Eliminate the Junk from Your Junk Drawer

The tradition of the junk drawer is one passed down through the ages. I still know where my mom's junk drawer is and I'm pretty sure it hasn't been cleaned since I lived with her. My drawer is no different. When I look into my junk drawer, I often ask myself how it got this way. Now the term "junk" would imply that it deserves to be a drawer of disarray and chaos, but what's the point in that? How will I ever find what I'm looking for in a drawer full of miscellaneous items I can't find another place to store? Much to my mother's surprise, I have found that there is a better way.

First, stop putting it off. It's easy to leave the junk drawer project for a rainy day, but something tells me when that rainy day comes along; you'll find something else to do. It's time to stop procrastinating. Besides, it won't take that long...it's only a drawer.

Unless you have something lying around the house, I would suggest you use some sort of drawer organizer. Here are a few products I recommend:

Office Depot Brand Metro Mesh Large Drawer Organizer

This organizer has 5 sections to organize everything from rulers, paper clips, scissors and note pads. It retails for $14.19.

Office Depot Brand Drawer Organizer

A cheaper alternative; this organizer is made of plastic but has 4 small compartments, 3 medium sized compartments, and 1 long. It retails for $7.19.

Rogers Hanging Drawer Organizer

If you're organizing a deeper drawer, it might be more effective to use a hanging drawer organizer. This allows you to rest the organizer on the very top of your drawer rails while still allowing you to use the bottom of the drawer for your bigger items or hanging file folders. It also comes with different sized compartments to store and separate pens, push pins and even disks. It retails for $5.79.

Once you've got the tools for your organization, it's time for the fun stuff.

If your drawer is removeable, take it out and dump the contents on the floor. You may want to lay down a towel or newspaper before you do - somehow there always seems to be some questionable material at the bottom of any drawer.

If it does not remove, simply take each and every thing out of the drawer and set them on the floor. Begin by grouping each item into like item categories. For instance: gather pens, pencils and erasers together. Group paper clips, staples and push pins together etc.

If you have a bunch of dirty or broken items, separate them into their own pile. Go through each item that is questionable and either decide to throw them away, donate them to a charity or recycle them.

Once you've grouped everything according to their appropriate category, it's time to go through each of thing and decide what is useful and what is not. If you've previously stored a driver disk to an old printer you no longer have, throw it away. If you've received a promotional calculator or calendar somewhere along your travels and you know you'll never use it, throw it away or donate it. This is perhaps the hardest lesson to learn. You must evaluate what you will use and what you can live without or your junk drawer is likely to become "junk" again.

Using your drawer organizer, fill the compartments with the most important items you've already decided to keep. Depending on the size of your drawer, you may want to buy more than one organizer to fully utilize the space.

One organizer I find particularly useful is a stantionary holder for my drawer. Before I purchased this, I was constantly struggling with crinkled envelopes. I also had trouble finding the right size envelope as I had all of my envelopes together.

Office Depot Brand Stationary Holder

This organizer has 4 compartments to store your stationary and really alleviates pillaging through everything in your drawer to find an envelope or greeting cards. It retails for $26.29.

Tackling this task will leave you ready to find what you're looking for when you need it. Maintain the drawer by repeating these steps every few months to ensure you keep the drawer clutter free.