Clutter, DeClutter, Hoarder, DeHoarder?

   I wouldn't say I necessarily classify myself as a hoarder, but I certainly manage to put away a great deal of...stuff. Over the years I've kept bookmarks from elementary school, awards from basketball, ribbons from speech team- you name it. And every few months/years/decades I go through boxes and toss something that I've been hanging on to for so long because I felt it was somehow important...until one day I realized that I don't need that plaque from the one year I played basketball, or those ribbons that are wilted and stained from water damage.

   One thing I've kept for years and seem to have quite the accumulation of are notebooks. Pens, and notebooks- which go hand in hand, really, as they're both used together. I'm a writer and I always have been, so it was never uncommon for me to have any number of writing implements in my bag and a notebook hanging out somewhere, until the days of tablets came and I graduated to an iPad Air and bluetooth keyboard. There would still be a pen in the depths of my purse, but no longer was it necessary to carry a large bag that could contain everything I needed for one of those 'just in case I needed to write' moments (the fact that I still carry a large bag is mostly for the need to be prepared for any eventuality- such as headaches, paper cuts, and assorted injuries).

   I have, sitting next to me, one rather attractive notebook made from recycled cardboard. I'm rather particular about what I write on, so this one has very smooth pages and a nice, thick cover. The cheaper notebooks are fantastic but the paper is terrible, and I enjoy perforated pages for the ease of tearing out pages that contain anything I'm not happy with or made several very frustrating mistakes on. This is the only notebook currently with me, but by no means is it the only notebook I have. Sitting in a box in the next room are four more, and on a bookshelf in the living room is yet another. At work, on my desk, is a pad of graph paper that's also half full.

   As a writer I'm a half-full...or half-fill....kind of person. Haha.

   I tend to change notebooks pretty frequently. They're like a mood ring, and while the colors of the notebooks I write in may change, they in no way signify how I feel. One day I might feel like writing in the purple notebook because it already contains a story I'm in the mood for, and the next day I might feel like writing in the recycled notebook because it has thinner lines than the former. That same feeling goes with the instruments I write with as well, because one day might have me using a ballpoint pen and the next might have me feeling the need to make my words as fine as possible with the elegant point of a sharpie pen (which, by the way, should only be used when one plans on writing only on one side of the page).

   Everyone has their oddity, and while I certainly feel I have more than one...this is only the tip of the mechanical pencil (I also enjoy those, from time to time, but only on the really firm paper. They're rubbish on the cheap, flimsy notebooks. Trust me.). But it makes you wonder, doesn't it, what other interesting things people hang on to? Those are the people who aren't necessarily hoarders but collectors of a sort. People who don't keep a thing for its value or because they have a compulsion...but because their moods change, and with them the need to dig out something they've held onto for a very, very long time.

   I could throw out a few of these notebooks, sure- but you never know when one might finally get finished. So for now they stay. And they wait.