Confessions of a Paper Junkie

Source: etsy.com via Vanessa on Pinterest

I love paper. All kinds of paper. When I was little and my mom would take me grocery shopping with her (every Wednesday morning, the same day and time of day she still goes) I would get to explore the store by myself* while she shopped  and I would almost always end up in the paint department, squirreling away paint chips (pretty paper).

After that I developed an attraction to stationery – both sheets of paper and coordinating paper/envelope sets and if you wanted to get me a good gift, a pad of paper would do the trick. I still have a ton of sets in a box in the basement, plus I took up card-making for a while (I’m a starter) so I also have all those supplies. Someday I’m going to really get going on sending real mail and I’ll wear through that supply. Though I could probably send one real letter a day for a few years and maybe then I’d start to run out.

In college I started scrapbooking – the paper supplies for this were endless and beautiful. I find it funny that I have a collection of fancy scrapbooks with cool pages for my college years but all the photos since I’ve gotten married and have children are in sleeved photo albums (or are residing electronically on Facebook – last year I printed photos one time).

When I started getting into graphic design, I found out that paper companies created swatch books – bound books showing samples of all the different colors and stocks of paper they manufactured – so I started ordering them (for free) to collect I guess. Turns out the company I work for had a couple hundred such swatch books – it makes me heart beat a little faster when I eye those boxes – all the lovely paper possibilities once again.

These days my paper obsession has taken the form of paper plates and napkins, initially just napkins from IKEA and then branching out to the products created by a local company that has a bi-annual warehouse sale where you can walk down rows of tables and fill large bags with coordinating sets of napkins and plates (not to mention the gift bags and tissue paper). It’s so cheap and so pleasing to the eye. I may or may not have found a box I’d stored away in our basemen that contained a couple dozen packages of napkins and plates when I was cleaning the basement, ones that had been there since we packed up extra things a few years ago when we were thinking of putting our house on the market. It’s a sickness. And I guess I can admit I could have hoarding potential, but thankfully I have a husband who loves me despite my love of paper products and who would keep me from filling a room with paper and sleeping in it.**

*I was still in elementary school when this happened, she was way more trusting than I will ever be. Both of her child and other people.
**I would never do that, it would be uncomfortable and would wrinkle the poor paper.

This post is linked up with Jill at Diaper Diaries.