Every Home Has a Junk Drawer

I had to smile when I saw that Paula (of A Latte Quilts) and I both spent yesterday tidying. Her pantry is neat, neat, neat. She accomplished much more than I for my task was simply to clean out the "junk drawer".

I think every home has a junk drawer. The junk drawer is the catch-all. In our house this drawer holds Pizza Hut coupons, stamps from the grocery store, recipes clipped from magazines, rubber bands, paper clips, stray clothes pins, calculator, scissors, recipe cards, etc. You get the picture. (Just in case you are junk-drawer-deprived, I'm providing a photo of Mine! Before and After!)

So here's my Tip for The Day. The key step in cleaning out a cupboard, a drawer, or a fridge, is to first dump everything. Get that thing Empty! In this instance I used a large, flat plastic container and tossed Everything into it. Look at that clean drawer! It's lovely, lovely, lovely! Sort of a minimalist look, wouldn't you say?

The next step is to place back into the drawer (the cupboard, the fridge, etc) ONLY those items that you intend to keep there. Everything else is sorted and put where it should have been put in the first place. (Most of it can be pitched into File #13). I used small baskets, retrieved from elsewhere in the house, as dividers to hold various junky items. They're perfect for this task.

The tall stack of clipped recipes? I found a dozen that were keepers. I must have been exceedingly hungry when I first ripped them from my magazines. (There's no point in hanging onto a recipe by some New York chef that calls for twelve kinds of cheese, three kinds of fresh seafood, and herbs that have names I can't even pronounce. What was I thinking?)

Now I need to tackle my sock drawer!