Tweak My Personal Organizer

Everyday, I carry several notebooks in my bag. Although I am a Tech Guy, I still use papers for notes because I tweak my gadgets all the time and I am not risking of losing my data when my smartphone is malfunctioning or the free cloud account crashes. All my notebooks are organized for fast searching of information I need.

Last week I decided to get me a leather (synthetic) binder organizer, to put all my stuffs in a single organizer. Few days later I felt like "I need to tweak this organizer." And I did ^^

If you just want to know my tweaks, jump to last step (Step #5), or else you can keep reading step by step ...

Cover page holding the organizer brand is boring indeed. I suggest you to print out your company logo on a piece of paper. Today's cheap inkjet printers can print colorful high quality image on general purpose plain paper. Mine, there is a clear cover at the very top cover, so even if I just print out on a plain paper, the clear cover will give a luxurious glossy look.

1. Get your logo or any inspirational quote on the net.
2. Print it on a plain paper with high quality at 5" x 7".
3. Trim it to the size of your binder. Use the standard cover page as template.
4. Make holes with hole punch.
5. Put the clear cover on top or make one if it is not included from your purchase.

Most organizers/planners come with side tabs. Nothing wrong with it, but when I put my pen on its holder I see the tabs are squeezed, and I just felt like "Poor tabs. Don't worry, I will move you up."

1. Get yourself a cup of coffee.
2. Cut off the old tabs, because we are going to reuse the plastic divider.
3. Design and print out colorful divider tabs. Any size and shape you like. I pick the bookmark ribbon shape. You can print your text directly or write with your own handwriting or draw icons on the tabs. You can simply cut the shape out of origami papers or any scrap papers. Many ways to do get it done.
4. Wrap the tabs with clear adhesive tape to prevent melting by water. Put double sided adhesive tape at the back of the tabs. Now the tabs have turned into stickers.
5. Match the tabs and the dividers at contrast colors.
6. Stick and align the tabs starting from one side.
7. Well done. Now we have top divider tabs instead of side tabs.
8. Enjoy the beauty colorful tabs even when your organizer is folded.

Commonly we have limited pockets on our planners while we have much to keep. Name cards, some member cards -- those seldom used and no need to bring them in wallets, bills, payment receipts, invoices, memos, etc. I put them in an accordion-pocket made from scrap wedding invitation card.

1. High-class wedding invitation cards, here in Indonesia mostly come with a folder-pocket to keep a separate invitation card to enter ball room or restaurant.
2. Slowly tear off the folder-pocket.
3. Fold both sides to accordion shape at balance 3-4 folds at your desired level. Here I folded as much as I can with the scrap wedding invitation I had.
4. Stick the sides and bottom of the accordion-pocket with double sided adhesive tape and I stuck it on the original cover page that had been replaced with a custom one.
5. I put that accordion-pocket at the very last page of my planner.

An organizer / planner will be more attractive if decorated with more colors, at least two. I use black and red ink. Then I found a problem, the pen holder can only hold one pen. I can either get a two colors pen or make another holder. I picked the later. I see space inside the rings.

Then come another options, the hard way : sew a little rubber band for clothing on the binder's base, or the easy way : set a ring paper on the binder's base. Here I picked the easy mode, for the 2018 Paper Contest theme :D

1. Prepare your scissors and transparent adhesive tape.
2. Find any scrap paper. We need only a very small size of paper.
3. Put your paper through the bottom of the binder's base between the second and third rings from the top so that the paper cannot slide downward. Measure the length of paper circling your pen and cut the excessive. At this point you can keep the paper a little bit longer, better than too short :)
4. Cover one side of the paper with adhesive tape and leave the tape longer at one short ends of the paper. Slide the paper back through the binder's base with the sticky side facing up.
5. Loop the paper around your pen and stick the excessive tape to form a loop.

It is only scrap paper but the adhesive tape strengthen it by wrapping around the paper. You need some force to break the loop.

Sit back, enjoy writing and sketching on my new organizer book. Now I can simply bring my organizer and a laptop to my office. I can work. I can sketch. I can take notes for my next instructable ;)

There will be more tweaks to my organizer as the time goes by...