I started using fountain pens just last year.

It was a considered decision, largely motivated by my desire to stop buying hoards of colorful pens to use in my notebooks. Until recently it used to be rare to find good writing pens (e.g. not art markers or gel pens) with ink beyond the basic colors of black, blue, and red; green and purple sometimes popped up, but not very often.

In the last ten or fifteen years, though, has brought rainbow explosion to the pen world, with brands like Uni, Zebra and Pilot rising to the forefront. Zebra’s Sarasta line offers 14 colors, while the Uniball ONE gel pen comes in 20 different hues. You can even get colorful pens that are erasable.

I’m not here to talk about the history and technology of pens that allowed this, however. Leave it to say that, as someone who loves writing with different colors in my notebooks and journals, I found myself compelled to try out every new pen that came along — and not just try them out, but collect them in each available color. [efn-note]Except yellow. You just can’t write in yellow.[/efn-note]]

There are two problems with this. The first is that they just take up a lot of space. Having a desk covered with pencil holders full of brightly colored pens looks really pretty in a photo, but it creates a lot of clutter. Not to mention desk drawers crammed with former favorite pens that have been replaced by the up-and-comers. There are only so many a person can use at once, after all. There are only so many pens that an octopus can use!

The second problem, the bigger one in my mind, is that all of these pens are plastic and disposable. As someone who tries to be mindful of the impact I’m having on the environment, I started to feel guilty every time I used up a pen and tossed the empty, plastic tube into the garbage — a feeling that was even worse if I decided to declutter a pen I no longer used but still had ink in it. Sure, a single pen is not a lot of plastic, but it adds up.

When I knew I wanted to make the change to a more sustainable writing tool, I decided that first I needed to cull down my collection of single-use pens.

Enter fountain pens. 

Honestly, I didn’t know what I was getting into. The realm of fountain pens is vaster than I ever imagined, with an enormous variety of pens and inks available. I excepted choices, but I never knew I would have so many choices. So many beautiful choices available. If striking a blow against consumerism was my goal in starting to use fountain pens, then I have failed miserably. The money I have spent in nine months is more than I spent on disposable pens in nine years. [efn-note]I’d like to say that is an exaggeration, but it’s probably not.[/efn-note] Ink bottles are taking over my desk. I make wishlists of what pens and inks I want next and stopped buying new clothes so I can afford them. It’s not quite an obsession, except that it totally is.

In fact, I made this video about exactly why I find fountain pens so enchanting, and posted it on my YouTube account a few months ago:

Have you given into the enchantment of fountain pens? Let me know in the comments!