What's in a name? In this case, it's the feeling I got after cleaning out desk drawers and pen pots and finding what felt like a thousand pens - some which worked, and some that didn't. One thousand pens. And has owning all those pens stopped me from buying more? No, it has not. I continue to be drawn to them, like a moth to a flame. And, by the way, it's not my fault. As I recently learned, it's genetic.
Last year I helped my aging parents move out of their house of 28 years, and we went through all the stuff. One of the items that was purged from my parent's house was a pot - or more specifically, a coffee mug - of pens. My dad had kept them on the kitchen counter for as long as I can remember. He didn't use them, that I saw, he just added to them. It wasn't his only stash of pens, but it was the one that he handed to me and said, "Make it go away." Coffee mug and all.
And so now it sits at my house, in our homeschool room. I'm slowly working my way through the pens. Some write smoothly and are a joy to scroll across the page, while others have that scratchy edge that I just can't stand, and they've gone straight to the trash. But even though some have been tossed, this has done nothing to help with my own purging. My own pen collection remains strong, which brings us back around to the name of this blog and how we got here.
In a future post, I'll share a little bit more about my Bucket List Cleanout (and the subtitle of this blog: Musings from the Junk Drawer), but for now, let's just say that I was forced to face my pen hoarding tendencies while working my way through my own office space. Pens and highlighters I've had since high school (I'm having hot flashes now, so that should tell you that high school was a while ago). Dried-out markers, cheap pencils that wouldn't sharpen without breaking if their lives depended upon it, pens that used to be "favorites" that fell out of favor, and the list goes on.
One thousand pens. That's what's in my junk drawers...among other things. It's more metaphor than reality (though, if all my writing instruments were collected in one location, it might be sadly accurate). As a country (I live in the U.S.) our houses, apartments, and storage units are filled with things that we walk by daily. Our things sit there, waiting to be used or tossed by us...or by future generations. It's not just pens. It's storage bins, notebooks, bags, kitchen utensils, clothes we'll fit in again "someday," and so much more.
If you're tired of your stuff holding you hostage, then welcome! If it feels like you have a thousand pens, but you really only want a dozen, I hope you'll stick around, because I think we might be kindred spirits. Let's simplify together.
No comments:
Post a Comment