Too many pencils.

In our house there are two things that multiply while I sleep.

Pencil Cases and Books. (but let's not talk about the books today)

We have so many pencil cases. They are all packed so tight that the zips hardly do up. We have collections of pencils, crayons, pastels, highlighters.

There are special cases for gel pens, glitter pens, smelly pens.

Yet no matter how many pencil cases we have overflowing, there are never any textas that last the next colouring session. There are lids with no matching partner and many a dried up useless texta that has run out.

Let's be honest. No one ever wants all the pencils, everyone always wants the textas. Or the gel pens. But a certain child never shares her beloved gel pens with her sister and will often hide them. The pencils go blunt and then break in the sharpener. The crayons are 'for babies' and the oil pastels are hidden because when someone gets pastels on the carpet or their clothes, this Mumma ain't doing a happy dance!

So here we are yet again, pencils, pencils everywhere but not a thing to colour with. And still, I can't bring myself to throw any out. Instead I just fill another shoe box with pencils, rubbers, rulers, pens, half used sticky notes and smelly highlighters and go shopping for yet more textas.

Over on pinterest people recycle old textas and make paints. When I was at school we used to use the barrels of the old textas for 'pea shooting'. I haven't taught my kids pea shooting yet, it's probably nearly illegal these days.

Got any tips on keeping the colourings under control? Do you know what a pea shooter is (perhaps I should add that to pinterest, I checked, there are none there yet!!)