The Voluptuous Lady Godiva

…And I’m back!  What have I been up to since my hiatus?  Well, I’ve been having a little bit of an affair…

Like a fine woman, she has curves in all the right places.  She is beautiful despite her lack of color and glamour.  She has attitude when needed but is also quite and sweet.  She’s a little bigger than what I am used to on a daily basis, but she provides me with everything I need.  She is exquisite. 

And shiny.

Introducing Lady Godiva (name chosen by Zoe -- if you're unfamiliar with the story of the real Lady Godiva, click here), the personal Nude Original.  I haven’t purchased a personal binder in a while, attracted to the slimmer compact binders as I am.  I’m not usually a fan of patent leather either.  But something about this binder’s naked shine attracted me.  And then I saw A Pretty Obsession’s video review of this binder.  That was the end of me.

So I bit my lip, took a chance, and ordered the binder with the Filofax gift certificate my husband gave me as a birthday present.  The rest, as they say, is history.

I wasn’t sure our love affair would ever get off the ground, considering I have been using the compact size for several years now.  I love the compact binders.  I love that it forces to me carry only the absolutely necessary amount of planner stuff.  But I had to give this girl a try.  Something about her just called my name.  I couldn’t turn away.

So here’s how she and I are making it work:

First, I was leery of the pockets, or rather, the lack of pockets as compared to most other binders.  As you can see, what I keep in the pockets is rather minimal.

I don’t keep anything behind the full-length pocket in the front.  The reason for this is because when I tried it, it made it difficult to put cards in the card slots since they are not so much “pockets” as they are slits.  So the cards just slide into the slits and the card is basically left hanging out on the other side.  So nothing went into the full-length pocket.

In the past I have kept stickers and Post-its in the large pocket.  In order to keep those items with me, I added a top opening envelope to store those items.

I don’t use these enough to be bothered by the digging inside the envelope that I need to do when I want to access these items.

In the large elastic section I keep a jot pad, which I also don’t use very much but which comes in handy every once in a while.

One of the things I love about the Original is that it has an elastic pen loop, which fits my Uniball Jest Stream, one of the things that the compact binders can’t do.

However, when the binder closes, the pen makes the top part of the binder stick out more than it needs to.

The binder might not be so uneven if I put something of the same thickness as the pen into the large elastic spot on the inside cover.  But because I don’t need anything like that in my binder, I just slip the clip of the pen into the pen loop, rather than the pen itself, the way I do with the compact binders (see photo number three above).  This has worked for me in the past, so I’ll just continue with that.

When snapped, the pen sits snug in the binder without falling out and doesn’t crush the tabs.

The meat of my planner is the same as what I had in the compact binders.  I have 6 tabbed sections.

With the compact binders, I can only keep 3 months worth of calendar pages.  But because the personal rings are much bigger, I could (and needed) to add another 3 months worth in order to fill out LG.

I don’t love this only because it’s more than I really need at any one time.  However, I have decided that because summer is always a whirlwind for us (due to road trips, vacations, barbeques, music concerts, and family gatherings) it’s great to have the entire summer (plus a little extra) of inserts readily available at my fingertips.  She has been working out well in this regard.

(Just as an aside, I think I will work LG into my rotation of yearly planning – I will probably go back to the compact size for the rest of the year but stick with the larger capacity of LG for the summer months.)

The back of the Original has a spot for a little notepad.

I have yet to use this, but you never know when it will come in handy.  I keep extra papers I need in the full-length pocket at the back.

There is one thing I am concerned about with LG.  Her rings look as though they might be a problem in the future.

There is no obvious gapping at the moment, but they aren’t perfectly aligned, which concerns me for how they might wear in the future.  Only time will tell.  The pages tend to catch every now and then, especially when I try to turn a large amount of them at once.  But it’s not enough to keep me from using LG.  As long as she works hard for me, I can deal with her dragging her feet from time to time.

You can see how voluptuous she is compared to Ms. Plum.

Ms. Plum has been in a snit since I put her on sabbatical, but she knows that come fall, Lady Godiva will have her turn at a sabbatical and she will be the star of the show once again.

All in all, I am very happy with LG, happier than I thought I would be.  Ours is not a relationship based solely on attraction, though there is that.  She provides more function at a time when I could use it most, even when I didn’t know it.  Another bonus is that she blends in well with my “Maid of Honor Butter” bag!

LG is the latest member of my Filo family, and one who has been received well by the family as a whole.