Arranging Stationery

...Because I'm obsessed with more than just fountain pens.

In fact, I love stationery and desk items of all sorts. Pens, pencils, pen pots, desk organisers, you name it.

I've accumulated many gel pens over the years. I had been reading articles on other blogs about arranging stationery, and they all said the same thing.

Throw out pens that don't work, chewed up pencils or those that are too short!

Which made me cringe. I don't like throwing things that could possibly be useful. Maybe if I left those old gel pens languishing in a cupboard for a few more years they'd work again...

But no. I will be a stationery hoarder no longer! I will throw out the pens that do not work!

So I spent a whole morning testing 95% of my collection (there is still one pencil case I need to find and sort through, I think) and separating functional ones from those that needed to go in the bin. I ended up with over forty that didn't work, and after a last attempt to get them to live again, I disposed of them.

It actually felt good to do that, knowing I wouldn't be picking up a pen and trying to use one that wouldn't work. But now I needed to store them. I looked for some nice pen pots at our local supeermarket, but they didn't have any. DIY to the rescue!

We have a large collection of clean, empty glass jars, so I took three and used stickers along with some washi tape to decorate them. They now sit on my windowsill, holding pens and pencils ready for use!