Need a pen? Good luck finding one!

Yesterday's junk drawer adventure led to the realization that I also have many, many pens, pencils, highlighters, and markers.  Of course, like most people, I cannot ever locate one of these items when I'm looking for one; and the follow-up - when I find one it is dry, broken, or out of lead.  I also find myself wondering about the large number of pens that are exotic ink colors like lime green or bright pink.

Today's Items

If pens and pencils were dollars, I'd be rich!

After discovering just how many writing instruments I have all over the house, I had to laugh, since I recently took a phone call from an insurance company and needed to write down a claim number and couldn't find a single pen.  It was comical.  The claims adjustor was a good sport, but it literally took me more than 2 minutes to find a working pen.  It felt like it took 2 hours.

Now that I have them all collected in one place.  It's time to do the boring job of testing them out.  All duds will land in the trash.  Can I tell, you this is not a fun job?  Scribbling all over paper to see if the ink is good or dried up was time consuming but worth it!

Scribble, scribble

After the testing, there are only about 35% of the pens, highlighters and markers that work.  The rest are trash.  The pencils were better and most worked or just needed sharpening.  I'm not sure we use pencils very much in this house.  Note to self:  DO NOT BUY MORE PENCILS.

It was a great feeling to get rid of all the duds,  Now, for a short period of time, at least, when I grab a pen out of the organizer I put right by the phone, it should work.  We should also be able to find one when we are looking for it.  Don't know how long it will last!

As of today - these all work.

Do you have trouble finding a working pen or pencil too?  This Only 3 Things A Day Challenge has certainly been entertaining.  My goal was to eliminate 900 things by the end of a year.  After today's purge, I'm pretty close to more than 300 items and it's only Day 7!

I'd love to hear from you if you are joining the challenge.  By the way, the challenge doesn't have to last a whole year for you - try it for a day, a week or just a month.  We all have unnecessary clutter.  Remember, I will never judge you or stuff you have accumulated.  Together we can lighten our loads.