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Anyone who claims they don’t have a kitchen junk drawer is either a liar or a sociopath. Because no matter how organized a person may be, everybody needs a place to stash all of those little random things that don’t really belong anywhere else.
If your drawer is anything like mine used to be, it also contains a handful of items that do have proper homes but you shoved them into the junk drawer anyway because isn’t that the whole point of a junk drawer?
But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Your junk drawer doesn’t have to be junky. It can be neat, orderly, and even kinda pretty. Just imagine a world in which you’re looking for that one birthday candle with the gold stripes or the big binder clip you swear you saw in there last week and you actually find them both with ease—and without stabbing yourself with a thumbtack or getting all weepy when you come across a takeout menu for your favorite Thai place that closed last year.
Well, not only is it possible to have an organized junk drawer—it’s possible to keep an organized junk drawer, too. Here’s how to make it happen.
Trying to organize your kitchen drunk drawer while it’s still full of stuff will only lead to more chaos. Instead, just take the whole thing out and dump the contents onto a table or into a large tray or other spacious, shallow receptacle. Avoid putting your junk into anything tall and deep, though, because you need to be able to see what you’re dealing with.
Before you even think about putting anything in the drawer, give the inside a good wipe down. Putting your items back into a fresh, clean drawer will be far more satisfying than trying to refill a dusty, crusty drawer.
This step is completely optional, but lining your drawer with pretty paper can inspire you to keep it neat and organized going forward. Choosing a light color will make it easier to see what’s inside.
In order to keep your drawer from turning back into a mess of miscellany, everything that goes back into it must have a home. Modular drawer organizers like the ones linked below are great for this purpose because you can arrange them in whatever way works best for you and your stuff. These baby bins also help to limit the number of “homes” available for your junk—because if you only have enough room for five or six organizers and they end up getting filled with stuff you actually reach for regularly, you might need to rethink where (or if) you keep all of those promotional flash drives you haven’t touched in a decade.
As tempting as it may be to start putting things into your madeover drawer right away, you still need to actually organize your junk—and ideally get rid of some of it in the process. Start by grouping things by category (writing utensils, rubber bands, paper clips, stamps, birthday candles, thumbtacks, tiny tools, etc.) on your table or tray. Then inspect each pile for broken, damaged, duplicate, or otherwise useless items and set those aside to trash or donate.
Now, go through each pile again. If you haven’t written a check in three years, does your checkbook really belong in the kitchen, or is it better off in a desk or fireproof document box? What about that charging cable you know goes to something but you can’t remember what and probably never will? Also, seriously, just wipe or transfer whatever is on those flash drives and get rid of them already; everything lives on the cloud now.
Now for the fun part! Once you’ve categorized and cleared out your junk, it’s time to start putting what’s left back into your clean, neatly divided drawer in order of priority. Of course, what’s most important is totally up to you; if you reach into that drawer most often for pens, Sharpies, and scissors, they should probably be in a long, skinny organizer toward the front. Smaller items you rarely use can live in the back.
If, by some miracle, you end up with a spare organizer and keeping it empty for future miscellaneous items won’t send you on a slippery slope right back down to junk drawer chaos, you can leave it as a catchall. When it starts to feel overcrowded, you can clean it out without having to dump the entire drawer and start over again. If the idea of an empty organizer is just too dangerous, you can turn it upside down so you’ll at least have to think twice before tossing yet another promotional jump drive in there—but honestly, who the hell is still giving those things out in 2023?!
