screech-owl’s “Ton O’ Pencils” is opening soon.
Little by little, I am getting organized. I decided to hit the desk today, since I got through with my appointments early. I organized everything, arranged the binder clips by size, found all the tape dispensers, unjammed all the staplers, and even sharpened all the pencils. Notice the abundant use of plurals.
The pens, pencils, and magic markers are now in covered shoe-sized storage boxes (appropriately marked). Highlighters are in a different storage box. I’ve even separated the stick pens from the click pens, and made sure that EACH one wrote before it went into the appropriate box (the scrap paper looks like a Jackson Pollock print). The pencils have been sharpened to their proper points, thanks to one of TWO electric pencil sharpeners (no idea where the second one came from); the unsharpened ones are in their own box, so I do not grab one that will not give me instant graphite-ization.
You need office pads? I have 12 half-used ones from various work projects, in addition to several clipboards (plastic and pasteboard)
Need some paper punched? I have four 3-hole punchers (one with a nice solid handle, while the others are the cheap ones) but only one single-hole punch. Wonder how that happened.
Only two boxes of paper clips: one large and one small.
Four large boxes of staples and three half bozes of staples for two and a half staplers (one of those little mini-staplers). And six staple pullers (they were multipacks, and one came with a stapler I purchased.
Five regular glue sticks (it was a six-pack), and one that does the cool purple streak so you can see where you put the glue down.
Sigh. Add a 10 pack of medium paperclips (single box versus multipacks – much cheaper per clip).
Six various sized rulers - 6-inch, 12-inch and one 18 inch, in addition to several circle and oval templates
Three sizes of binder clips: small, medium and too damned big to fit in the compartment keeper.
Did I mention I bought one of those small doodad organizers you find in workshops to keep the nails, screws and other stuff you can’t find? It’s nice, but the too damned big binder clips are too damned big to fit in the compartments. So they rest in the middle desk drawer, right next to the four rolls of scotch tape, while the large sand-ballasted tape dispenser (the one that landed on my big toe, the one that HyperKitty thought was a mouse and wrestled with, yes that one and it hurts again like hell; I swear I am going to get steel-toed bedroom slippers!) sits on the desk, right next to the magnetic paper clip holder (you know, the one that you just shake upside-down and a paper clip sticks to the magnet part, unless you are a dumbass owl and overstuff the little box and nothing falls out).
Oh, and I found the nice brass paperweight my sister sent me for my birthday. It’s shaped like a fountain pen and lucky for me, it missed my foot. Good thing too, the end of it is pointed.
This just in: add another size of binder clips; I just found one of those ityy-bitty teeny cutie binder clips that will maybe hold about six sheets of paper. Only one of them, but technically, I have to add it to the census.
Need color coding labels (3/4" round) - take your pick of yellow (2 packs), red, black, dark blue, purple, green and fluorescent orange.
File folder labels - limited choice here - blue, red and purple. Only a half of box of file folders - the rest are in use.
And I’m not even listing half of the stuff I have too much of.
Anyone want to barter anything? I need rubber bands, correction fluid, and a new ink pad (the other one dried out).
I’m sure I’m not the only one - what office supplies do you have an overabundance of? (Not a poll, just make me feel better about having too much stuff). I’m actually proud of the fact that I managed to get everything organized. And I put the can-opener back in the kitchen where it actually belongs (it was magnetically attached to one of the staple pullers. Definitely want to avoid any interspecies breeding on that one).
And yes, I’m checking into donating the excess stuff to a local teacher’s charity shop where teachers can purchase school supplies at reduced cost. Worst comes to worst, I’m sure some other non-profit organization would welcome some supplies.
In the next couple of days, I’m attacking the desk side drawers. Wish me luck.