I have too many notebooks

I hope you've all had a great start to the year. I spent the first day at home, doing things around the house - cleaning, cooking, everything. My husband finally put up the painting I gave him in 2024. It's beautifully situated in a bright corner close to our TV console, so we get to see it almost all the time. I'm happy - the apartment is getting my touch and is starting to feel like our home, instead of his apartment with his wife in it.

On the second day of the year, before leaving to do our grocery shopping, I found that I was missing my pocket notebook. We searched high and low for it, and I was forced to jog my memory of the last time I used it. Turns out, it was in the cubby my husband dedicated for my "hobby" things - books I borrowed from the library, little trinkets I'm collecting, notebooks, colouring books, colouring pencils, sudoku books, and more. I knew it was in there, but it must have been misplaced when I took things in and out of it.

It made me realise that I have way too many notebooks. I use 4 at the moment! But in my defence, they all serve a different purpose each. I will walk you through them all, and:

Drafting Notebook

This notebook was a set-up I had in the first half of 2025. I wrote the year's calendar by hand and used it as a bullet journal to keep track of to-do lists and events. It was very useful for my wedding planning. I used a separate notebook as for my journal entries.

Halfway through the year, again, I realised it was too big to be carried around for note-taking. It then became a notebook for my reading list and other drafts.

For this year, since I had extra paper lying around for the cover, I decided to use it for drafting posts, ideas, reflections and documentation. I didn't want to be in front of the screen watching the insertion point blinking on my editor and then getting distracted in the name of "research". It worked: I drafted my last post on the notebook, leaving (blanks) and ??? for points where I needed more clarification. It gave me a structure and thus led me to write more efficiently. I love this.

I don't think there is a Muji store in Lille but I know there are many alternatives so I'm not worried about replenishing it. In fact, once I'm done with this, I'll use one of the many A5 notebooks that I still have. I know! I have too many notebooks.

Pocket Notebook

This cheap $0.90 notebook was something I settled on when I was looking for something that could fit in my pocket. I was so serious about getting a pocket notebook that when I was browsing, I tried pocketing different notebooks at the store to see what could fit comfortably. Anyone who saw me must have thought I was trying to steal - openly!

Anyway, I bought two of them and branded the cover page with "FRONT" because both sides look the same.

I didn't want to use my phone's Notes app to write notes in an effort to reduce my phone usage. It's been useful: I've used it to write recipes, my thoughts, shopping lists, and a lot more. Because it's so small, I've written in it during work, while eating lunch outside and on the bus.

I've done point-form/skeleton drafts of posts on it as well.

"Let me check my calendar!" Notebook

I bought this notebook around the same time I bought my pocket notebook so that they can come together with me. I started filling it up in July 2025, and it has space for only 15 months so I may have to get another thing for October 2026 onwards.

Frankly, I was also tired of manually creating tables on paper. People in the Bullet Journal community make it such a fun part of making a manual notebook. I don't enjoy it much. Some days, I just don't have the energy to do it. And then I spiral and think, "gosh i'm such a shitty human being". Dramatic.

Having the tables already printed helps to give me a structure.

I fill in the things that are upcoming in the Monthly pages, and then put in more details in the Weekly pages. On the opposite page, I either use it for to-do lists or to add ticket stubs and stickers of the activities I did that week. I know Junk Journalling has really taken off last year, but my apartment is too small to keep junk for junk journals. I mean, I don't even know what I'll do with all my notebooks. I threw away the journals I wrote in from 2020 - 2024 because they were too heavy to be brought over to France.

Now that I think about it, I could just consolidate my pocket book and calendar book by using a small empty notebook with one of those post-its with Monday to Friday already written on it. I'm sure they have those in Monthly form too.

Journal

This is my constant: I started writing somewhat diligently since 2020 during the pandemic and continued into doing a morning pages routine. Nowadays, I try my best to write at night after dinner, no matter how tired I am, so that I can remember the day's events and my feelings about them. I find that writing in the morning is too much of a rush. Plus these days my mornings can be as early as 6am or as late as 10am. This weather really wears me down and I can only hope that I will get better at it as it goes.

Anyway, I'm not really picky about the notebooks I use for my journals. It just needs to be lined and A5 sized. I started this one on 18 December 2025, solely because the previous one was finished on the 17 December 2025. This notebook has 96 pages (I counted) which means that it has 192 pages - enough for 6 months if I write 1 page a day. I'll need to change it in June, which is fine because I have a second copy of it!!

This is the only notebook that I do not want to consolidate because I wish to write 365 pages (which would make it a 133-paper book) and if I was to do all the other things in the same book, I would need a LEUCHTTURM 1917 Notebook 411, which I don't think I will enjoy writing in (because it's thick and big). And the whole point is to use what's available (all the notebooks I have not used) and to be able to have a notebook to replace the phone in my pocket.

It's okay to have multiples in a year as long as they are labelled clearly.

I realised that last year, on the first day of the year, I wrote about my Journaling Journey. A lot has changed since then, but it's amazing to see how my attitude towards journaling has changed. I used to write to be a "better writer" and then to complete Julia Cameron's The Artist Way (which I never finished, hurhur). Nowadays, I journal because I like to dump my thoughts before bed so that I can go to sleep with a clear head.

I don't think there is ever a right way to journal, to use notebooks, or to write a to-do list. I used to be sucked into the performative-ness of Bullet Journaling, often chastising myself for my ugly journals. It was after I read the book by Ryder Carroll, the founder of the Bullet Journal technique, that I felt better about my own system.

I hope you have found this meaningful. I would love to hear your thoughts on how you keep track of your life.