31 Days of Clearning: Day 5

Day 5: My Pencil Drawer

I'll let you in on a little secret... I have a pen fetish. At least you'd think I do judging by the amount of pens (and pencils and highlighters) that I have strewn about the house. Most people have a pencil cup. I have a pencil DRAWER in my office and a pencil BUCKET by the phone in the kitchen. I can barely find my scissors or ruler in a drawer that is overflowing with pens.

I've mentioned my pack-rat tendencies in previous posts and I think much of that came from my dad. He grew up during the Depression and some of his stories were sad to hear. His family had very little for a long time. Maybe that's why, as an adult he had fun ordering and buying the gadgets and stuff that he didn't have growing up. But most items ultimately became a collection of things; it was very rare that he only had one of something. He had a drawer full of calculators, a drawer full of watches, a shelf full of wireless digital thermometers, and toward the end of his life he probably had around 10 digital cameras. I can't afford to have 'collections' like that, and my pack-rat nature probably doesn't run as deep, but I do have difficulty in letting go of some things. I was surprised that pens could be among those things as I set out to rid the drawer and bucket of dead pens.

I found that I had been holding on to some of the pens because they were representative of different periods of my life and prompted memories.

A "Land Title" pen that must have been from the closing on my first home,
a pen from the Scanticon Hotel which no longer exists (it became the Inverness Hotel & Conference Center probably around 1995),
two pens from a couple of women's retreats through church,
pens purchased in gift shops as mementos from trips I took,
pens with my daughter's name on them
Taz pens (from when my daughter was much younger and in her "Taz" phase,
pens from past employers, a couple whose names have changed due to mergers,
a pen from Loews Ventana Canyon Resort where I went with U S West to a sales and marketing conference in Arizona, and
a couple of pens inherited from my dad.

And then there were pens that just looked cute or were fun.

Some pens were from companies I had not heard of or had never done business with, so I was prompted to research who they were (Operation Walk - Denver, CA Inc. - Communicating with Agriculture, ITT Financial, and HPCW Business Writing). And there were a couple of pens from temporary agencies that helped me get my foot in the door with organizations that I ended up working with for many years. I was happy to find that they were still in business.

And then there were the pencils ...since I don't believe I have a pencil sharpener any more, I should have gotten rid of them but they're still in my life.

It was also hard to get rid of the pens that had some weight to them. They seemed higher quality but they were non-refillable and dead. So, heavy or not, they went in the pitch pile.

I threw away 153 pens today. One healing aspect to this exercise is that one of the pens in the pitch pile included my soon-to-be ex-husbands' name and company on it. No reason to hang on to that. And, fortunately, all of my dad's pens worked, so I didn't have to make that "to toss or not to toss" decision.