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Just realized my $30 dot grid notebook works better than the $65 one I babied for a year
I always thought pricey paper was the secret to a neat bullet journal, so I used a $65 hardcover for all of 2022 and treated it like glass. Then in March I grabbed a $30 dot grid at a shop in Austin just to have a backup, and my spreads actually look cleaner because I stopped being scared of messing it up. The cheap one has 100 gsm pages and barely ghosts with my fineliners, which I did not expect at half the cost. Now I am stuck: is the nicer notebook really worth it, or was I just paying for the feeling of being careful? What made you switch sides on expensive vs cheap journal supplies?
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pat_stone21h ago
That $65 hardcover from 2022 might have had better paper and you'd never know it because you were too scared to put real ink on it. Honestly the "cheap paper made me braver" thing sounds nice but it's kind of a trap, because a notebook you actually fill up is worth more than one you baby, sure, but that doesn't mean the pricey one was a scam. Tbh my experience went the other way, my $60 book handled watercolor and marker bleed way better than the $20 dot grid I tried after, and the binding didn't fall apart by month four. Ngl the real lesson might be that you got lucky with that Austin find, 100 gsm at $30 is a good deal and not every cheap book holds up like that. The cost wasn't the problem, being afraid of the page was.
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the_terry21h ago
was I just paying for the feeling of being careful" hits hard because yeah, you were. I did the same thing with a fancy hardcover and caught myself not using it half the time because I didn't want to mess up a spread. Switched to a $15 dot grid and my journaling got way more honest. The trick is to check page weight before you buy so you don't get burned by ghosting, since price and gsm don't always match up. Spend the extra cash on pens you actually like instead of a cover you're scared to touch.
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