Quantity Issues

 

I've been trying very hard lately to cut back on buying excess office supplies. It's been a thing for me for many years. Usually it's pens that I tend to "oversupply" but sometimes it's other stuff. When we had the Metro Twist presentation at Sew Day, the idea of using the tag style post-it notes to mark on your ruler was raised. So I ordered some on Amazon, a "24 Pack" which I pictured as 24 of the 1"x3" tags. Seemed like a lot, but it was the smallest quantity that I could find.

Upon receipt I realized my error, this wasn't 24 of the tag sized post-its. It is basically 24 pads of normal 3x3" post-its that have been cut up into thirds. I now have more than a lifetime's worth of these things. They're useful, for sure absolutely. But am I ever going to use them all up? Not a chance. Good thing they were cheap. My DH is thrilled, apparently he loves this size of post-it, so maybe together we will use up some reasonable percentage of these things. 

The other two things I ordered were for the dyeing class I'm taking in October with Jane Dunnewold. We're going to be labeling the samples that we dye, she suggested little tags and safety pins. Got them! But OY the quantities involved. Luckily they don't take up much room to store.

I think they'll work really well. I can write this small if I really need/want to.

The bigger safety pin is one of the ones I use for quilt basting, this is for size comparison. They really are quite petite these safety pins. And now I have 500 of them. Sigh. Again, this was the smallest quantity I could find. Same with the labels, also 500, so at least that matches up right? I probably needed at most 50, but instead I now have 10X as many. 

Obviously this is all a 100% silly 1st world problems kind of complaint. Not earth-shaking or really all that important of course. I'm calling this the Old Lady Complaint Department now. Still it's annoying to realize that the massive consumer culture I'm participating in has no end of options, except as to quantity. More and more and more is always better or expected. This means all this excess has to get stored somehow, in containers or furniture, which ends up meaning a bigger living space is needed, and on and on. Unless I just throw away the ones I don't use. It's all so wasteful. That's what gets to me the most I guess. At least the containers I'm using for the dyeing class are all recycled glass or plastic containers from food. 

More Input

I got the chance to work at the Santa Cruz FabMo distribution day last week and came away with a smallish sized bag full of goodies.

 This time there was a nice selection of modern looking, simple graphics in linen or linen/cotton. This is all going into a couch quilt to go with our lime green couches. The nice cuddly flannel one I have in there done in primary/brights doesn't go at all and it visually upsets me to see it. I love the idea of all this stuff getting used instead of being thrown away, go FabMo!

I scored a nice selection of Cotton & Steel prints purchased from the Quilt Show table at the Alden Lane Nursery Show. They were leftovers cuts from this year's block-of-the-month kit, being sold at cost, saved some $$ on these, yay!  I think I love the matches print the best.

Some new backing fabrics (i.e. fabrics I find at a comparatively cheap price that I like using for the backs of quilts because I don't have to worry about how much they cost) and a few more to add to the grey-yellow quilt project box, and disco witches just because.