Organizing Your Junk Drawer

Most people seem to have a junk drawer somewhere in their homes. Mine have always been in the kitchen.

Here is a look at my own drawer. It needs to be revisited as it’s getting too messy to find anything in it! And just because it has a cute little drawer organizer in there, doesn’t mean it’s organized.

Even though you may clean and organize a drawer, closet, room or home, you need to keep up with the decluttering and organizing or it will fill with clutter again.

I timed myself and was able to reorganize my drawer in 30 minutes. It was slightly longer than I anticipated, but I did take time to rinse out the drawer organizers and tried to be thoughtful about what I was putting back in the drawer, as well as try not to toss something that may be of value to someone else.

My goal in the end was to NOT have a junk drawer, but a neatly organized drawer of items used often in the kitchen area. I think that’s a great idea for every drawer in any room. Put things in it that you use in that area. Anything that’s truly junk should be tossed in the garbage.

Steps to Organizing Your Junk Drawer

• Empty out your drawer to see exactly what’s in there.
• Toss anything that is garbage: broken, unused, junk.
• Remove items that belong somewhere else in the home.
• Put like items together: rubber bands, glue, tools, etc.
• Use drawer organizers to keep items neat and easy to access.
• Maintain your non-junk drawer by glancing through it periodically.

Here is my drawer after I reorganized it. Ahhh…. Much better! I can now easily get to pens and pencils and small household tools. I didn’t want to spend any money on more drawer organizers, so I used what I had and added a couple more containers (I love those Hillshire lunch meat containers for organizing drawers). And I’m left with room to find everything easily.

Items that didn’t belong in this drawer went into other areas of the home where they made more sense. I didn’t really need a box of push pins in this drawer because I don’t even own a bulletin board in my kitchen!

Everyone will have to decide for themselves what small items are important to them, that they use regularly and need to be part of the so called junk drawer. But whatever you decide you need, keep it neat so you can find what you’re looking for quickly. And be sure to revisit this drawer every 6 months or so just to make sure things didn’t find their way into it that don’t belong!