The Junk Drawer Situation

​Does the drawer become a junk drawer over time?

Or because we have in our mind what is meant by junk drawer, that drawer in the kitchen becomes the junk drawer?

Whatever the case, that drawer in my kitchen is messy junky and now is the time to work on it!

​I even have one of those drawer organizers that was supposed to help with keeping things in order….so
what happened?

That is the burning question isn’t it?
It is for me, and here is the crazy part, I continuously, over years let it build up to the level that it is today!

I can tell you for me is has to do with time, convenience guilt and overwhelmingness.
One thing for sure, I neglected the drawer and therefore made the junk drawer situation worse.
But ultimately, I must deal with this, it can’t keep going on forever.

I know this of course, and I have told myself many times. Mostly when I opened the drawer to look for something, I got used to digging through all the stuff in there until I found what I was looking for, it would only last a minute and then I would be on my way to doing whatever I needed to do.

I started thinking, wouldn’t it be nice just to open the drawer and grab the item I need in a matter of
seconds?
And the answer is yes of course!

And now the messy drawer mission begins.

So, I planned the date and time and took pictures of the drawer. I wanted to remind myself of what it
looked like at the time, and hopefully would never get to that level of messiness again. I gave myself
roughly two hours.

It should never be a surprise of how many things can fit into a drawer until everything is taken out of it.

When I saw the number of items from the drawer that spread across my countertop, I was incredibly
surprised – even though it should not be a surprise.

​There were plenty of random stuff– salt & pepper packets, plastic utensils, batteries, measuring tapes,
lots of hardware tools just to name a few.

How did all of those items plus other stuff end up in there and why?
Well, that would have to be covered in another blog.

Once everything was out it was time to sort, categorize and find a place for it.
This part was easier than I thought. I had multiples of the same items which made the sorting easier and I know what I wanted to keep.

My sister gladly took all the plastic utensils. I was able to reuse the drawer organizer which was
great.
I placed the items I wanted to keep back in the drawer and what a difference for now:

​​I also had another drawer organizer, but this was not going to go into a drawer.
Instead, I would put those things that didn’t belong in the kitchen but belonged somewhere into this organizer and schedule a time to deal with that another day:

​At the end of the day my goal was to deal with that junk drawer, and I accomplished that!
I must admit it feels pretty darn good to get that done.
Although it’s done, it will be ongoing effort to keep it as clear as possible.
I am willing to bet though, that each time I open it I’ll have a pleasant feeling instead of one with overwhelmingness.