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Midori Traveler's Notebook: My burgeoning obsession

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Despite managing to stay organised in what can be quite a stressful and hectic job, I am appalling at keeping my personal life in order. This year, I'm maid of honour in one wedding and a regular bridesmaid in another, am unbelievably busy at work and am trying desperately to maintain some semblance of a life among the dress fittings, hen parties and deadlines. I've long since resigned myself to the fact that this blog will be tricky to factor in for at least a few months.  Unless I branch out and indulge myself with some miscellanous ramblings of only faintly bookish posts (yep, like this one...), that is.
Found in Pinterest here

So anyway, while I was scrabbling my way from week to week with a constant feeling that I was forgetting something, I saw this post on So Obsessed With. Seeing the Midori notebook (although in that case it was a "faux dori") was kind of a lightbulb moment.  The idea is simple - you buy the leather folder type thing, fill it with inserts (planners, notebooks and whatnot) and then you can carry around your entire world in one beautiful leather wrapper.  I could plan and outline blog posts while actually getting a grip on my life!  A couple of Google searches later and I was completely smitten with the idea of getting my own Midori.  Not only because I really need to get into the habit of actually using a diary properly but because it occurred to me that if I could just get into using it, it could solve a whole range of "problems"... 

1.  I *hate* having notebooks that don't have a single focus.  I know that's weird but it's just the way it is. There's no way I'd write a recipe or general thought into my review notebook, for example, or write a To Do list in my hen do ideas notebook. No way at all.  That means that I have a whole host of notebooks around the house for different things even though I can only really carry one around with me at any one time.  If I'm listening to an audiobook in my car and want to jot something down, I have to put it in my phone with the intention of transferring it to my review notebook later.  I almost never get round to transferring those notes.  Being able to carry around a number of smaller notebooks seems like the ludicrously simple solution. 

Found on Pinterest here
2. My brain gets cluttered.  When I was a teenager, I used to get an A5 page a day diary for Christmas every year and used to write all of my angsty thoughts into it. I kept it up until I was at university and then the habit fell by the way side. Having somewhere I could just jot down the odd thought again would be nice, I think, and be a good way of sorting through the jumble of ideas and idle thoughts that I have on any given day.

3.  I love picking up business cards from restaurants I love and saving tickets from places we've been on holiday but then I find that I have nowhere to put them and eventually they just end up stuffed into a plastic wallet in the study (or at least, the room that will be a study one day).  The idea of keeping a travel journal when we go away and having a keepsake from each trip full of scribbles and mementoes makes me feel all warm and fuzzy :)  

It took a few days of ogling photographs of other people's traveler's notebooks before I realised that I just needed to get one.  

Midori Traveler's Notebook starter kit
There are tons of videos and tutorials online about how to make your own traveler's notebook but I'm a perfectionist and it would drive me crazy if my effort was even a bit off (which is likely...I'm not so great with the crafts) so DIY was never an option for me. I could have bought a "faux dori" from any one of the numerous sellers on Etsy but most of the sellers were based in the U.S. so by the time I'd paid for shipping, I might has well have bought a "real" Midori.  Again, I'm a perfectionist so there was no chance I was spending a not insignificant sum on something that might not have been as good as the real deal.  So I figured that the original Midori would be my traveler's notebook of choice and had a nosey at a few UK sellers until I settled on buying my Midori from Amazon. I know that I probably should have used a smaller retailer for buying such a niche item but the price difference was about £15 so I went Amazon.  The down side is that it's being shipped from Japan so even though it was dispatched over a week ago, it's still on its way.  

I've gone for the regular size in black and waiting for it is KILLING ME.

SO PRETTY - CraftyAliCat
Since ordering, I've been scouring Etsy for fun inserts (and bought a couple from CraftyAliCat here) and things that I'll be able to use to make my traveler's notebook PERFECT almost as soon as it arrives.  I've gone so far as ordering some "official" inserts from a Japanese store (www.pencils.jp) because they're less than half the price of the exact same inserts when bought from a British stockist, even when you factor in international shipping costs. I've also spent an inordinate amount of time looking at pictures on Pinterest and picking up ideas of things that I want to do with my beauty when it arrives.

Basically, I'm becoming obsessed.  If it doesn't arrive soon, I'm going to pop.  Tell me that I'm not the only one that gets this hung up on stationery!!

Next up:  THE UNVEILING (*please* let that be soon...)

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