Junk Drawer

[Jalapeñomel]

I’m assuming everyone has a junk drawer, but do you have a specific junk drawer?

We have a drawer that just has cards: birthday cards, thank you notes, etc.. When I see a cute card, I buy it, so when I forget to mail one, I have it easily accessible.

[underwaterrhymes]

We have multiple junk drawers.

I really need to go through them all.

[pierogigirl]

We have 2 in the kitchen - 1 for craft stuff, and one for misc household stuff like tape, tape measure, rubber bands, etc.

I guess one drawer in our bathroom is one: toothpaste, floss, tweezers, emery boards, etc.

[momin2013]

We have one junk drawer and it’s in the kitchen island. It has pens, pencils, a Sharpie, a highlighter, tape, sticky notes, a stapler, a glue stick, a nail file, scrap paper, a chequebook, a deck of cards, a bunch of random loose papers, and DS’ grade 5 curriculum workbook that I’d meant for him to work on last year but which he barely started. Oh, and what appears to be a mini pocket Quran.

[ProfessorArtNerd]

I have a junk house basically

[pixy0stix]

Aug 15, 2024 17:06:39 GMT -5 ProfessorArtNerd said:

I have a junk house basically

LOL! Same, or at least most times it feels like it.

[Deleted]

Aug 15, 2024 17:06:39 GMT -5 ProfessorArtNerd said:

I have a junk house basically

This.

Seriously we have junk receptacles (drawers, bins, baskets, etc) in nearly every room.

The two in the kitchen have:
D1: Flashlights, batteries, pens/pencils/sharpies
D2: Random small household tools like small screwdrivers, multi-tools, scissors, tape, tape measure, eyeglasses repair kit, and random charging cables for small electronics (labeled)

[doctoranda]

I have a junk drawer in the kitchen that serves for "I don't know where this goes" and I have a drawer with any type of cards, postage, and stationary, and also one with office supplies like pens, tape, clips. The latter two I would not call a junk drawer but I can see that others would. My nightstand is a junk collector.

[eb777888]

There is definitely no organization at all with my junk drawers! It sounds like you have a card drawer, lol. My house is pretty tidy but drawers is where my mess lives. I clean them out every year or so, usually around fall because that's when I do a big deep cleaning, so they are definitely due. I was tearing through everything last week looking for David's SS card and I was like fuck, I gotta organize this shit! So much unused space because it's filled with crap I don't even see for a year at a time.

[mrsslocombe]

We actually don't have one! Our kitchen only has one drawer (thanks NYC apartment design) so the utensils go in there. The closest thing I have is the entry way table, I drop things off there. But I'm forced to actually deal with them periodically because it's staring me in the face.

[circa1978]

Aug 15, 2024 17:09:46 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Aug 15, 2024 17:06:39 GMT -5 ProfessorArtNerd said:

I have a junk house basically

LOL! Same, or at least most times it feels like it.

When you have ADHD, the world is your doom pile.

We do have a dedicated kink drawer in the kitchen above the trash can but the organization of all other drawers is highly theoretical.

[eb777888]

Aug 15, 2024 17:35:08 GMT -5 circa1978 said:

Aug 15, 2024 17:09:46 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

LOL! Same, or at least most times it feels like it.

When you have ADHD, the world is your doom pile.

We do have a dedicated kink drawer in the kitchen above the trash can but the organization of all other drawers is highly theoretical.

[circa1978]

Aug 15, 2024 17:39:48 GMT -5 eb777888 said:

Aug 15, 2024 17:35:08 GMT -5 circa1978 said:

When you have ADHD, the world is your doom pile.

We do have a dedicated kink drawer in the kitchen above the trash can but the organization of all other drawers is highly theoretical.

Hahahaha, ok I'm leaving it.

[mysteriouswife]

I’m dying at the kink drawer. That’s a different post. 😂☠️ I needed that typo

[underwaterrhymes]

Aug 15, 2024 17:06:39 GMT -5 ProfessorArtNerd said:

I have a junk house basically

LOL. Same.

[jlt19]

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I have too much storage. And I feel like over 50% is unnecessary stuff/junk.

I have an abundance of kitchen storage but barely use anything because I quit cooking when we moved here, even moreso when XH moved out. But still have ALL the things.

Basement, half full of crap. 3 car garage barely fits my car and the golf cart. Most of it is XH’s tools he’ll take when he gets a house, at least.

And this is all after purging when we downsized in 2021. My neighborhood has 4 garage sales a year and I still can’t find the motivation to get the stuff out of here. Probably because somehow, more stuff will just fill up the spaces.

I do have a kink drawer though…

[expectantsteelerfan]

We moved into a bigger house with a LOT of drawers and cabinets, and it has led to use have slightly more organized and specific junk drawers and cabinets. As in, we have an entire cabinet in our living room under the TV dedicated to decks of cards, other card games, and games like dog pile and cat stack and the car one that DD still sometimes plays on the coffee table.
In the kitchen we have a battery/flashlight drawer (I tried the battery daddy, and somewhat ironically when I tried it, it lived in the cabinet with the card games, but I found I like them loose in a drawer much better and we have the drawer for it so they went back there). And then we have a column of 4 drawers where we have utensils in one, then like cooking utensils, vegetable peeler, other small tools that get used often in one, then rarely used tools like pumpkin carving stuff, egg dying stuff, big ladles or other random tools that get used a few times a year, and then a drawer for birthday candles, packets of ketchup and taco bell sauce, and other random stuff like that.
And yet we still have another drawer in the 'desk' of our kitchen with the pens, pencils, tape, scissors, note paper, nail file and clippers, etc.
And plus also, all our end tables and our coffee table have drawers that have specific junk in them too.

