Guest Blogger: How to Organize that “Junk Drawer” in your Home

Guest Blog #86, Entry #538, May 29, 2011

Let’s face it, who doesn’t have a a “junk drawer”? That drawer in your home that has a combination of tools, kitchen appliances, take-out Chinese menus and every button that was ever lost in the clothes dryer inside of it? Today’s Guest Blogger gives tips for organizing and keeping clean.

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Most people have a drawer in their kitchen that they fondly refer to as a “junk drawer”.  A junk drawer contains–junk!  Your junk drawer might contain things like rubber bands, safety pins, bottle caps, receipts for school projects, or a whole host of other items.  Our junk drawer also contains things like glue sticks, coupons, screwdrivers, sewing needles, and an eyeglass repair kit.

Don’t we all have a drawer that looks like this?

Image courtesy of Apartment Therapy’s – The Kitchen Cure

The thing about junk drawers is that the clutter can quickly get out of hand if it is not organized on a regular basis.  This, of course, may cause you to ask exactly how you are supposed to clean out a junk drawer.  Read on for more information!

• Make time to clean and organize.  I usually organize our junk drawer on a monthly basis simply because our family is large and we accumulate a lot of junk! You may need to organize your drawer more or less frequently depending upon your needs.

• Dump out the drawer.  This is the easy part: simply take everything out of the drawer and place it on the kitchen table.

• Clean the drawer with a damp cloth.  This will get rid of the dust, pencil shavings and other items that tend to accumulate at the bottom of junk drawers.

• Group items together.  I find it helpful to group similar items together after I’ve emptied out my junk drawer.  For example, I’ll pencils and pens will go in one group, and unused scrap paper in another group.

Organize your drawers for ease in the future

• Throw away what needs to be thrown away.  After you’ve gone through your junk drawer, you will most likely find broken items or pieces to items that no longer work or to items which have been thrown away.  It really is safe to get rid of these items instead of allowing them to linger in the junk drawer.

• Put away what needs to be put away. You may have items in the junk drawer that actually belong in other places. These items usually end up shoved in the junk drawer simply because it was the easiest thing to do at the time.  For example, I found my sewing needles and some thread in the junk drawer during a recent organization project.  I suspect that my daughter put them there after mending a skirt because it was the easier to put the sewing items in the drawer than it was to walk down the hall and put the items away.  Therefore, I called her over, handed her the sewing items, and asked her to walk them down the hall and put them away in my sewing kit in the closet.

That junk drawer can become your ‘everything organized” drawer

Image courtesy of: Hello My Dear Blog

• Purchase drawer organizers.  I found drawer organizers at the Dollar Store and purchased several different sized organizers.  I have found that these plastic containers take quite a beating and need to be replaced quite frequently.  This is why I purchase the organizers inexpensively.

• Fill the organizers with items.  When filling the organizers, remember to keep similar items grouped together if at all possible.

All that is left to do is to stand back and admire your clean and perfectly organized junk drawer.  You might want to take a picture to help you remember the historic event—because junk drawers, at least in this house, tend to get disorganized fairly quickly.

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