) Lx

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was all excited reading this, Kate, because I know our Staples carries that eco/recycled line of books and papers. Then I remembered you're in the UK and, alas, I am not. I will look when I go to my local Staples (today) but I don't think they'll have the A5 size. They'll have some other North Americanized size. :-(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh no!!! If you need me to send you a pile of them, just ask!!

      Delete
  5. oh no . . . . . . . . . I just went to order some and they don't have them :( Hopefully they will get some more in. Well found btw cant wait to try them out!!! (by any chance do you have the Staples ref number for these pads?) Thank you for sharing your find!!! x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're welcome Roxy!!
      The item number is 37540 :)

      Delete
    2. Hello me again :) I've tried using the code 37540 but apparently its a digit too short? I hope its not too much trouble but could I ask you to check the number again for me please? Sorry to be a pain :) x

      Delete
    3. I've had a look again, and there's only that number, not a 6 digit number! Sorry! And I've tried the Staples website- my link doesn't work, and it isn't coming up in any of the searches I've done! Maybe they've taken it off the website? I hope they haven't stopped selling it!!!

      Delete
    4. Thanks so much for looking :) I hope they haven't stopped selling it either, it would be so useful for my uni work etc, it would be a real shame!!! Thanks again, your a star for checking for me xx

      Delete
  6. That's brilliant :) thanks so much xx

    ReplyDelete