A couple of weeks ago, I've gone through my home office and cleared up some of the stuff, especially scrapbooking/craft stuff I've got lying around my home office.
I tossed things I didn't need. I organised my rubber and acrylic stamp collection, placed all of my washi tape and stationery into two boxes. I've even gone as far as organising my coloured pencils and pens into different desktop containers. I've kept my stuff pretty organised, but the desk has become another mess as I'm sharing with Michael.
After I've finished organising my pile of stuff, I realised that I have too much stationery and washi tapes to last me a long time. I don't know how I managed to get this much stuff, but as I looked through my iPhone photos and my Instagram account, I found that it's all because I've visited two discount shops and always have left the shop with something for my Filofax.
Don't get me wrong, I love decorating my Filofax. It makes my pages look a little less plain, but when I'm spending all my time decorating something that is meant to be a tool to get my life organised, I'm not being productive and I'm not managing my time at all.
I'm not at all ragging on those people who take decorating their Filofaxes very seriously, but as for me, I know I need to use my organiser to be productive. I'm not going to spend hours washi-taping the sides, using stamps to write down my chores and such. I do have some stamps from The Sweet Stamp Shop. I use them to remind me what day of the week is waste and recycle collection or when it's laundry day. I'm always the minimalist, using a personal sized Filofax until last summer when I moved into an A5 Original since life became a little more busy and I wanted to journal in my organiser as well.
Okay, I've gone a bit off topic. But back to the original subject of this post.
In the last two weeks or so, I've managed to visit two discount shops close to my house. There's a Marshall's and a Tuesday Morning, each a mile away from me.
This is the first purchase I made this year. After using both stamps, I found that I'm not going to be using them at all. The ink pad was a good buy since I have stamps that I use for scrapbooking. The Project Life Cards, I have every intent to put them in my Filofax, but realised it's just another worthless thing to add in the organiser and it will make it quite heavy. All in all, this was an impulse buy.
I went back to Tuesday Morning again, the following week. In this week, I was looking for thick scrapbook paper to make my dividers with and I wanted them in somewhat of an golden and teal colour since my Filofax Original is in navy blue. I needed to add a pop of colour to it, though I've already had dividers in that colour range that I made last year.
I also bought another packet of Project Life cards. I don't do Project Life, but the colours of the cards were in the colour range that I was looking for, so in went the box into my shopping basket. The only purchase made on here that wouldn't be called an impulse buy would be the acrylic blocks.
Recently, a friend told me that she's having a baby and I bought her the Plan Baby stamps from The Sweet Stamp Shop. Since I saw the acrylic blocks the last time I went to the shop, I bought it since I didn't know if she had these kind of stamps. It was perfect. She was having a baby and she recently bought an Erin Condren planner.
The last shop I visited was Marshall's. It's a discount department store that sold designer stuff and practically everything under the sun. My sole purpose to visit the shop was to get some loose leaf tea, but after walking past the stationery isle, a set of pink and gold washi tape a long with a notepad caught my eye and I couldn't help myself. I picked up the note pad and the box of washi tape and headed for the checkout queue.
This past Monday, I read Angela's (from PaperLoveStory) post on "Pressures of Blogging" and how she ended up with too much stationery/washi tape. I think I had all the intention of buying these items so I can post them on Instagram. I know I need a much more solid post, solid material to put on my blog instead of just posting what I do with my Filofax. I need to get back into book reviews and recipe testing as with my previous blog with Vox.com/Typepad.com (except without the knitting).
So, what about you, have you had bought too much stationery stuff and have no idea what to do with it?
