Using Things Up

Did you ever sit back and consider, for a moment, how many different pens you have in your household? You’ve probably noticed it when you were looking for a “good” pen, not one of those cheap, skinny ones that skip when you write and always seem to be ink-challenged. You may have pens in jars, pens in the kitchen messy drawer, and pens in family room end tables, in bedroom dressers, even hiding in bathroom cabinets. It’s as if your entire life has been devoted to accumulating as many different, partially used pens as possible.

It’s not just pens, though. Perhaps when you were engaged in that frustrating search for the “good” pen you realized that you’ve got a lot of other random stuff, too, and in amounts that are much greater than you could ever actually need. Consider, for example, those little round or square dental floss dispensers that your oral hygienist gives you as part of the dental swag bag after an appointment. You’ve already got dental floss at home, but it seems wasteful to just throw away a perfectly good mini-roll of dental floss, so you chuck it in a drawer . . . and the next thing you know they’ve apparently multiplied and that drawer is absolutely overflowing with them.

The same is true with pencils that are used about halfway down to the eraser nub and have become dull because you’re not sure where a sharpener might be. Or different kinds of tea bags in one kitchen cabinet, highlighters in various colors with barely a whisper of highlighter juice left, mismatched drinking glasses, and random pads of paper of varying sizes, with the remainder of the little rubbery strip that used to hold the individual pieces of paper curling up at the top. Or the kitchen drawer that is groaning with an impressive array of various food-related objects, like ’60s-era ice breakers, that never seem to get used. And a careful inventory of your personal possessions would probably yield other examples, too.

How did we end up with all of this household debris, and what are we going to do with it? You can’t just toss out usable stuff, because you’d feel guilty about that, so the only viable answer is to consciously try to use it all up. But how? It’s a daunting task, for sure. The obvious answer is to specifically change your habits with that goal in mind. In short, it’s time to take up doodling while you are watching TV, flossing multiple times a day, highlighting junk mail envelopes, quaffing cups of tea after dinner, and breaking ice just for the heck of it. And while you’re at it, you might join a skeet-shooting club to thin out the herd of that kitchen glassware, too.

Random Pens

This morning the pen I was using ran out of ink. I felt around in the pocket of my work satchel and pulled out a fistful of potential replacements, and realized that my bag carries the most random assortment of cheap pens you can imagine.

I’ve got some unbranded pens that I picked up at the supply closet on my floor at the firm, as well as one branded Vorys pen that was sent out by the firm with some fanfare years ago and that I feel like I should save for a special occasion where using the branded pen would be warranted. (I haven’t quite figured out what that special occasion might be, but perhaps I’ll instinctively know it when It arrives.) Then I’ve somehow acquired a pen from a bank, two pens from hotels, and a pen from a tire and auto parts shop. Other than the pens from the firm supply closet, I have no recollection of how I got any of these pens.

I’ve also got some slightly higher quality pens in the mix, but I have no idea how I got them, either. I’m not a pen snob. I can’t justify laying out the money for a high end fountain pen or weighty Cross Bailey with replaceable cartridges, which in my view should be reserved for people with fine handwriting who write important letters on fine stationery. I don’t fall into that category. I’ll use pretty much any pen that is at hand because my handwriting stinks and the only person who is going to read my scribbled notes on legal pads is me.

I carry around more pens than is necessary, but I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry and I don’t want to find that I’m out of pens when I really need one. And in looking at this motley collection of writing instruments, I realize that the pen pocket of my satchel is the workplace equivalent of my sock drawer. For me, at least, the sock drawer ends up being a repository of one-offs that I keep around in hopes of finding the other sock someday. My pen pocket is the same way because you never know when you might really need a cheap pen.

Our Non-Working Pen Collection

Our house has the largest collection of non-functional pens in the known world.

You will find them just about anywhere.  The drawers of our desks, kitchen cabinets, bedroom dressers, and family room end tables are stuffed full of them.  They are sticking out of old coffee cups, desk organizers, and brass bookends — and they seem to be multiplying.

Long ago, Kish and I had only a few non-working pens.  If a pen ran out of ink or otherwise failed to fulfill its intended purpose, we threw it away.  But then a Bic met an attractive Scripto, one thing led to another, and now inoperative pens are everywhere.  We’ve got cheap pens that were given away by orthodontists, cheap pens that were part of some lame “gift bag,” cheap pens that will explode for no apparent reason and cover your hand in ink, and cheap pens that have lost their caps and been chewed to within an inch of their lives.

And these cheap pens are clever.  They hide in plain sight, living among the tiny handful of working pens, knowing that they likely won’t be tested and discarded because, in reality, no one actually uses pens regularly anymore.  And when the chips are down, and a birthday card or important document needs to be signed, they relish the chance to frustrate their human hosts, who fruitlessly try pen after pen after pen, pressing down with increasing force on some hapless piece of paper, pleading to the God of Pens on Mount Olympus to please deliver unto us one — just one! — working pen.

One of these days, I should go through every drawer, cup, and cubbyhole in our house, testing the pens when tempers are cool and discarding those that don’t work.  One of these days . . . .