Creating a Command Center: Writing Utensil Organization

I'm fearful my mister is a pen hoarder. I like to have a pen lying around here and there for that spontaneous idea or phone number I need to take down. But his hoarding has led to this...

I told him I was pretty sure the pen police would be coming for him soon. I told him there are pen deprived people all over this city because of him. I don't think he took me seriously...

Anyway, to continue to get our command center in order, I decided the insane amount of writing utensils stored in our house must be addressed. 

So, I gathered every writing utensil in the house that I could find. I emptied out all of our "pen holders" and also found the following: a screwdriver, a button, a couple bandaids I wouldn't dare put near an open wound, a key, a raffle ticket, two parachute men, a 2006 key chain, some coin rolls, a pig key ring, a stick of gum, three tubes of chapstick, a bobby pin, a safety pin, and some temporary cement bonding glue. Can you find all of these items below?

Next, I did what any normal person would do - I tested out every writing utensil. Yep, every.single.one. That's normal right?

I threw away anything that didn't work or was real close to not working as well as anything too gross for me to touch to test it out. Then I sorted the remaining items into three groups: work, keep, donate. Work was a distinct group of pens that the mister brings home from work. I am sure no one else in his office is able to write due to a lack of pens and a tight budget. The keep pile consisted of nice pens that I'd enjoy using, a few pencils with good erasers, and some highlighters and Sharpie markers. The rest went into the donate pile. I don't know if people buy pens from thrift stores, but I figured someone could make use of them. 

My next step was to figure out how to store everything in the keep pile. I really like these hanging bucket ideas:

{Image Via}

{Image Via}

{Image Via}

I tried to find some already-made kits but they were a little more pricey than what I was hoping to pay. I picked up a tension rod and some ribbon for about $7 at Jo-Ann Fabrics and grabbed three pencil cups at the dollar store. I used my Cricut and my home printer to create some tag labels and attached those to the pencil cups with the ribbon. 

Then I put up the tension rod across the office desk space and used a level to make sure my buckets wouldn't all slide to one end. I attached each of the three buckets to the rod using the same ribbon. The ribbon has some nylon in it, so I used a candle lighter to melt the knots of the ribbon to keep them from pulling out from the weight of the pens. I also melted the exposed ends of the ribbon to keep them from fraying. 

Finally, I put a portion of the "keep" utensils into each of the buckets. I don't think the tension rod is capable of holding everything I decided to keep. At the same time, I don't think it's necessary to even have THAT many writing utensils in the house. Nonetheless, I will store the remainders in some baskets that I'll show you later. 

I like how the project turned out and I like even more that it was only $10. 

I threatened the mister that the buckets will only hold so much weight - so he should probably be more choosy in which writing utensils he brings home. Is there a Pens Anonymous group? 

The command center is coming along nicely. I still have two or three projects left before it's "done"!

How do you store your writing utensils? Do you have a pen hoarder in your house?