With January almost over, it probably seems a little late to consider a planner. However, if you are ike me, you might have waited to make a decision or discovered that you needed something your current planner wasn’t delivering. This is where the Midori B6 Pocket Diary in Clover Design (currently on sale for $21) comes in.
I had been trying to do all my planning freeform in a B6 Stalogy notebook but I realized I had not built in any “future planning” for myself. I don’t mean lofty 5-year goals or anything as grandiose as that. I mean I didn’t have those month-at-a-glance pages in my Stalogy unless I drew them all out myself. Color me lazy but I realized a small pocket diary/planner could be added into my notebook cover that would provide me with a place for those planning pages. Things like birthdays, holidays, trips and other events that are not happening today. My Stalogy is for tracking the daily to-do’s — go to post office, print outs for meeting today, etc. But the sort of bird’s eye view pages weren’t there. The “I have X weeks before this project is due and I’ll be out of town for these days so….” view that a monthly calendar or a week-on-a-page can provide.
So, I went searching for planner/diaries that were still available. Trust me when I say by the middle of January the pickin’s get pretty slim. I lucked out (pun intended) when I found the Midori B6 Pocket Diary.
First, it fits into my leather cover and is the same size as my Stalogy so I can corral both books together and flip back and forth between my daily page in the Stalogy and the weekly or monthly view in the Midori.
Second, the paper quality is excellent. I know the expectation with Midori is that the paper will be fountain pen friendly but because of the size and cute graphics, I thought the paper quality might have been skimped on. Nope. Lovely paper. The paper is slightly ivory colored and the right hand page on the weekly pages is lined with light grey lines that don’t bother me too much.
The paper works well with my finer nib fountain pens which are appropriate for the small spaces available to write notes. I’m not going to use a big fat nib to try to write holidays and birthdays in the boxes on the monthly calendar but the paper withstood the ink just the same, if I needed to.
Third, the die cut tabs for the months is super convenient and makes flipping around to different months fast and efficient.
Finally, I am actually kind of charmed by the graphics. I bought the Clover designs because I like the color green but was worried that the graphics would be too busy of cutesy. After using the planner for a couple weeks, I actually like the designs. Each month has an animal featured. January is a pig, May is a deer. I am not sure what that means but I find the artwork cute and adds a bit more color to the largely green pages.
I would actually consider purchasing one of the other designs. The Birds design or the Vehicles design are particularly fun.
Should you decide to use the Midori Pocket Diary without a cover, it does ship with a plastic slipcover over the softcovers to provide durability. Overall, I think the Mirodi Pocket Diary is a good value with a lot of great features. If you miss out on ht remaining stock of 2023 editions, be sure to put a 2024 on your wish list.
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