It’s back to school time, which is one of my favorite parts of the year. Growing up, I was always excited to buy new school supplies. I still feel the need to buy school supplies even though I’m no longer in school. However, we happen to be in the middle of shopping for a house, so major stationery splurges are strictly off-limits. Luckily, during my drought of new office supplies, a hero came to my rescue. Her name is Laurie Huff.

Laurie Huff is the current blogger for the Quo Vadis blog (of Quo Vadis planners), but I have been reading her posts for years on her personal blog, Plannerisms. If you are currently in the midst of trying to find the perfect planner to organize your life, then I highly recommend going through the archives of her personal blog. The Quo Vadis blog also has ideas and inspiration for planner and journal users and often has giveaways. I happened to win one such giveaway.  

I won the A5 medium Rhodia Drive notebook, and I will be giving you my unbiased review on it. Rhodia Drive and Quo Vadis are both made by the same company, and both have the same creamy and delightful Clairefontaine paper (which is made in France, so it’s fancy, right?). I have tested this paper in stores previously, but this is my first personal experience with it. The cover of the notebook reminds me of a #2 pencil, specifically the soft-leaded ones. (These pictures appear a bit lighter than the real thing.) It measures 6 x 8.25 inches and has 48 pages of 80 gsm extra white paper. The covers of the notebook are coated cardstock and are also waterproof. (I did not test this detail.) You can also see this notebook on the Rhodia Drive website in  black and white.

I used different inks and colors on the first page to test the opacity of the pages. I’m not sure that you can tell from my pictures, but the Marvy LePen and Sakura Gelly Roll bled through too much. The rest of the pens had an acceptable amount of visibility for me. However, as I continued using the notebook, I noticed that the Sharpie pen and G-2 also were too dark on the back side of the pages. This may be because I write too hard, which is why my writer’s wart is roughly the size of a small mountain. I stuck to writing with Uniball Sigmos the rest of the time, although I did smear a couple of letters because the pages are so smooth.

The spine experienced some wear after a few weeks in my cotton quilted backpack. It was in there with a personal-sized leather planner and a reusable water bottle. 

All in all, I really like the Rhodia Drive notebook. My favorite aspect of it is the size. I really prefer wide notebooks over narrow ones, which are harder to write in for people with large handwriting. (Also, now that I’m thinking about it, I might like it because it is the same size as our elementary school composition books. Remember those?) I love the texture of the paper; it really is smooth with a good weight.

Have you ever tried any Rhodia notebooks or Quo Vadis planners? Let me know in the comments! Also, I have been putting off writing a post about my personal planner. Let me know if you are interested in seeing how I try to stop wasting my time.