02.29.2016

0830

When it comes to simplifying your life to create a zero waste life, there are a lot of tasks to tackle in every aspect of your life. It takes time and you have to go through your bathroom, kitchen, closet, pantry, car; every area of everything you own. So there will come a point during this clean out process that you come across items that can’t be donated or recycled, which means you’re producing trash. The struggle here is to either use up the item and then eventually throw it away or toss it out immediately. This is the case with my writing utensils.

In my undergrad, because I was an art & design student, I was required to buy a lot of art supplies. When I say a lot, I mean Prismacolor Premier Double Ended Art Markers, Brush Tip and Fine Tip, Set of 24 Assorted Colors, Prismacolor Premier Soft Core Colored Pencil, Prismacolor Nupastel Set, Winsor & Newton Cotman Water Color 12-Tube Set, Royal & Langnickel Small Tin Charcoal Drawing Art Set, Koh-i-noor Woodless 12 Graphite Set, and the list goes on and on. However, the great thing about art supplies is that someone else always needs it. Once I graduated, I donated  some of my art supplies to my former BFA program and I also donated items to incoming art & design students, whom I was connected through colleagues of mine.

I have a basic rule I live by when it comes to keeping art supplies, “If it’s a ‘wet’ art supply, donate it”. I stick to that rule because the majority of the items that I “think I will use,” I most likely won’t use it again before it dries out. I understand that some people need creative outlets to express themselves, but for me- I only keep items that require minimal maintenance.

I kept my Pentel Sharp Mechanical Pencil, 0.7mm, Blue Barrel, Each (P207C), Avery AVE49838 Tripleclick Ballpoint Multifunction Retractable Pen, Black Ink, M, Black , Pilot Dr. Grip Ballpoint Ink Refills , PRISMACOLOR DESIGN Eraser, 1224 Kneaded Rubber Eraser , Pentel Super Hi-Polymer Lead Refills, 0.5 mm lead refills and Pentel Super Hi-Polymer Lead Refill , 0.7 mm lead refills. I am more creative and can speed sketch faster when I work with graphite and ink. I work in the architecture and design industry and there is a level of creativity that I must maintain. I’ve opted out of junk mail as much as I can but a few pieces still get through so I use scraps of paper from junk mail to take notes on.

As time passes, I will see if I want to stick with my Pilot Dr. Grip ink refills. The packaging that these refills come in are not completely environmentally friendly so I still question the use of them. However, I will probably stick with lead. Lead is one of my favorite rendering mediums and there’s something very comfortable with using a pencil that takes me back to my childhood. I recommend using the kneadable eraser because the eraser doesn’t slough off when you use it so there’s no mess left over from using it.

On a side note, if you do have a set of colored pencils like this:

It’s not a bad idea to write out each code number of each colored pencil on a piece of paper so that you know exactly how the color is going to render on plain white paper. With this system, when you go to the art store to replace a single pencil, you’ve already got the info.