Post-it notes, paper clips, pens and pencils, tissues, accompaniment editions of hymnals, the current day's choir music, the psalm of the day and communion propers, all in their own little stacks, and such. In my music bag - magnet on extendable rod for retrieving paper clips that fall under the pedal board, pliers for unsticking jammed thumb studs, screwdrivers for the occasional repair to the console, water, organ shoes, glasses for playing, cough drops, and always some dark chocolate. Awful sermons go better with dark chocolate, don't you think?

Note: Console will be rebuilt in July 2015, so perhaps I can leave all the tools home afterwards.

My faithful stuffed dog sits beside the claviers, appropriately named "Anathema."

I keep a box each of large and small paper clips, a stack of note paper, tea-bags, a water tumbler, push pins, a holy card of St. Athanasius, a recipe box with cards with choir-members names & phone numbers, a copy each of "Benedictus" (writings for each day by Ratzinger/Benedict XVI), Gordon Reynolds' "Organo Pleno" & "Full Swell", "The Problem of the Liturgical Reform" by SSPX, the ancient Polish hymnal from 1882 ("Spiewnik Koscielnie" (I don't use it for much, but it keeps the rest of the stuff from falling over), and pages of loose-leaf organ music that get frequent air-time. Also a watch, a mug of pens, pencils, and a highlighter; ChapStick, a baton, and a pitch pipe. I used to have a tuning fork, but I think one of the altar-boys nicked it.

And of course hymnals, anthem books, chant books, and organ music, and books of and about liturgy/liturgical history.

I've been meaning to get a yardstick so I can retrieve the dozen or so pencils that have fallen under the pedals.

You need an extendable rod with a magnet tiny monkey on the end.

That's sounds way less useful than my idea.

I've been meaning to get a yardstick so I can retrieve the dozen or so pencils that have fallen under the pedals.

We have an Allen simulacrum--every so many months, when capacity has been reached, I remove the pedal-board and retrieve my pencils, paper-clips, change, toupee, etc., vacuum, and replace it. Bechya can't do that with a Fiske!

Have you ever dropped something into the pedalboard and then upon playing a piece during the next liturgy it jams the two infected pedals in the down position? Only once, never again.

I did have a post-it note fall into the pedals and stick where the contacts come together on one note. It was "G" during a piece in - what else - "G" major. LOL.