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Craving the simple again: another ink purge

I was surprised to find that over the past five months — since I made my ‘ink menu’ back in June — I’d accumulated around 40 new bottles of ink. I knew I’d been splashing out (not literally), but I hadn’t realised quite how much.

Since my ink collection was now bursting out of the boxes and drawers I had it stuffed in, I decided this week that it was time for another one of my periodic purges.

Marie Kondo-style, I get all my inks out. I break the colours down into groups to evaluate them. Yellows, oranges and reds in one group. Pinks, magentas and purples in another. Greys and blacks. Greens. Bright blues. Teals. Dark blues. Browns. Complex colours.

I start to swatch them, roughly in colour order, on to sheets of 300gsm watercolour paper. It absolutely burns through the cotton buds, but it makes crystal clear when I have too many inks sitting in the same area of the colour wheel.

That’s when I have to make some tough decisions.

I ask myself honestly: do I really need all these grey inks, or pink inks, or brown inks, when I write in those colours so rarely? How many yellows do I really need? I look for colours that are too similar. I think about when I last inked a pen with that shade. Scarily, I often can’t remember when I did.

There are reasons to keep an ink beyond simply its colour. I consider properties like shading and sheen, or how fast it dries. I keep some inks because I like the smell, or the bottle, or even the name. Some I keep, if I’m honest, mainly because they’re rare and I’m afraid I won’t be able to buy them again if I change my mind.

I try not to beat myself up, and I don’t force myself to get rid of a bottle if I want to keep it. I found that the lowest I could go in many of the colour groups was seven or eight inks. Overall I managed to cut down to 80 inks in total. You might think that’s loads, or surprisingly restrained. I guess it all depends on your perspective.

With the list finalised, I used more cotton buds to swatch all the inks in roughly rainbow order, creating a ‘menu’ I could look at when picking an ink for a pen. I find this is a great way to see what I’ve got, even those smaller less fancy bottles hidden at the back of the drawer. I still need to do the greys, browns, blacks and complex colours on a second sheet, but you get the idea…

One benefit is clear: my ink now takes up less space. I feel less guilt about having bottles sat unused. And choosing inks is easier. The downside? Maybe less variety, or losing a hidden gem of an ink that I’d never given enough attention to. But honestly that’s the anxiety talking, the FOMO. With 80 inks, and 30 pens, I’m not short of options.

I enjoy this process more than I probably should; it’s cathartic and also fun to rediscover all those inks, get them out in the open. But I hope that isn’t temptation for me to buy another 40 inks over the next five months…

14 Comments

  1. Louise

    I need to do this as I have too many inks also. What do you do with the inks you deicide you can live without?

    • Anthony

      I batch them up into surprise boxes of 5-8 inks and sell them as variety packs on Facebook 🙂

    • Brenda Pace

      I give mine to newbies to fountain pens or to pen lovers on tight budgets. Or to a friend who loves a particular color of ink. Many pen lovers are older, on fixed budgets, so a surprise ink delivery adds a bit of joy to their lives.

  2. Chapel

    I’ve been giving away pens I’m no longer are interested in along with bottles of inks I no longer use to people expressing interest in discovering or re-discovering fountain pens.

    So far I’ve given away 15 pens and 23 bottles of ink with a few more pens and inks to go. I hope to be finished by Christmas as I don’t need to sell the pens or inks for the money.

    I have about 5 inks I use regularly (KWZ IG inks in Blue Black, Blue 5, Blue 6, and occasionally IG Turquoise, and Waterman Serenity Blue for vintage lever-fillers). No use keeping the rest.

    Too many of the inks I bought were difficult to read, garish on the page, and just not my style.

    So you might consider giving them away to someone who likes them. Who knows? You might inspire a new pen person and make them a pal.

  3. Helen

    I’ll take them off your hands and use them with love if they’re going spare! X

  4. taimdala

    I can’t stop *Drooling* over your swatch menu. ♥ It’s gorgeous. Have you thought about selling prints of it? It’s so vibrant and cheerful, I would love to have it on my wall so I can look at it every day. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. ^_^

    • Anthony

      Well that’s very kind of you to say! Even better — why not make your own? A box of Johnson’s cotton buds, a sheet of paper, and whatever inks you have plus some samples at a couple of £s each. It’s fun!

      • taimdala

        So true!

        (Looks at 2+ years of Ink Flight shipments … )

        Lord knows I’m not beggared for choice! LOL!

        • Anthony

          You might need a bigger sheet of paper 😂

      • taimdala

        Perhaps instead of paper I could use the walls? LOL!

  5. rupertarzeian

    Well done once again with your resolve to de-clutter. The ink swatches look beautiful. And for those buying a lucky dip box of mystery inks, that is a lot of fun too.

  6. Hlib Vyshlinsky (@hlib)

    Do you like this new Montblanc Blue Planet? I can not find any review of it.

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