How to Organize Your Junk Drawer
It may seem trite, but I find that the state of my junk drawer often reflects the state of my life at any given moment. The more my junk drawer is filled with junk, the more I find myself dealing with junk IRL. But as soon as I tend to my junk drawer, I’m naturally nudged to sort out other unfinished tasks in my life (like taxes and bills, which are often hiding in said junk drawer!).
You’ll know it’s time for a reorganization when your drawer is more often jammed than not—or just as important, if you’re never able to find what you were looking for in the first place. Sound familiar? If so, it’s time to sort through that junk drawer!
Here’s how it’s done:
1. Take everything out of the drawer. The first step is simple enough. To make this worth your while, I strongly recommend removing *all* the contents of your drawer. Yay! You did it.
2. Toss and repeat. Toss (AKA recycle) any manuals for electronic equipment you know how to use (and if you forget how to use them, there’s always the Internet!). If you’re a cable hoarder and love to hold onto mysterious USB cords and old batteries, really consider when you last used them. You can do yourself a solid (and the earth too) by recycling old electronics at Best Buy. Pens and pencils and sharpies, oh my! Cull through your collection and toss any pens and markers that no longer work. If you find collecting receipts thrilling, now’s the time to sort and toss any you no longer need (i.e. that receipt from CVS for Reese’s Pieces can probably go). Consider keeping the remaining important receipts with a small binder clip.
3. Wipe it all down. Grab some All-Purpose Cleaner and a rag, as chances are that drawer has some dust and interesting crumbs lurking in the corners. With a clean drawer, you’ll be that much more motivated to keep everything in place.
4. Group like with like. Now that your drawer is back open for business, it’s time to get everything in order. Group all like items together and pare down the rest. This means grouping coins with other fun coins, rubber bands with rubber bands, receipts with other receipts, scissors with other scissors (but you probably don’t need more than two pairs here, coming from someone who’s guilty of randomly collecting scissors). If you come across items like extra pairs of scissors and bills that *could* go back in the drawer, but might end up taking up valuable real estate, consider moving them to your desk or to another less-frequently used drawer.
5. Bin there, done that. The key to maintaining your junk drawer is to have homes for all your items. You can certainly go The Container Store route and purchase smaller bins for all your items. If that’s the case, these bins are great and so are these. If you’d rather use what you already have, I’m a big fan of Ziploc bags, old Tupperware containers, empty iPhone boxes, and even tea cannisters. Get creative! The main idea is to keep everything in its place so you don’t end up with a mumbo jumbo of miscellany. If you’re waiting on your bin purchases, just put everything back in the drawer for now as you’d like it in the future.
Now that you’ve got everything in place, it’s up to you to keep everything nice and calibrated! Chances are it might get a little wonky from time to time. Accept the ebbs and flows of the junk drawer and know you have a system in place to get everything back on track.