I’ve been using a Passport Travellers Notebook as a purse for a while now.

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However, I’ve been unable to shake the desire to try using a pocket planner as one instead.

I’ve been here before. I set up a beautiful pocket yellow Finsbury a few years ago to be used as an EDC and purse. As beautiful as it was, I just couldn’t get on well with it.

It was too small for me and didn’t lay flat at all.

Given I’m more used to smaller planners now, thanks to my success with the passport TN, I decided to give it another go.

I had my eye on the new Pocket Norfolk from Filofax, but didn’t want to drop that amount of money on something when I wasn’t 100% sure it would work for me. I decided to check out the pocket Moterms as an alternative and found a lovely dupe*.

Unboxing

I was impressed with how quickly this arrived – less than two weeks.

This isn’t my first Moterm, I purchased a cover for my Cousin a couple of years ago and really liked the quality. The presentation this time around was a lot better, though, with the planner even coming with a dust cover.

This is a beautiful pebbled leather cover, in burnt orange. It smells amazing and feels soft to the touch. The closure feels secure and there’s a lot of give in it. This could definitely be stuffed without issue.

Inside, you get a zipped pocket in the front with a vertical pocket behind. The zip pocket is gusseted and very generous.

In the back, you get three card slots, one slightly larger one at the base and another vertical pocket behind it. You get a generous pen loop, and silver hardware with good quality rings.

There’s also a large pocket at the back, making it perfect as a purse.

The lining is as shiny as it looks. It’s difficult to describe. It doesn’t feel the highest quality, but it does feel sturdy and like it would hold up with frequent use. I couldn’t actually find any information in the listing* as to what it was made out of.

In terms of what this planner comes with, it’s quite minimal.

There is a leather flyleaf, which is a nice touch and provides extra card storage.

My only complaint with this is I’d prefer the card slots to be on the other side, so I could put this at the front of the planner to have quick access to cards.

The inserts that the Moterm comes with are pretty basic. I don’t think I’ll get a huge amount of use with them. I’ll likely use them as scratch paper.

First impressions

I’m really happy with this planner. It feels extremely well made, all the stitching is perfect, and the leather high quality and soft. It feels a lot softer than my Personal Yellow Finsbury*, which was a similar price to this. Recently, I’ve felt that Filofax’s have dropped in quality, and I think this has contributed to Moterm rising in popularity. This is still not a super cheap planner* – around £40 when I purchased it. But, you get a lot of planner for that, in my opinion.

As you probably noticed in some of the pictures though, this planner doesn’t lay flat. It’s not so much the planner and the leather it’s made of. It’s actually the pocket at the back that’s the issue.

The back pocket is far too baggy. It bunches up underneath, meaning I can’t get it flat at all. You can definitely see how roomy that pocket is in the image above. It’s surprising, as the Moterm I’ve previously had also had that back pocket, but didn’t have the lie flat issue.

I’ll have to wait and see how I feel once I set it up, but I think I’ll need to remove any pages I need to write on, particularly if they’re on the left hand side. This isn’t too dissimilar though to when I’m using my TN so shouldn’t be a deal breaker.

I’m excited to get this set up

I’ll share the full set up once completed, and probably do a comparison to my Passport TN. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to know about either set ups, drop me a comment, and I’ll cover it in the next post.