Others might call it a junk drawer, but I do not think of it that way, at all. To me, it is an office supply drawer.
It has occurred to me that all of these supplies are duplicated in the computer room. I could walk down the hall and get supplies from there. And if I was short on kitchen drawers, that is exactly what I would do.
I suspect this drawer in the kitchen is the one we all use the most often. It is very handy.
I straighten this drawer pretty regularly. Here is how it looked just as I was getting started, this time -
My motivation? The medicine bottles lined on the right side, the twisty ties and rubber bands cluttering the back, and the haphazard pens, pencils, markers.
For weeks I kept thinking - why did I think those medicine bottles were a good idea? What on earth is in all of them?
One day, waiting for the microwave, I thought, I am going to see exactly what is in all those medicine bottles.
And to my surprise, they were all empty. And they were very green, ours are brown. I have no idea where they came from or how they ended up on the drawer. They are now in recycling.
I realized - I am not required to save every twisty tie. I use the twisty ties that come on things, but I do not actually reuse them on other things. I saved the very large ones and put them in the garage with zip ties. I pitched the small/obnoxious ones, quite happily.
Between that drawer and a bag in the computer room, this is how many rubber bands I had in the house -
I saved one and ALL the rest went to my backdoor neighbor. I order asparagus every week which comes with two of the very good wide purple rubber bands, I will be restocked regularly.
I also cleaned out this many fat highlighters from this drawer and the computer room and they went up my backdoor neighbor also. I kept a small set of the skinny highlighters that are much easier to store.
I kept three of the very good white erasers and sent my neighbor two, still in their wrappers -
I rearranged the drawer a little bit, and here is where we are today -
Make no mistake, it will needed sorted again in about 6 mos. It is a magnet for weird things.
