Comments on: House Beautiful: What’s in your junk drawer?

By: Eva Langston

Eva Langston — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:43:04 +0000

I talked with organizer Justin Klosky from the O.C.D. Experience (www.ocdexperience.com) recently, as he came and gave me a free consultation, and said to me that it is indeed OK to have one junk drawer in your home, but it should be organized and clutter free. A suggestion he had was to dump out the drawers in your home that were “junk drawers” and then sift through the things that you actually needed and used, bring them to the one main junk drawer and discard the remaining items that were truly junk. I took his advice and now my junk drawer is clutter free, usable and continues to stay that way since I empty it out now once every few months and do not have any other drawers for junk..

By: Patty

Patty — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:58:27 +0000

@Alisa — From your description of the junk drawer, I thought maybe we grew up in the same house, until you listed the pet collars and flea medicine. (Although if we’d had pets …) Instead, we had the mini-stapler and the staples that didn’t quite fit.

By: Krys Slovacek

Krys Slovacek — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:23:11 +0000

Ditto @Homer. That was my first thought. The first time I opened Karim’s drawer, his stuff would look like what a junk drawer really is.

By: Sue

Sue — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:22:37 +0000

Am I missing something? How do the pens and other round objects in the second picture stay in place?

And do I see a Tide Stain Stick without a lid?

By: Beverly Wade

Beverly Wade — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:48:03 +0000

One of my decluttering clients had the best name for this sort of storage place – ‘The useful drawer’.

By: Homer

Homer — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 01:38:18 +0000

Impressive. Karim Rashad must open his junk drawer very slowly.

By: Alisa

Alisa — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:56:23 +0000

Three more things that were always in that junk drawer from childhood: scissors, batteries and every glue imaginable.

By: RML - Being More Through Having Less

RML - Being More Through Having Less — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:48:44 +0000

http://www.ekkentroslife.com/2.....rawer.html

I posted on my junk drawer coincidentally this week, however I still haven´t done the new improved after shot

By: Alisa

Alisa — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:48:09 +0000

That’s not a junk drawer, Erin! It’s a nicely organized kitchen drawer. I went to the House Beautiful website and I didn’t see one junk drawer. A junk drawer is a mishmash of weird items (that are generally useful) that are all jumbled together in a messy heap. This drawer is generally in the kitchen. I don’t have a junk drawer either but we had one growing up. It had all manner of tape in it, misc. sewing notions, string all wrapped around screws and bolts, floral tape, pencils of all varieties, pens that didn’t work, screwdrivers, rose food, crayons, cake decorating stuff, pet collars, flea medicine, tape measures, letters to my Grandmother, appointment reminders. You get the idea. And this drawer NEVER got organized! All in all it was a neat drawer to comb through when I was a kid. A good junk drawer is like an archeological dig.

By: infmom

infmom — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:59:25 +0000

That is way too organized to be considered a junk drawer.

By: Simpler Living

Simpler Living — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:04:47 +0000

I like your collection of wine stoppers. The lower is really colorful.

I started thinking about the tyranny of the junk drawer when I was getting rid of my clutter. Mine ended up being a way for me to avoid making a decision about what to do with random things like twist ties that I felt badly about just throwing away but ended up never using. Instead of finding a place for things (including the trash can), I put them in the drawer.

Do more organized people, like you, avoid the junk drawer concept altogether? It sounds like it.

By: Tanna

Tanna — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:04:27 +0000

Thanks for sharing Erin. It’s interesting to see how all of the junk drawers can vary! I just did a post with two other organizing bloggers about our junk drawers. http://completeorganizingsolut.....rawer.html