The Mini Junk Drawer
Stupid things I do May 22nd, 2016You have a junk drawer, right? Of course you do!
But do you have a mini junk drawer? A drawer so small that for all intents and purposes is really just decorative. It can’t even fit cutlery. It’s a dumb drawer.
We have one in the kitchen. It’s where my husband Dave and I years ago decided “This is where we shall put all our important receipts and crap. It will protect only crap of the most critical kind. We will never lose anything important if we put it in this ridiculously tiny little drawer.”
And so we did.
Today I cleaned it out because it could finally take no more when I tried putting in a receipt for my cat Lucky’s medication. It cannot handle the addition of a 0.05mm-thick piece of paper.
As I extricated the pile of stuff, the things I realized we were saving got more and more stupid.
- Receipts for any meaningful work we had done on the two cars we don’t even own anymore
- Receipt for a PC our family bought Dad in 2007
- Receipts for carpet cleaning, purchase of a storm door and new mattress and work on our garage door and microwave
- Blood work results for my husband
- Meals on Wheels donation receipt
- Two Sharper Image mini catalogs
- Black and white 35mm film (do kids these days even know what that is?)
- Said 35mm camera
- A bird feeder warranty (because, you know, they go bad)
- Zinnia “Guaranteed to Grow” flower seeds (2 packs)
- My college transcripts (so that’s where they were!)
- A thank you letter from 2002 for work I did on a client’s PC that crashed (what?)
- Instruction manual for a Motorola pager. A pager!
- Approximately 80,000 screws, nails and cables for unknown things
If this is what I fit into mini junk drawer, you can just imagine what’s in my full-service junk drawer.
The only thing I plan to leave in Tiny Junk Drawer is the meat thermometer. It shall now be known as Meat Thermometer Drawer. At least until we want to save another critically important receipt. Or flower seeds.
So where do you keep all your super duper important things?
Stumble it!
May 22nd, 2016 at 4:05 pm
You don’t want to know…because I am a super duper obsessive compulsive organizer – even my junk drawers (2 of them) are organized. So while all extra keys are kept in one junk drawer, they are all tagged appropriately. I could go on but I am almost ashamed of how organized I am…It’s a sickness I tell ya…
May 22nd, 2016 at 4:57 pm
I have a junk footstool — and it is as horrific as you might imagine. My mother, on the other hand, has nothing BUT junk drawers. Every drawer in her house is a hodgepodge of this and that — 20 years worth of everything that ever came into the house. It’s a nightmare.
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May 22nd, 2016 at 5:34 pm
Grace — I love how you’re the complete opposite of us. I’m jealous of your “sickness.” Amazingly, I’m much more organized at work than at home. I have very little tchotche or unnecessary papers and whatnot there.
Wordfiend — The footstool sounds interesting! As for your mother, maybe she’ll have that breaking point where she goes hog wild and tosses everything. That is my wish for her. It’s so cleansing and satisfying!
May 22nd, 2016 at 5:46 pm
We do have a junk drawer (or two) but if I’m honest, Mo will put things wherever she happens to be at the time, so I have even found something that should be in a junk drawer in our cutlery drawer! I gave up many years ago, trying to find anything in our house, unless I put it away. The whole house is Mo’s junk drawer, with everything put away nicely, just not anywhere we’re ever likely to find it again.
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May 22nd, 2016 at 6:02 pm
That drawer looks bigger than my junk drawer. I actually have a pocket spiral notebook for receipts so they do not go in a drawer. In my junk drawer I have squirt guns, a plastic golf hole thing, a piggy bank, old pictures, and other misc. junk.
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May 23rd, 2016 at 3:47 am
Babs — “The whole house is Mo’s junk drawer, with everything put away nicely, just not anywhere we’re ever likely to find it again.” I know this must be a real struggle for you, but this made me crack the hell up. There should be a tracking app for that. You know, bar-coded inventory if you ever want to find something again it’s just a click away.
Karen — A notebook sounds so organized. I think you must have inherited the organization gene from your father. I still remember that from your book. Of course, my parents were both very organized. I think it skipped a generation with me!
May 23rd, 2016 at 6:44 am
I am working on this exact problem this week. Sigh. Where does it all come from? I have one small drawer in the kitchen that started out holding all the “info” from our gated community including the 80+ pages of rules and regulations (many of which we have already broken with our realizing). Now it has a bunch of checks that I use mobile deposit to deposit and don’t know what to do with the actual check, twist ties, appointment cards, lint rollers because I do have two cats, and a license plate holder to name a few objects. Time to purge.
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May 23rd, 2016 at 10:02 am
I was so excited to have an email notification waiting for me this morning alerting me to this new post!
We have a junk mini magnet box. It’s a Pinterest project of a decorated cereal box that hangs from the refridge. It holds lunch box notes I’ve written to my husband that he won’t toss and oddball receipts and coupons.
May 23rd, 2016 at 4:11 pm
Beth Ann — You’re a rule breaker! So funny. I love that you have a license plate holder. I had one too, in a drawer at work, for some bizarre reason. I thought it belonged to a student assistant who used to work for me, but he said no. So I threw caution to the wind and chucked it! No one’s asked for it since.
Vanessa — Thank you for being excited at a post from me. That little comment made my whole day. I love the cereal box holder idea. The fridge is a good place for something like that. Always in front of you. Nice job!
May 23rd, 2016 at 5:29 pm
Oh, I have one of those. Well…actually it is our one and only junk drawer. We have a little house, so all of the drawers…including the junk drawer is little.
In it you will find: Joe’s collection of twist-ties, a bag of rubber bands, a mini-hammer (that the handle is full of different size screwdrivers), tape of all sorts, old cat collars and a cat t-shirt that reads “4 on the floor” and a 3D puzzle.
I go through this drawer all the time…but why I still hang on to some of those things, I will never know.
May 24th, 2016 at 5:50 pm
Lin — Your junk drawer actually sounds kind of helpful and I love that you have a cat T-shirt in there because why not?
June 5th, 2016 at 1:02 am
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September 26th, 2016 at 1:01 pm
I think being an organized is the real being
October 11th, 2016 at 10:09 pm
The only thing I plan to leave in Tiny Junk Drawer is the meat thermometer.Haha me too
October 21st, 2016 at 10:42 am
“A bird feeder warranty (because, you know, they go bad)” Still laughing ten minutes later.
October 30th, 2016 at 3:53 pm
We have gone from a junk drawer to a whole cabinet. I don’t even like to look in it anymore. It keeps getting moved to the bottom of my “To Do List”.
November 5th, 2016 at 3:02 am
I also have a drawer same as yours and definitely a mess, so many garbage,receipts and everything!
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