Hitting a Nerve

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You know how every time you go somewhere, you get a free pen/pencil/crayon? Combine that with a compulsion to get the best deal at the Back to School sales and you get this insane storm of writing implements.

I went around the whole house on a mission to find every single crayon, marker, pen, pencil, colored pencil, eraser, highlighter and sharpie I could find. I searched high. I searched low. I drew the line at crawling under beds. I called Stephen at work.

“Honey, where are your pens and pencils in your office?” His office is a very scary place where things go to die. We refer to it as The Pit.

“Um, you don’t need to go in there.”

“I’m collecting all of the pens and pencils so we can go through them.”

“I want my pens and pencils. I use them. I don’t want you to throw them away.”

I hit a nerve. A very sensitive pencil nerve. “I’m not going to throw them away. I’m simply collecting them. You’ll go through them.”

He paused. Sighed. “They’re all over the place in there.”

I hung up the phone, put my big girl panties on and went in. On purpose. I tried to pretend I was anywhere else but there. I got in. I got out. With an entire box of writing implements.

When everyone got home, I had laid out everything I’d found on the dining room table. During the collection process I thought I’d count them. To somehow quantify the madness. Until I saw them all and realized I’d still be counting in June if I did that.

We all assembled around the boxes, containers and piles. Each person was given a pencil box. We had at least six and Stephen got the biggest. The only rule before “shopping” began was that you could only keep what could fit in your box. I was proud of everyone – they stuck to their boxes with minimal whining. Halfway through the process The Girl went to her room and emerged with another plastic box of pencils. They were probably under the bed.

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Later that night, Stephen and I were talking about the pencil boxes.

He sighed. “I’m way out of my comfort zone. Like waaaaaay out of my comfort zone.”

“They’re just pens and pencils.”

“Comfort zone. Out of it.”

“Um, you do know this is our Simple Year, right? And you agreed we needed to do it.”

“This is gonna be hard.”

“Yep. But it will be worth it.”

“God, I hope so.”

It’s safe to say I’m way more comfortable with this than he is.


18 Responses to Hitting a Nerve

  1. I too suffer from pen/pencil overload. Makes me crazy, and I have resorted to doing exactly as you have.
    Getting rid of stuff is scary, no doubt about it. I often feel like there are two sides war-ing in my head: “Wow, we have TOO MUCH STUFF! Must get rid of it” vs. “We need to get more STUFF!”. New stuff is just so—-new. And interesting. And cute.

  2. I’m convinced that pencils and pens breed when I’m not looking and then hide when I am frantically looking for something to write with (except for the broken and dried-up-ink ones). I really need to corral, sort, and pitch…and I really like the one per person pencil box idea.

  3. Great job Candice. This was a good way to start the process with something that is minor but does tend to multiply in our houses. Hopefully small steps like this will help your husband recognize that this process is going to make life a lot easier. Wait until he can actually find what he wants in his office in a snap because the piles of clutter are gone. Keep it up!

  4. You are not the only one with writing utensil overload problems! Our basement flooded and as I was going through storage totes I found a whole lot of crayons, unfortunately I just put the lid back on. With 6 kids and a day care I have a feeling this problem is going to haunt me for a long time, thanks for the inspiration though!

  5. Very cute (and true for everyone) post. I did that once and it astounded me how many pens and pencils, markers and scissors we had. I also found 3 of our 6 known hammers (all were missing)!

    Love this post.

  6. Good job! Throwing away is really hard for many people. Maybe an organizing project of your own next so poor hubby doesn’t flip out. Mix it up. You have a year, remember?

  7. I had to giggle at the fact that getting rid of some pens was out of your husband’s comfort zone! Keep going, you’re doing a great job 🙂

  8. the thing is, pens (and markers and highlighters) will eventually run out of ink, but pencils and crayons take forever to go through! in the words of a former professor, sometimes you have to lean in to the discomfort. Good luck to your husband!

  9. I sooooooooooo relate to this post. My DH buys scads of cheap pens imprinted with his business info to use as ‘business cards,’ but hundreds of them turn up in our house. And every one of these pens is a piece of his identity, so getting rid of them is doubly hard. One breakthrough, though, is that he’s agreed not to order any more imprinted pens!

  10. This made me laugh because I did the same thing yesterday. We have moved about 200 defunct pens and broken pencils from house to house and I finally gathered then up and threw them away. The bin liner of things from the old desk drawers is down to some paper, keyboards (why do we need two?) and a bag of stuff for someone else to identify. Feels good!

  11. We’ve moved around quite a bit and really had to downsize our possessions on this most recent move into a smaller home. I’ve been selling, freecycling and donating, and feel like what we have now is reasonable. When things wear out or break I will think very hard about whether or not they should be replaced, and when our next move comes I will be ruthless.
    We still have a whole house of furniture and possessions in storage for when we return to the US but that’s another story!

  12. Oh but pens and pencils….. they’re useful aren’t they? You can’t get rid of them……
    Nah, just kidding. I just feel guilty getting rid of anything tagged ‘useful’. I know, I know, I need to work on that!

  13. wait until husband is ready to toss something and you get triggered!
    push, pull. yin, yang.
    love the one pencil box per person idea

  14. sooooo many pens!! so frustrating yet such a cute story about your family gathering around the giant pen collection and “shopping” for their individual pencil case 🙂 supercute!

  15. Oh fun timing…I tried to get rid of some pens and pencils tonight…I got rid of 2 pens. I will go back and get rid of more. But last time I gave away all our extra pencils, we were given boxes of dozens of them as gifts. My children get them as gifts from grandparents too, with fun patterns, but they are not good ones. OK. I am weak, They will go though. Thank you!

  16. The pencil boxes are a great idea! We’re kind of on the opposite end for them, so far(I do have children, so I now know to be on the lookout for that. I’ve already noticed the crayon thing.). We only have a couple of pens, and a few pencils. May as well get rid of the pencils, though, as they’re new and we don’t have a sharpener!

  17. I hit a nerve with my husband who has 2 CPU units which are huge. I asked if we could get rid of the older once since he bought the newer one to replace the older one and his response was “back off woman!” so I let that go. Great idea about having a pencil case so it was a designated amount of space!

  18. I know what to do with the extra pens/pencils: offer them to your nearest middle school. My students come to school with nothing to write with. It makes me crazy. I used to buy extras but I was going broke.

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