My index fell apart 6 months in, here is what I switched to

I started a bullet journal back in February, and kept my index on page 4. By August, I had torn out 11 pages because I kept running out of room and had to squeeze in collection names with tiny arrows. I finally gave up and moved the index to a fold-out page at the back with washi tape. Has anyone else had their index become a mess over time, or do you just restart the whole notebook when it gets bad?

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elizabethwhite2d agoTop Commenter

...and that's exactly why I stopped using a traditional index at all. I realized the real problem wasn't placement, it was that I was treating the index like a table of contents in a book when my journal is more like a living document. Instead of fighting it, I started numbering my pages in chunks, like 1-20 for work stuff, 21-40 for personal, and just leaving the first two pages blank. When I need to find something, I flip to the chunk that makes sense and scan. It feels chaotic to some people, but honestly, tearing pages out and rewriting the whole index every few months is way more stressful than just accepting a little mess. The fold-out with washi sounds clever though, I tried that once and the tape peeled off after two weeks.