This A5 Filofax Refillable notebook in the Orchid colour is something I stumbled upon in my local branch of WHSmith, having no prior knowledge of it. I was drawn in by how simple but classy the lilac leatherette cover looked, and bought it on a whim for the bargain price of £9. I’ve now had it for a little over a month, and I’ve been loving it!

Now that I’ve looked into them, I’ve found that Filofax do quite an extensive range of these refillable notebooks, some with the leather effect covers, some with cardboard covers with a range of different patterns and designs on. 

The real selling point of them though is in the name: they’re refillable. They combine a traditional notebook with the classic Filofax ring system, so you can not only use, remove and replace the pages but also shuffle their order around, and move around the included dividers to keep different topics separate. They also include a clip-in ruler that also works effectively as a bookmark, which is a nice touch. 

Unlike a regular Filofax though, the rings are small and can’t be opened: instead each divider and piece of paper has a slit in it so you can push it onto the rings. I like this system, although I will say that when moving individual sheets you do have to take care not to rip them, as it’s easily done. 

The paper itself is good quality, and nice to write on. It’s 100gsm, so fairly thick, and very smooth, with almost no bleed through or ghosting with gel pens, fountain pens, and even Zebra Mildliners. 

I’ve so far been using this notebook to solve a problem I’ve been having recently with notebook overwhelm. I tend to have a crazy amount of active notebooks at any one time, and so I’ve now condensed a few of them down into this single notebook, using the divider to separate the different topics. Which is the real beauty of these notebooks!

This notebook was also my first foray into the Filofax brand, and I have to say I’ve been impressed! So much so that I ended up buying a cheap Filofax Personal Organiser which I’ve also been loving…I think I might be a Filofax convert! 

So have you tried the Filofax refillable notebook before? What did you think? Are you a fan of Filofax?