Organizers: Chic Datebooks That Can Make Your Day

One of the most pressing causes of anxiety this year is whether you have enough people, activities and projects in your life to warrant an “organizer.” And if you do, then there’s the inner turmoil while you determine which organizer--given your needs, finances and the image you want to project.

It’s an issue to be faced with as much courage as conviction. Possession of an organizer means coming face to face with one’s life, clearing the clutter and Getting On With It.

And that can be a terrifying proposition. But to people who have them, they’re as revered as the Bible.

Fulfilling a Need

We’re talking about a movement here, a movement that has captured people’s imaginations, lives and finances as surely as any religious cult.

It’s a movement, converts will tell you, born as trend but matured into necessity.

There are, of course, skeptics. By whatever name--there’s DayRunner, Filofax, Day-Timer, Running Mate, Recordplate, to name just a few--the organizer is really just an overgrown datebook upscaled to include addresses, scratch paper and tabbed dividers. Its purpose is fundamentally the same as all those little pieces of paper, 3-by-5 index cards and assorted notebooks which, for centuries, have served the world well.

Sales Are Booming

Yet last year, according to industry estimates, Americans spent $300 million on organizers. At Fred Segal Paper on Melrose Avenue, which is to local Filofax devotees what Antelope, Ore., was to followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, calendar inserts alone have been selling at a rate of 300 a week since mid-September.

Why?

Status, say cynics. It’s status to be busy, to toss your worn DayRunner or Filofax on the table, rummaging through the calendar to see if you’re free for lunch on Thursday. Then, given that the time is clear, to turn a few pages for instant access to

a restaurant phone number. And finally, inside the plastic coin slot or envelope--two dimes so you can make reservations right then and there.

Even die-hard organizer obsessives admit there’s something to the status argument. But you quickly get past that, they contend.

Says Randi Jacobsen, 28, an associate news editor for “Entertainment Tonight,” who runs her life from a burgundy Filofax purchased last October, “I’m really an organized person and this is the ultimate. There’s a place for everything. Anything I need to know, I have right there. Why, even when I’m playing Trivial Pursuit--I was asked the capital of Iraq--I just sneaked a look in my Filofax and it’s Baghdad.”

“We’re all leading a busier life,” she added. “And we find we have a lot of input that needs to be stored and retrieved at a moment’s notice.”

Exactly the thinking of Leonard Fagelman, owner of Fred Segal Paper and a new Tarzana store, the Daily Planner, which stocks nothing but organizers. Fagelman, whose life is contained in a Whipsnake-covered Filofax, is truly hard-core. “Those people who don’t have organizers, should,” he contends. “Sure it was trendy in the beginning. But now it’s a necessity. I walk into a business meeting with my Filofax and I have every piece of information I need. An organizer is like having your own Atari always with you,” he said. “In fact, I could pull up your phone number faster from my Filofax than from a computer.”

And why is this so important?

Silly question, Fagelman scoffed. “Why, to free up more time for yourself in today’s cluttered world.”

Most people with organizers try to keep a sense of humor--even as they are giving witness.

--Joan Peter, 42, a Santa Monica management consultant, says she “resisted and resisted” before she succumbed and purchased her brown leather Time Bank four or five years ago. She figures it ran her $75, including all the inserts--two types of calendars, the address book, a communication record, special paper to record her projects in progress, plus blank sheets. Before Time Bank, she says, “I’d have piles of paper in the den, the kitchen, my purse.” Pulling everything together, she admits, was a chore. “In fact, it took a person sitting next to me saying, ‘Do this; do that.’ But now I don’t have to remember anything.”

--”I was like a little kid with a dollhouse. You know, arranging and rearranging. I don’t think I talked to my husband for a week,” says Joan Weiss of Century City, a free-lance consultant for corporations giving charity events and one of L.A.’s super-volunteers. She received her navy-blue Filofax as a 50th birthday present last year. Since then, she says, she’s probably bought at least 20 more--though not in the United States, where the standard Filofax runs about $150. Weiss buys her organizers at Harrods in London where the price runs about $75. “I feel like I’m supplying the world.”

--Jill Halverson, 44, executive director of the Downtown Women’s Center, was one of those whom Weiss supplied. She received her new red Filofax a week ago and has set aside this weekend to put it together. Organizers are not a paradox on Skid Row, Halverson says, though hers is admittedly extravagant.

