I finally took the plunge and ordered a Moterm!

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I’d been hearing about Moterm planners for a while. Everyone seemed to be raving about them. While I like my current Cousin cover, I was getting annoyed with the lack of pen loop and closure. The Moterm covers have both of these. They’re also very reasonably priced* for a leather cover. Less than £40 and a few weeks later, it arrived in my chosen colour!

The first thing that struck me about this cover was how well it was packaged

It arrived in a nice simple box, with the brand name on it.

Inside the box, the cover came in a little canvas (?) bag.

The leather smell is there, but it’s not as strong as other leather products I own

The true colour is hard to capture, but it’s a beautiful dark teal. Not too dissimilar to my Aqua Filofax.

Once open, you’re met with loads of pockets inside.

There’s ten internal pockets in total, not including the two pockets either side for inserting a notebook and the large back pocket.

The back pocket can comfortably fit A4 paper in it, which is fantastic. Perfect for storing a few important papers.

You won’t be able to fill this too much though, I as I imagine it will affect how the planner lays out.

There is the same brown lining inside all the pockets. There’s also a lot of give in them, so you can really stuff these, if needed.

I can’t tell what the lining is made out of. Definitely something synthetic that would be easy to clean.

As the Cousin is so thick, you’d have to be careful not to overstuff these pockets. If you did, you’d run the risk of no longer being able to close the cover. If you were using just a usual A5 journal, you’d be able to fit a lot more in the pockets.

There’s a few more pockets in the back. I usually use back pockets for storing sticker kits.

The pen loop is a nice width, and most pens fit in it

The location of it is far too high though. I have to put my fountain pens in it upside down, otherwise they stick out of the top and affect how the cover closes.

This cover also comes with two book marks

I don’t like book marks in covers like this, and will end up snipping them out.

They’re probably the only part of this cover that feels a little cheaply made. The nylon of the book mark in particular isn’t great.

The cover is pretty sturdy, with only a small amount of ‘floppyness’

The leather used is quite thin and inside the cover you can feel a small amount of interfacing and a thin layer of card.

You can see just how thin this is. If you were to purchase the ringed version of this, how thin this is may bother you. However, as this is a folio and you slot both the inside and outside covers of the planner into it, that adds some sturdiness to the cover. So in daily use, I don’t see the relative thinness of this cover being an issue.

I haven’t set this up yet, but I wanted to give it a test for this review, so I popped an old Cousin into it

It fits really nicely and is easy to install. As you can see, where I used a lot of tabs, they conflicted with the pen loop.

Even with this thick Cousin, the cover closes with no issues.

I tried my Kaweco Sport in the pen loop and that words really well.

As you can see, there is a slight strain on the cover when it’s closed. If you end up with a super chunky Cousin by the end of the year, you won’t be able to use this cover and would need to switch to the Avec instead.

Overall I really like this

I’m glad I finally purchased a Moterm*. It was exactly what I needed – a nice cover that closed and had a pen loop. The back pocket is super useful as I always struggle with what to do with those important papers I need to keep close. For a leather cover this is relatively inexpensive compared to others around. If you’re new to the Cousin and perhaps don’t want to splurge on the official covers, this is a really nice alternative.

I’m going to move my 2020 Cousin into this, and once I’m settled in I’ll post a little set up. The quality initially seems really good with this, but I guess only time will tell how well-made it really is. For the time being, I’m planning to continue to use this through to 2021.

What do you put your Cousin in? Let me know in the comments below!

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