Introducing Beauford, the Travel Filo

I have been looking for a permanent use for my Black Slimline Guilford.  I have now found one.  Beauford (originally I wanted to name him Gilbert, but I vaguely recall that someone else has maybe already used that name for a Filo…) is perfect for the job of travel filo.  He’s slim, sleek, professional, and gets the job done quickly without complaint.  Even though I use a compact binder for everyday use, when traveling via airplane, this binder can’t be beat.

Let’s take a look at his set up.

First, here he is in all his delicious leather glory:

You can see how trim he is, especially compared to Reggie, the compact Regency:

Of course, Beauford is empty of inserts here, but this gives you an idea of how I need to trim down what I carry when he’s in use.

And here he is compared to my household personal Malden:

Here are all three together:

The reason Beauford is the best binder for this job of traveling is because of his small rings (which force me to take only what I really need) and the secretarial pocket on this inside.

I quickly filled his front pocket with all of the information I was going to need for my latest trip (a “Filo on Location” post is forthcoming)—mostly confirmation emails and the like.  Once in the airport and having checked in, I put our boarding passes in here so that they were easily accessible.  Also, while I don’t normally carry my driver’s license in my Filo, I did put it in one of Beauford’s card slots so that it too was easily accessible for when I needed to show identification.  While in the airport, I only needed to take out my travel filo to access everything I needed.  Beautiful!

The first thing you see upon opening Beauford is my clear pocket which is filled with random things from various trips I took.

Currently, it holds the wrist band we had to wear while at Club Med Turkoise, a Vermont bookmark, and a Starbucks gift card (drained within a week of receiving it) from Texas that my sister- and brother-in-law gave to me for Christmas (while technically not from a visit there, it does remind me of our trip to San Antonio last May).  I will add other random items from upcoming trips as I find them.

Then, I have a mini dashboard on the first tab.

I don’t think I’d need anything more than a square Post-it and a smaller one while traveling (though, knowing me, I’m sure I’d be able to find a use for them while traveling!).

The tabbed sections are as follows:

• Information – holds directions, phone numbers, and any other pertinent information for the trip
• Lists – when planning a trip of any kind, I start with a to do list (if it applies) and a packing list that stays in my compact binder; as I’m prepping for the trip itself (the day before usually), I will move this list to the travel binder
• Notes – anything can go here really—places to visit when we return, notes on various restaurants or attractions—anything I find necessary, really
• Calendar – an abbreviated version of my daily planner; for this trip I carried 6 months worth of monthly pages, the remaining daily pages for January, and the number of Day Planner pages I would need while we were away to track what I ate and what exercises I did (for the record, I ate whatever I wanted—including alligator tail—and didn’t do much exercise, save for taking the stairs instead of the elevator and a walk on the beach)
• Financial – I don’t typically keep track of expenses while on a trip, but sometimes I should; so I added this in hopes that it will help me to keep spending to a minimum (this section was not used this go-round)
• Emergency – this holds emergency contact information should there be an emergency

Within the “Notes” section, I kept a print out of a travel exercise plan I found somewhere at some point.

I didn’t look at it once.  Next time!

The back of the travel filo has a full-length pocket, where I stored some owl Post-its notes.  I didn’t use these, but I figured they might come in handy should I need them, so they will stay there for now.

As an aside, this pocket would also come in handy for placing my passport (I think it would be wide enough).  I stayed within the US this trip, so I didn’t have the opportunity to check.

So that’s Beauford in a nutshell.  He served me very well on this trip.  I don’t know that he’d accompany me on road trips since I don’t necessarily need a secretarial pocket for random papers and such.  I will have a road trip coming up in a few months, so we’ll see how I feel about that.  But for airplane rides, I will most probably defer to him for all things planner related.

As I said above, I will do a “Filo on Location” post to discuss where we went and to show pictures of Beauford in action.