‘We’re Role Models’

“The women we serve, well, we’re role models to them--and they see us with our calendars and schedules. The small paper datebooks, we got a bunch--and now they’re really hot. We have activities here, the women write them down--drama class rehearsals, things like that. They see the value of getting organized. I like it. It shows we’re all the same. Everybody has appointments and everybody needs some help.”

An organizer organized well can tell you more about a person than a photograph. There’s size. You can go large, as popularized by Harper House’s DayRunner, which uses 5 1/2-by-8 1/2-inch paper; or smaller, like Filofax, which uses 5 1/2-by-6 3/4 paper. You can go for wild high-tech vinyls, leather, several different types of snakeskin or, for $500, there are the Goula Golland tapestry covers from Belgium which are hand cut and one of a kind.

Then there are the inserts, most of which are interchangeable. Filofax alone has more than 400--British and U.S. city maps, species checklists for bird watchers, horses’ stud records, golf scores and, for party-goers in need of icebreakers, there are pages of one-liners. There are highly rigid forms--lots of lines and boxes earmarked for specific uses, or blank forms in a variety of colors.

There are divider labels for people in the fashion industry and the film industry. There are probably 50 kinds of calendar formats. There’s high-grade paper and there’s low-grade paper. There are organizers with spaces for checkbooks, keys, credit cards and business cards. Some have built-in rulers, pen and pencil caddies, leather or clear plastic pouches.

Some organizers close with a clasp; some with a zipper; some with a Velcro-hinged fold-over; and some, nothing at all.

And finally, there’s cost. That’s where the movement has its castes. Praise to all who care enough to spend $20 to $50 on getting their lives organized. But those who care enough to spend upwards of $150--they are the Brahmins.

“It’s like being a member of a secret society, like having a secret handshake,” said one woman who was given a black Filofax 16 months ago by a colleague. “And now that Filofaxes have become so trendy, well, I see people with them and I think, ‘Good for them.’ But I look to see how worn it is.”

She’s given some thought to understanding Filofax’s peculiar appeal. “My theory is that they cost so much money that you’re besieged with guilt if you don’t use your Filofax--at least for a couple of weeks. Then you’re addicted.

“Even if you’re not organized, Filofaxes give the strange impression that you are,” she added. “It sort of hypes professionalism.”

Not all Filofax owners are so intrigued by its trendiness. “I know it’s a yuppie status symbol,” sighed independent producer Charlie Milhaupt, 36, of Silverlake. “It probably looks very nice on the seat of a BMW. But . . . I don’t know, I’m just reluctant to engage in trendiness.”

His was a Christmas gift from his parents, though he chose the black leather cover and inserts himself. “I was stunned at the price,” he admitted. “My parents had suggested I look around, but I didn’t have the time. My tendency is to buy the real thing rather than a copy. And the Filofax black leather seemed substantial.

The Sound of Velcro

“If it’s trendy, it’s also discreet, very matter-of-fact,” he added. “I see mine as an individual item, not as a Filofax movement. Still, there’s something about the sound of Velcro opening at a restaurant--at Hugo’s in the morning, when everyone’s checking their organizers for the day--that just makes my skin crawl.”

Organizers have been known to offend. For one thing, its owners tend to proselytize. They give organizers to their friends and relatives, telling them it’s what they need. And they treat their organizer--whatever the brand--as an extension of themselves.

Lila Sparks-Daniels, 39, president of American Consulting and Training, a Mill Valley firm that does management training internationally, talks avidly about “the little tabs, the memory insert, financial expense envelopes right there for you. I like the feel of the pencil and pen. And when I saw the purse (DayRunner’s $130 stylish gray leather shoulder bag that opens to organizer format, but has a pocket for wallet, lipstick, comb and keys on the outside), I just had to have it. I mean I’m carrying my entire office right on my shoulder--and now it’s not even heavy.”

Randi Jacobsen calls her burgundy Filofax “the second love of my life” and “a perfect little companion.” She’s even become a martyr to her organizer, suffering teasing and barbed remarks because of what she admits is an obsession.

Even Charlie Milhaupt admits that some people carry their entire life in their organizer. “It’s as if they don’t have a home of their own.”

Observed free-lance writer Maureen Maman, after being accosted in a stationery story by a man touting his organizer, “He showed me his whole life, his watch, his calculator, his money, all his business records. If he lost it, it would be like pulling the plug on his existence.”

Fear of losing your identity to your organizer does turn many people off, a problem common to all movements. Even more, however, are repelled by the ruling principle behind the organizer phenomenon.

Clutter--some people just won’t give it up.