The Junk Drawer

I’ve been meaning to do the junk drawer post for quite some time, but am just now getting to it. What really lit a fire under me was while I had people over for dinner one evening. A friend was helping me with dinner because I had had a few too many cocktails beforehand and I pulled out an oven glove from the drawer by the oven (aka the junk drawer) for him to use. When he reached his hand inside the glove it wouldn't go on correctly. Instead, he pulled his hand out of the glove holding onto my extra car key; the car key which was also kept in the junk drawer.

Since I am on summer vacation I thought this was a good time to clean the junk drawer…
The culprit is the top drawer.

Here it is open, well kind of since this is as far as it would open before getting stuck on all the junk.

This is everything that had been put inside that little, tiny drawer.

Some interesting highlights…
These are pictures of my “nieces and nephews”. Emily, in the top picture, is going into 1st grade this year. I get pictures of the kids which are great, but I don’t ever really know what to do with them afterwards, so they end up in the junk drawer. These have been in the junk drawer for about 4 years.
Here are some coupons and receipts. The most recent coupon had an expiration date of August 26, 2006!

The 3 items here are so outdated it’s not even funny – a calculator that no longer works, a transmitter for my first ipod, and a cassette tape. Yes, a cassette tape! Can you even remember the last time you used a cassette tape? I can’t, but I had one in my junk drawer just…in case.

These are old calendars (go back as far as 2005) and check registers. Since I do all my banking online, and have for some time, I don’t even use check registers anymore. And why oh why would I need calendars from 2-3 years ago?

Keys! There are maybe 3 in this pile that I know what they are used for. The others? I have no idea, but they might be needed someday.

I use a lot of chapstick and whenever I’m at Target I pick up a pack, just in case. Usually it’s because I don’t remember seeing any left over in the junk drawer. It was probably hidden under the old coupons and keys, but I’ve got enough to last me for a little while anyways.

After throwing out all of the things that were either expired or haven’t been used in over a year and finding better places for some other things, I have a very clean junk drawer now. It even opens all the way!

What kind of junk are you holding on to?