Reclaim Your Junk Drawer

Behold: the humble junk drawer.

Everyone has one, right? It’s that drawer, usually in the kitchen, that is the default place to shove something when you think you need it but can’t figure out where to store it. The junk drawer is the platonic ideal of the catch-all, the original “miscellaneous” category.

Here’s the thing about the junk drawer, though. It doesn’t actually work all that well to help you find those things you’ve placed inside it. It becomes such a stuffed jumble of random items that it’s hard to see everything or know what exactly is in there. This is why so many people wonder if it’s even possible to organize a junk drawer.

There are a ton of tips online about how to organize your junk drawer. However, if you want to completely prevent junk drawer clutter in the first place, I have a different proposal:

Get rid of your Junk Drawer and embrace the Utility Drawer!

Just by using a different word, you’re going to change the way you think about this one little drawer. A junk drawer is literally a dumping ground, a space full of crap where you shove things when you don’t know where to put them.  On the flip side, a utility drawer is a drawer full of things that are very useful that you need to access all the time.

But this isn’t just a semantic issue. Everyone does need a place to store odds and ends that they really do use all the time. With a utility drawer, you can approach this need to store seemingly random useful things with intentionality. Ask yourself what things you need quick access to on a regular basis, and organize your utility drawer around them.

Exited to reclaim your junk drawer as a less messy, more useful Utility Drawer? Here’s how to organize your junk drawer in 7 easy steps:

• Clean out your junk drawer. I mean take out everything! Bonus points for giving it a quick wipe down. Drawers get grody.

• Throw away any obvious trash. That might even be the top few sheets of this notepad, if the lists are old.

• Sort everything from your junk drawer into categories. In this drawer, I can already see that there are several lint rollers, which I’d put into a pile.

• Decide which of these categories are appropriate for your new utility drawer, and in what quantities. Maybe it makes sense to keep a few AA batteries in the utility drawer, but most of them should be stored with tools, lightbulbs, and hardware.

• Find a home that makes sense for anything you’ve decided not to store in your utility drawer. Maybe the lint rollers should go in the closet, to use when getting dressed.

• Think about anything else you might like to have with these items to make them easier to use. Locate them and add them to your utility drawer. Do you want standard Scotch tape on hand in addition to packing tape?

• Create your final organizing scheme for your utility drawer. I love using simple drawer dividers - preferably plastic or acrylic, because they’re durable and easy to clean.

There is no one best junk drawer organizer - a lot of products will do a similar job. Instead of focusing on a particular product, instead use the concept of the utility drawer to guide your organizing solutions.

Reframing a classic home organizing problem in this way is just one of the ways professional organizers think about organizing differently. Want to find out how to shift your mindset and start thinking like an organizer? Click the button for free resources, including my webinar on Developing an Organized Mindset.

What organizing ideas have you used to organize your kitchen junk drawer?

LMW