A Filofax...for EVERYTHING?

Greetings humans!

Many members of the Filofax (and other similar planners) community use their organiser for absolutely everything, from diaries to shopping lists and from internet passwords to keeping track of their finances. Incredibly convenient, you know where everything is, you won’t leave the house and then kick yourself for forgetting something in your other organiser (which has happened to me more than once), and it’s considerably cheaper to run. It’s great to have everything in one place - apparently.

The thing is, I’m not really sure if this is something that I would be willing to do. In terms of practicality, it wouldn’t work for me because there’d be hardly enough room for EVERYTHING I’d need/want in there, since an A4 probably wouldn’t cover it and I’m not carrying one of those everywhere with me if I don’t have to! But there’s another reason as to why I’m sceptical - security.

I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the 1990 film ‘Taking Care of Business’, where an advertising executive’s Filofax is found by a crook who then manages to steal his identity and live his life, all with great comic effect (apparently). Although this is very unlikely to happen in reality, if you keep absolutely everything in your Filofax, and then lose it, how much of your private information may be compromised? The chances are that if someone found it they’d try and return it to you (even if it is just for the free gift that Filofax offers upon the return of registered organisers) but not all humans are nice creatures and not everyone can be trusted.

Furthermore, what about you in the meantime? If I mislaid my main Filofax, which is used to plan my school/social life (since that’s how I spend most of my time), I could probably cope by asking my friends what homework was set and when we were next meeting up outside of school. If I lost my finance Filo, I’d probably be a bit more worried, but I have online banking and if any personal data was in there, I could simply call the bank and explain my situation. If my internet planning organiser went missing, then I could probably pull from my memory what was on there, and most of the ideas would probably be duff anyway. If, however, all of this was in a single Filofax and I lost that, I’m not sure how well I’d be able to cope. Yes, if I did lose an ‘everything’ Filofax, I could do all of the above simultaneously and I doubt there would be much of a problem. However, that would mean that the school I go to, my place of work (if I can find a job!), my personal details, my financial details, my thought processes, the exact locations of my appointments, my health details and much more could fall into the hands of someone else. As I said, not all humans are nice creatures and not everyone can be trusted.

I appreciate that I have an incredibly cynical view of humanity. Losing my Filofax would be very unlikely to happen (I’d like to think!), and identity fraud even more so, but isn’t it better to be safe rather than sorry? What do you reckon?