Decluttering

I can’t imagine what mental aberration caused me to collect a sufficient cache of office supplies to go through several degree programs without ever taking another trip to Office Depot.

For example, I’ve two cartridges for my laser printer, not counting the one I just installed. When you consider that I go through a cartridge about once every eighteen months, I’m thinking this qualifies as overkill. Especially when you consider how freeking expensive the damn things are.

And for those times when I want to produce my documents manually, I’ve maybe a hundred pens (after sorting out the ones that have dried up and the ones I need to take back to work), and a few dozen unsharpened pencils. I like pencils and use them a lot, so there are also mebbe forty sharpened pencils of various lengths sitting about in various drawers, boxes, organizers and end tables.

Plenty of college ruled paper, assorted notebooks and portfolios, colored paper and construction paper and just plain paper – you know the drill.

My collection of souvenirs of various travels and relationships, of which I am genuinely fond, is overwhelmed by random stacks of guidebooks, brochures, etc. that I brought home from home shows, fairs, conventions, conferences and vacation destinations. We could heat the house for a week in the dead of winter with all this worthless wood fiber.

Can you tell I’m on a decluttering campaign?

Does anyone have a lighter?”