Show me your junk drawer

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In the vein of the post we ran about the art project documenting the interiors of refrigerator, I want to see what y’all have in your junk drawers.

Here’s the key to mine:

  1. Adhesives.
  2. Batteries and matches. It makes sense in my head to have an “adhesives, batteries, and matches” bin.
  3. Keys. To what, I do not know. Also a Square reader. You know, in case I need to take credit card payments in my kitchen.
  4. A half-used tube of henna.
  5. Three sets of nail clippers — my hoard so my husband can’t lose ALL of them — and a cat laser.
  6. Screwdrivers. All kinds!
  7. Tools! Tools that aren’t screwdrivers, I guess.
  8. Plastic wraps, bags, and tin foil.

Mine’s pretty straightforward — so you’re going to get bonus points for the freakier naturally-occurring collections. Post your photos on Flickr and share links in the comments.

About the Author: Cat Rocketship

I was the Managing Editor of Offbeat Home for a year and a half. I have a rich Internet life and also a pretty good real life. Hobbies include D&D, Twitter, and working on making our household more self-reliant. I also draw things.

Comments on Show me your junk drawer

  1. I don’t have a picture of this, unfortunately, and it is no longer present in my home (I have since become much more vigilant in my battle against stuff), but I used to have a junk drawer that included only an incredibly rusty bear trap and a bunch of plastic easter eggs.

  6. Is it bad that we have 4 junk drawers?

    There’s the stationary draw that contains the entire contents of a desk I no longer own or have space for, the ‘weird shit’ draw for things like bouncy balls and plastic frogs, the DIY draw for things like duct tape, spare light bulbs and screws and the ‘misc. paper’ draw for things like wrapping paper I want to reuse and stickers I want to find a use for.

    And this is in addition to 2 draws for stuff with a lot of sentimental value but no practical use (like old concert tickets) and a draw mostly full of “7 vinyl albums.

    Yeah, I admit it. I keep a lot of shit. But at least I know what’s in them all right?

    • i too had the drawer of sentiment until i skimmed through my mother in law’s “dating scrapbook” where she documented the years in which she dated her husband. that was a scrapbook the way it should be- scraps adhered to a giant page, NOT sparkly, wavy bits of paper, costly stickers and maybe three things worthy of keeping. the cellotape and newspaper clippings were yellowing beautifully. how couldn’t i follow suit? so i grabbed an old album from my graduation that only had two used up pages, a giant bottle of tacky glue and my scraps and went to town. now i actually look through those things and its much better than having them tucked away who knows where.

      • One day I want to take all of my husbands old con badges (because he saves them all) and press them under the glass of our coffee table. Seems better than just keeping them all in a jar in our closet.

  7. My partner hates the idea of a junk drawer whereas I think it’s necessary, useful and fun – especially in the kitchen. Spare keys, incense, tape measure, corks-for-future-corkboard-project, laser pointer for the kitties, batteries, bottle caps, push pins, paint swatches, “important” receipts, miscellaneous stuff that doesn’t have another home, etc. are all housed here. Periodically my partner gets into a tizzy wherein the drawer is cleared out and piles of “my crap” are presented to me with a frown. I secretly sneak this stuff back in a week later when the cleaning frenzy has passed… mwahahahaha.

  11. In our home its called “The Everything Drawer”

    Normal items that can be found in it:
    scissors, super glue, tape, batteries, tacks, twisty-ties, rubber bands

    Less normal items:
    Fire sauce packets from TB, A fake hairy mustache, Take out menus, shrinky-dinks, a My Little Pony comb (we don’t have kids), scented wax melts, assorted product samples (like vitamin samples, lotion samples)…

    I know there is more, but that’s all I can think of at the moment.

  12. http://flic.kr/p/aDK6BU

    I should mention that I removed a layer of take out menus from the top of this so that you could see the inner workings of the drawer…
    From top to bottom: Travel Pack tissues, beer bottle caps (oh, so many. And why???), liquor bottle pourer cap thingy, frosting tips, string that looks eerily like the kind that comes wrapped around a turkey , playing cards, command hook, tons of pens, sharpies, highlighters, batteries – both ones we use and ones that we don’t know what they go to, a baggie of birthday candles, a baggie of plastic monkeys, painters tape, wet wipes, stamps, chopsticks, plastic spoons, scissors, lego parts, hair tie and binder clip.

    • Yes! I was going to post that my whole garage is a junk drawer!
      We often refer to it as “The room of Crap” because with a toddler in the house you have to keep things a little safer and when we don’t know what to do with something it always gets chucked in the garage for awhile. I even have a “Transition counter” out there for on going project piles or boxes to be shipped at christmas-time.

  14. I have wooden clothes pins and stuff to clean wine off the carpet and cut flower food in one drawer…and the other is organized with little bins and such: light bulbs, batteries, 3-prong adapters and take-out menus. But I’m still sorting other stuff out since we got married…I’m sure they will accumulate more. I have more junk “baskets” on random tables to collect all that crap that ends up under the couch from the cats.

  17. No picture, but at my mom’s house there used to be a drawer full of rubber bands. Nothing else.

    My stepdad comes with a Depression era mentality, can you tell?

  18. Growing up we had “The Hutch” in the kitchen. It was essentially the house’s Lost and Found. It had THREE junk drawers, which had random photos of relatives, crayons, envelopes, stamps, keys, screws, tape, etc.

    I *JUST* cleaned my junk drawers this weekend (Dog treats, tape, screwdrivers, straws) but
    Here is the junk drawer at my office desk.

    Emergency Makeup and first Aid Kit including rubber gloves and rag to mop up blood (just call me Joan from Mad Men); nail polish; cards, stamps, checkbook; emergency candy; old Samsung cell phone(anyone want it?); lint brush.

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