My New Midori Love

It’s arrived! My new journal – have you heard of the Midori Travelers Notebook yet? I happened upon it on someones blog about a week ago and instantly fell in love with it. It’s a simple little ‘invention’ from Japan.

The Midori arrives well packaged in a simply Kraft box with an information leaflet on the Midori

It’s a simple enough concept, just a piece of leather and a few elastics. One would think it’s a bit pricey for what it is – I paid £40.00 which included postage and tax, but it honestly is so worth it – and here’s why…

*For a start it is genuine leather and smells heavenly. Being leather the more you use it, the more scratched it gets, the  more worn it becomes – well, the better it looks. On the little insert that came with the Midori are the words, “After using for a long time, when the leather quality changes and scratches remain as your memories, this notebook will be more precious than ever to you.” How true! Can you imagine after years of carting your MTN (Midori Travelers Notebook) all over the place, on your journeys and life experiences, with all the wear and tear etched into it’s cover, how precious and personal an artifact that would be? Perhaps not to the greater world at large, but to you.

Inside the Kraft envelope the Midori lies in a lovely little linen {or is it cotton I wonder?} slipcover

* It’s fantastic quality. I’ve seen posts and pictures on ‘fauxdori’s’ which are ones people have made themselves, but I wonder about the quality and the longevity of them.

* It has a very old worldly and vintage feel which is JUST up my alley! Honestly, I can just picture Dr. David Livingston pulling out his leather-bound journal and recording the days adventures in Africa 🙂

The Midori comes with one booklet with blank pages and two spare elastics.

* The journal works by slipping in little booklets under the elastics. You can buy inserts of all types. I am waiting on three inserts to arrive, another booklet with plain paper, and artists sketch booklet and a booklet with grid-block paper. You can also get diary inserts, zipper pouches to hold travel bits and bobs – or anything that is relevant to your life really, Kraft envelopes – honestly, the accessories and refill options are vast. You could even make your own booklets if you wanted. Obviously the cost can mount up quickly so I have started with the basics and will add a few more things to my Midori over time. As I ‘move’ into my Midori and work with it a bit, I will post on how it’s working for me and give you a closer peek into how it all works. If you do not have the patience to wait for me (personally I wouldn’t lol) you can hop onto my Midori Travelers Notebook board on Pinterest.

It is revealed – as simple as can be. An elastic around it’s slim middle to hold future notebooks all together. A simple un-adorned string for a bookmark. But now the fun begins – the dressing up of your Midori…

So – why it appeals to me other than the reasons I’ve listed above is that I have about three journals on the go at any one time. I have that daily ‘brain-dump’ journal that I showed you earlier on in the year, a nature journal which you get a peek at every so often, and a Bible Study/Prayer journal. Of course I also have my daily appointments diary (Filofax) as well as my school planner which I use daily.

 With the Midori I can have all three journals under one cover plus whatever else I want. In fact I might just use one of the booklets as my daily appointments diary!  A separate booklet for each thing but all bound under one cover.

Now here’s another great point to love – when a booklet is full up, you simply archive it and add another. I have piles of half spent journals from over the years in the book case. They are precious to me, each containing memories of a life lived. These little booklets would be much easier to retire into a plastic box once filled. All of uniform size and thickness, just label for indexing purposes and file away. In fact, you can buy little Midori binders to file away your filled notebooks in.

As you can see I have wasted no time in adding a few pretty charms to my Midori

We are planning to go to Scotland this year for our holiday, I can quite easily slip a notebook inside which will be dedicated to that trip as a travel journal – which is what the Midori Travel Notebook was  originally purposed for. Each little notebook that you insert has a plain Kraft cover so you can decorate it yourself. So for my ‘Scotland Trip’ notebook I could cover it with a map of Scotland onto which I have highlighted our route, add a few travel stamps or pictures of what I hope to see etc. I can add some zipper pouch inserts or envelopes to hold tourist ticket stubs, or receipts from our travels etc. I would then paste them into my travel notebook when we got back to the hotel – or boat in our case.

All in all, it’s just the most wonderful, flexible, lightweight, and rather nostalgic-looking notebook. It appeals to all my senses and pretty much fits the bill in keeping all my writing, journaling, sketching papery life in one place 🙂