EDM 232 - Draw your junk drawer

This is a sampling of what's in the junk drawer. At least these are the useful things in the junk drawer. There is a lot of junk in there that isn't used and probably could (should!) be thrown out. I have for the last several years waged warfare against the clutter that has accumulated over the last decade or so. Over the winter vacation, I shredded a drawerful of household bills that dated back to 1996. Earlier this spring, I shredded decades worth of old insurance and investment papers, and threw out manuals for appliances that hadn't been here for years. The junk drawer is the next step in Operation Clutterbusting. But the junk drawer, I discovered, has a lot of emotional baggage attached to it. "Look there, that's the plastic orchid that was attached to the birthday cake when I turned 40. How can I possibly throw it out?" A Google search for "clutter" proved that this is not just my problem, but a universal issue. We are drowning in paper, and useless junk. There are millions of websites dealing with it, there are people who make their living helping others get a handle on their junk. The late great George Carlin did a classic monologue on people and their "stuff". Why do we have so much trouble throwing things out?

Staedtler pen and watercolor pencils in Moleskine sketchbook.