For the second year in a row, my partner gave me a subscription to Doodles by Ben‘s Pin Badge Club. The result is monthly happy mail for me.

The subscription is for a small monthly box that always contains the month’s original badge (this past month was a friendly comet), stickers of the month’s design, a magnet of the month’s design, and some sorts of little surprises. The surprises are sometimes sweets, sometimes extra stickers, one time a little keychain. It’s all so much fun and I think Ben, the artist and creative maker responsible for this monthly box of fun, is brilliant.

I do wear the badges, usually by pinning them to jackets, but enjoy the stickers at least as much. This gets to the problem part of this post. I find it stupidly hard to use my stickers. It’s always a fight, even when I want to use them. I get into this mentality of scarcity, this sadness that if I use a sticker then I won’t have that sticker anymore.

This is, of course, ridiculous, especially since I get multiple stickers a month from Ben, buy planner stickers off Etsy, and have more stickers than I will ever use. I have the same problem with washi tape and ink — however much I may use in a month, I buy more. The accumulation continues.

I joke about hoarding, but accumulating is a real issue. We live in a small two-bedroom apartment (probably about 700-800 square feet) and storage is limited. I don’t have space for a dedicated craft desk so things like stickers and washi tape have to be put away which keeps them out of sight. If I use them, I get to see them.

So one of my resolutions this year is to USE ALL THE THINGS. The world is full of stickers and makers of stickers. I can always get more stickers. Plus, when I use stickers, I get to see them.