[Nonny]

I have lots of little junk places (mostly in my desk, or my bathroom drawers). But we don't have one "good" junk catch all drawer because our kitchen drawers are all very firmly designated for kitchen tools. But I have a junk flower pot (it's not like you are thinking, it's square, and kind of flat) that's a junk pot. It has a plastic ninja letter opener, random sticky notes, my freezer tape, my husband's PH testing strips, and some other random crap (I think the cat's brush is in there right now).

[underwaterrhymes]

Aug 15, 2024 18:20:16 GMT -5 jlt19 said:

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I have too much storage. And I feel like over 50% is unnecessary stuff/junk.

I have an abundance of kitchen storage but barely use anything because I quit cooking when we moved here, even moreso when XH moved out. But still have ALL the things.

Basement, half full of crap. 3 car garage barely fits my car and the golf cart. Most of it is XH’s tools he’ll take when he gets a house, at least.

And this is all after purging when we downsized in 2021. My neighborhood has 4 garage sales a year and I still can’t find the motivation to get the stuff out of here. Probably because somehow, more stuff will just fill up the spaces.

I do have a kink drawer though…

😂 same same

[bittybomb]

We have a desk in our kitchen and all of its drawers, and cubbies above house the junk. I can’t stand it. The desk even has an organizer in it that houses even more junk. I hate it.

[penelope]

We have one in our kitchen, one in our office space, H has one in his bedside table….

I started going through the kitchen one not long ago when I was in a ‘throw it all out!” Kind of space. There was a combination lock in there, I asked H if knew the combo. He said no but don’t throw it out, it’s a good lock! What an idiot. I grabbed a garbage bag and just started purging at that point and didn’t ask about another item. So at least everything in them is now usable.

[UMaineTeach]

A writing desk in the entryway/dining room. Off the top of my head, random sunglasses, shoe polish, 2 outdated GPS units from before smartphones, a bunch of cables of unknown use, a collection of lapel pins, pens/pencils/markers, promo key chains / lanyards…

Office desk is another treasure trove of outdated technology. Who’s going to use that floppy disk of Windows 2000 Microsoft Money backups? No.One.

And there is a junk closet upstairs. Let’s not get into that mess.

[Roc A Bee]

Most of these I don’t consider a junk drawer. If I can name what is in the drawer, it isn’t a junk drawer, to me.

My messiest drawer is one in the laundry room. I keep gift cards, mail that I need to file in the office, bills to be paid later, other random paperwork, my check book, stamps, my stepson’s teeth imprint from the ortho, etc.

[dexteroni]

Aug 15, 2024 16:28:31 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

We have a drawer that just has cards: birthday cards, thank you notes, etc.. When I see a cute card, I buy it, so when I forget to mail one, I have it easily accessible.

That isn’t a junk drawer though IMO; it’s a drawer with one dedicated use. To me, junk drawer is a spot where miscellaneous stuff ends up, that either should go somewhere else or has no other place to go, and is at least somewhat messy.

We have a miscellany drawer in the kitchen that holds a few office supplies, a few small tools, spare keys and garage door opener, etc. I guess it would be a utility junk drawer by your definition, but I don’t consider it to be one because it’s stuff we use regularly and it’s decently organized. I do have a true junk drawer in a guest room upstairs. Every time I get something out of it, I find something else I’ve been looking for, and think “I really have to go through this drawer,” and of course never do.

[W.T.Faulkner]

Every junk drawer could be a kink drawer to at least one person in the world.

[rosiebear]

Related, we do have a kink drawer, or more accurately, a kink box. If we both die in an accident, my kids will be mortified. 😆

[donutsmakemegonuts]

I have junk drawer in the kitchen and a junk room upstairs. It's a spare room that I used for my office when I was working remotely back in the day that we have just be putting things in that we don't know what to do with. I have bags of clothes to be donated, the upstairs vacuum, spare toilet paper, etc. The closet has winter coats and wrapping paper/gift bag stuff. It's kind of a mess, but we just close the door lol.

[midwestmama]

Add me to the "junk house" list. We have a few different actual junk drawers. One of them is part of a built-in desk in our breakfast area/dining room, as our house was built in 2000 and those were super popular then. I have on my project list to take out the desktop and then repair the walls, repaint, and buy a free-standing cabinet to put in the space (as there are no built in cabinets above the desk). Then I will have an entire junk cabinet, lol.

Also my office tends to be the junk room - it's where I move things that need to be sorted for donation or to try to sell, as well as other things that I just don't have time to or want to deal with at the moment. My office is in the basement, so no one but me ever really sees it, and I can just close the door if needed.

[NewGirlNic]

We have 1 in the kitchen. I've bought all kinds of organizer inserts and tried like hell to keep it semi organized, but within a few weeks it's a mess. It's a catch all for notepads, random papers, pens, bag clips, chargers/random cords, chapstick etc. I think there are 2 old phones in there. 

We also have one in the little drawer of the end table in the living room. That one isn't as bad. Coasters, old remotes, takeout menus (these are all so old, when do you ever need/use an actual paper menu anymore, LOL), photos. 

I could probably classify our front entry coat closet as a junk closet. LOL. 

[shauni27]

I have one main junk drawer that I just happened to clean out and it makes me so happy to have it organized, lol.

Then we have another one in a hutch in our living room that has gift cards and stickers and other various things like that.

I have a card basket where I keep a bunch of cards that I buy like you, Jalapeñomel.