Not traveling with my Traveler's Notebook

I bought a Traveler's Notebook cover last year, mainly because they released an olive edition and I needed it. I liked the idea of a modular notebook, though, so I swore I would figure out how to use it. I continued liking the idea and doing absolutely nothing else with it for 6 months. But it's a new year with a corresponding new me, so here I am! Using it!

I will freely admit to dropping about 50 bucks on the cover and having no regrets about it at all, but a lot of the other stuff that Traveler's Company sells is overpriced. Some of their accessories are fine things that someone less frugal would probably be happy with, but others are garbage. I don't want to play roulette with garbage, so I've hacked together the stuff I have inside my notebook with some success.

The first thing I've stuffed in there is a homemade fabric zipper pouch that my mom was nice enough to help me make. The zipper pouch that Traveler's Company sells is a horrible flimsy plastic thing with a junk zipper that looks like it's going to break after a month or so of regular use, and it's... nearly $10?! No thanks!

This pouch is made up of two individual ones connected using strips of fabric on the top and bottom so the pockets don't overlap with the spine. I store pens in there instead of on a pen loop because I don't like the idea of them potentially getting banged up, leaking, or falling off completely. I also stuff other things in there like stickers, tape, and receipts that I want to save for later. Storing supplies internally doesn't add too much bulk to the notebook, and the closure is loose enough that nothing gets squeezed.

I've also made my own inserts because the Traveler's Company notebook inserts are comically low-quality. They're a few sheets of paper wrapped in brown kraft paper and held together with staples on the spine. This construction (or lack thereof) means the resulting notebook is flimsy and doesn't lay flat even with extensive effort (clipping, folding, etc). I was beginning to lose my mind trying to use the notebook that came with the cover.

I bind my books using French link binding because it's fast, durable, and allows the resulting book to lay flat without any effort. For paper, I prefer Rhodia paper to the Midori MD paper that the branded inserts use because it's nice and smooth and ink dries fast on it. (Midori is Traveler's Company's parent company... I think? The covers and stuff used to be branded under Midori as well for a while.) I also repurpose unused sketchbook papers to make new appropriately-sized sketchbooks.

I've decided to compartmentalize my notebooks as follows: a planner/bullet journal, a scrap paper book for random junk that just needs to get on paper (and pen testing), and 2 sketchbooks (one regular and one watercolor) for on-the-go art. I'm not sure how realistic the prospect of travel drawing is, but having a book available is... something. It's something.

The notebook cover can only accommodate one notebook because there's one piece of elastic cord that runs down the spine. However, you can daisy chain notebooks together using rubber bands. Traveler's Company insists that you need their special branded "Connecting Bands" for this purpose; said "Connecting Bands" cost $6.40 for 4 specially-shaped rubber bands, which is patently bananas. You can use any regular rubber band that can stretch out far enough — it looks a little janky if you squint, but at least you're not a sucker who pays $1.60 for a rubber band!

Also, a note on TN sizing: both sizes of Traveler's Company covers use weird nonstandard sizing. The regular size (this one) is the same height as an A5 notebook, but only about 75% of the width. I actually really like this size for its portability, but your options are limited if you don't want to make your own books. Similarly, the passport size is exactly the size of a passport, which makes it great to use as a passport holder, but virtually no pocket notebooks are this size. If you want a cover in a standard notebook size, there are quite a few other companies that make similar elastic notebook covers with more size options.

Anyway, right now my notebook is a glorified planner because I haven't really figured out what else to do with it. I have not used it for "real" journaling or any sort of travel scrapbooking, which seem to be the most common use cases, because I'm not much of a journaler or scrapbooker to begin with! I figure this is incremental progress for now, though, considering it's been many (many) years since I've written stuff on paper so extensively.

It's been fun getting back into the whole pen and paper thing, though, so I'm hoping to graduate to using my notebooks in a more enlightened way in the future.