Ooops. I know I said we were going to do videos, cds, albums, etc next but plans changed. TW reminded me that Melisa, who we were re-homing some “third grade” books to, would probably be able to use some of our no-joy school and office supplies. TW was right — it’s expensive for teachers who are setting up their first classroom (or setting up any classroom, really.)
So, we switched gears and I wandered around the house gathering up all of the writing utensils and scissors and notebooks and glue and paper clips and staples and thumb/jump/usb drives.
Luckily, the earlier tidying up made this a little easier than it would have been if we still had all of that PAPER all over the darn place. I had already put most of the notebooks and notepads in a box, while pulling paper out of our desk drawers and such and every time I’d seen a usb drive in recent weeks, I’d put it in a pile on top of TW’s desk.
We ended up with more writing utensils than I can count — many still in packaging and/or unsharpened.
– I went through these first, looking for anything that was obviously broken/dead and threw all of those into the trash.
– Then I touched each pen/pencil/marker and asked whether it sparked joy. Generally speaking, not much sparked joy. Any Micron or Pitt pen sparked joy, most Sharpies but after you’ve touched 5 black Sharpies, how much joy can the sixth one really bring you? Some pens due to how they felt in my hand, the design of them, or a memory of how they wrote.
– After that, I tested each item from the joy pile to make sure they all wrote and/or still brought me joy when writing with them.
– Then, in my no-joy pile, I looked for things that were obviously new and never used, things I thought Melisa could use in her classroom, and things that I knew would bring TW or a kid joy.
– TW walked through at this point and I asked her to go through the no-joy pile — I don’t think she added a single thing to our joy pile.
Which left us with a pretty small pile of pens, pencils and markers.
It also left Melisa with a pretty good size pile of pens, pencils and markers. Yippee!
I did pretty much the same thing with various other categories of stuff. All the crayons, colored pencils, kids’ markers. All of the staplers/staples/paper clips. All of the glue, glue sticks and tape.
Then we got to the paper and note pads. I want to know why we had so many different packages of mailing labels, business card makers, and other weird papers for the printer. We NEVER use that stuff. NEVER ever. NO JOY, none, zero zip.
I did save quite a few notebooks but almost no notepads. I’m a list-making doodler so I need some sort of paper on my desk all of the time. Notepads are fine but I much prefer an actual notebook — even a smaller than average notebook is better than a notepad.
And, did I mention we have (HAD!) a ton of post-it notes? I haven’t even gone through them all because I have an entire container of stuff like that in my Filofax supply section — but OMG all the post-its and flags and gah. I was pretty amused (also, annoyed) — TW didn’t really feel much joy for any of the stuff in this category but when it came to post-its and flags, she wanted to keep everything. She was sure one of the children would want/need/feel joy for all of those things. I reminded her of just how many we had. Just how few the children took to school with them last year. And, we purged. Melisa got anything brand new and unopened. The rest went into the recycle bin.
There are two items in this category that I haven’t really talked about — USB drives and scissors. I think they deserve their own KonMari Problems post. For now, I’ll just say… we have enough. More than enough. Ugh.
We started this task with a rubbermaid bin, two of those cardboard storage boxes from IKEA, a half dozen drawers and shelves full of office and school supplies and ended up with one IKEA cardboard storage box and one rubbermaid bin, neither full, of supplies.
I’ll admit to not being obsessive about making sure all of our office and school supplies were gathered. In the 24 hours since we finished this task, I’ve already seen two pairs of scissors and three pens that never got rounded up. (I discarded them.) I’m ok with that. I know what we have, now. I’m pretty sure that 99% of what we find lurking in the hidden corners of the house can be discarded without any problem at all. Excluding the stuff upstairs in the girls’ rooms. I intentionally saved their supplies until they were home — I’m really trying not to Kondo their stuff without at least SOME feedback from them. So, we’ll do theirs the next time they’re here for more than a couple of hours.
Next up is CDs, DVDs, Albums, Video Games — and cassettes, lol.