When I was a child, I had one of those super sturdy metal hand held pencil sharpeners that you held over the trash can to sharpen a pencil with.  My friends all had these cool colorful pencil sharpeners that had a built in pencil shaving catcher attached to it.  My classrooms had the gun metal grey pencil sharpeners with holes for the various pencil sizes and they were screwed onto the wall.  One of my teachers, had a whole section of her wall dedicated to the pencil graveyard for pencils she deemed too short to write with.  The number of times I dropped my sharpener into the trash bin while I was trying to sharpen my pencil way outnumbered the number of pencils on that wall display.  The key was to not sharpen pencils after lunch because icky banana peels in the bin ewwww!  

I am going to sound like my parents or grandparents, but there are two office/classroom supplies that just aren’t made like they used to be. The stapler and the pencil sharpener.  Luckily, my husband and I both come from families who keep anything old that still works so we have found an old stapler but I have been through many pencil sharpeners as a teacher and no matter how expensive or industrial looking they are I have not found a good one until now.

One of my friends, who I met at the ballet studio as our daughters dance together, is a teacher and she recommended that I check out Classroom Friendly Supplies‘ version of a sharpener.  I had my doubts, but I signed up to get a sharpener for review. Once I found out that the sharpeners come in fab colors like: precious pink, popular purple, groovy green, and firehouse red among others I was even more uncertain.

Once the package arrived, and I took out this solid metal sharpener things were looking up.  It had the feel of those old office supplies that I used to borrow from my father’s desk.  That cool feel of the metal and the weightiness of the tools of yesteryear.  

After I figured out that I had to pinch and pull out the pencil guides, and I put the first pencil to the test, I quickly fell in love with this new sharpener.  Added bonus: ever since we got it (and we have many others) I have not heard from the kids that they need a pencil or they can’t find the sharpener because we all like using this one and it works exceptionally well.