Yesterday I went for a pen in my "office" drawer. It's where I keep my checkbook, calculator, pens, pencils, envelopes, rubber bands, flea and tick treatments, hoses, light bulbs, pennies, magnets, broken magnets, twist ties, hand cream, graham crackers, and my entire collection of baseball cards.
That's rubbish, of course. I don't like baseball.
So yesterday, I wanted to write a check. I know I'm probably one of the last few remaining 30-somethings on earth who use checks, but I just can't bring myself to give every last shred of my life over to computers just yet. I also take a small amount of petty satisfaction knowing my check is costing the cable company more to cash it than it's likely worth. (We only pay $8 a month for very, very limited cable.) In fact, I would admit the very act of being a pain in the ass of The Man is my singular motivation here.
When I put my hand in the drawer, something bit me. It might have been a report binder clip; it might have been my pet Gerbil Lady Diana from 1980. See, they were only courting back then. Shows how old I am.
I decided enough is enough. I am a minimalist, damn it. Why I tend to live like a hoarder getting help from Dr. Phil, I don't know. But inside me burns a true minimalist who longs for a place for everything and everything in it's place, and then throw half of that away and find a place for the rest, then have a conveniently dispersed fire, throw all the burned things away, and find a place for the rest of that.
Even with my particular habits of shedding extraneous materials which makes our house one of the sparsest we know, I still found enough pens and pencils to last me through to the day I sign my first Social Security check.
Some of these are my own doing; others came from hotels, and others from school teachers that say "fabulous 5th grader" for all those worksheets the kids will be dying to complete over summer vacation. Have any of you ever used a pencil down to its nub? It takes a very. long. time. There isn't any way a person, or a family of five for that matter, needs a package of 40 pencils. When schools ask us to buy 60 pencils for the school year, I cringe. Not from the cost, but from the waste. Think about it: 60 pencils per kid, 180 days of school = one pencil completely consumed in only three days. I don't think so. Most of them are eaten. Around here, pencil use is even less common. I don't do crossword puzzles. I don't design buildings on blueprint paper, either.
I digress. I do that. I should have named this blog "I Digress". At least then you would have had some warning, eh?
I culled the herd, saved out two pens and two pencils, and put the best ones in a ziploc bag waaaaaay at the back of the drawer.
I could have tied them together with one of these, though:
But I've tried that, and people will take one out of the bundle over and over instead of using the ones RIGHT THERE, I suppose because it's more fun to pick a fresh one?
Why on earth do I have so many rubber bands?? One reason is that Brenna has been saving every one she finds in every store we've visited for the past four years. Just today in Michael's I had to threaten her: "Don't you dare pick that up off the....nope, we are NOT keeping it!! We are not taking that thing home!" I sounded like she was cradling a homeless puppy. And those purple rubber bands that come off the asparagus are so pretty. But the rest are from a bag of 650 I bought to use on two xylophones we used to have. I can't even imagine what I would have to do in my remaining lifetime to use up 650 rubber bands, so I'm bagging them up for a new life somewhere else.
I also have a surplus of these.
It's a lucky thing I had some tape.
Wouldn't want it to pop open in the Goodwill box. It was difficult to choose from such a rich array of styles, strengths, and opacity, but I managed. I got lazy and chose the scotch, since it was easiest to dispense. Though if needed, I certainly could have cut a piece of packing tape off the roll.
Now, what's going on here?
THIS is why teachers need you to give them 60 pencils per student. A child will refuse to use a pencil once the eraser is gone. Don't think for a second that this wasn't an intentional exploitation on the part of the Pencil People. If they really cared, they'd make all pencils look like this:
We all hate the thought of parting with things we might use in the future, but really, does my kitchen need to be outfitted for a hostile takeover of a Fortune 500 company?
Ahhhhh, now this is more like it.
