Sometimes one big drawer of junk isn’t nearly as easy to navigate as two smaller drawers full of half the junk each. So in that vein I decided to transfer all of the stuff out of our double-wide junk drawer, which has gotten increasingly “rowdy.” Especially in comparison to the obedient glasses, mugs, and vases in the upper cabinet:
We have some completely empty smaller drawers on the other side of the kitchen near the office which should do the trick. We’re blessed to have more storage than we know what to do with in this kitchen – and putting this stuff near the office is so much easier since we use 99% of it in the office anyway (but don’t have the means to store it in there yet). And now – how exciting for you guys on this fun Thursday morning – you get to come along for the entire junk-drawer-transfer adventure. Fasten your seat belts. It’s gonna get ca-ray-zay.
Here I am cheesily sorting stuff and trying to decide what should go where (I love taking drawers out and parking it on the floor to go through them- then I can spread everything out to see what I have – and then make “keep”, “store somewhere else” and “donate/trash piles”).
A few tips from an admittedly not-very-varsity organizer (I just dabble, so let’s call me JV):
- If you haven’t used it in 6 months to a year, you might not need it at all (or may be able to store it somewhere out of the way, like in a small storage box in the closet as opposed to giving it real estate in the everyday-use junk drawer)
- Try to group like items together so you can grab them all at once if you need to (ex: address book, postage stamps, and address return address stamp)
- Nobody needs five hundred pens
- Nobody needs five hundred paper clips
- I realized that we moved a stack of Post It Notes and hadn’t used one since the move. Or before the move. We’re just not Post It people. Which is good to know since we’ve had that same unused pad for years (taking up space that something we do use could have been inhabiting).
- Corralling the smaller items in little divided boxes is always nicer than having clips and pins and staples lying around without any structure around them to “contain” them
- More shallow piles vs. fewer deep piles are easier to go through when you’re looking for something (you can see more so you don’t mess up the entire drawer searching for something at the bottom of a deep pile)
- Snacks keep the organization effort moving (a handful of jelly beans = energy)
Here are those empty drawers located right off of the office in the corner of the kitchen:
And here’s the top drawer after packing in a ton of stuff in a slightly more organized manner (envelopes and stamps on the right side, our green address book with our address stamp and tape and stapler in the front, and a whole lotta pens, pencils, scissors, paper clips, binder rings, wire, band-aids, etc in the brown cubbied box).
Here’s the second drawer with batteries, rubber bands, safety pins, markers, crayons, 3M heavy duty velcro (great for keeping frames from getting pulled down by Clara) along with checkbooks and paper bank tubes for rolling change. Update: John didn’t like the idea of everyone on the internweb knowing where our checkbooks are so they have since been relocated (even though I countered that our alarm could stymie Clooney and the rest of those Oceans Eleven guys – did he not read yesterday’s post?).
Update: When it comes to babyproofing, we’re doing that as we go. Clara doesn’t open kitchen drawers or cabinets yet (and is always supervised in the kitchen), but the second she shows any interest (aka: even touches them, let alone opens them) we’ll babyproof and share a little update as things in our house evolve.
Oh and that third drawer got to house all of our cloth napkins, runners, and paper napkins:
And check out what I found at the bottom of the old junk drawer. Nope, not a cute baby girl, a permanent red ink stain from an old floppy disk. How random and retro is that? Ha.
Another random occurance: how many times my feet made it into this post. They’re in 33% of the pictures. That has to be an all time record.
But my best discovery was this old soccer button with little boy John on it. How cute was my hubby twenty years back? Of course he still is, but this is a whole new level of cuteness. And I see a whole lotta Clara in that sweet face. Note the eyeball cabinet knobs checking him out too.
My takeaway from this project a three fold. 1) Organizing always feels like it’s going to be a bigger/more annoying task than it actually is (this whole thing took me less than thirty minutes when I just parked it on the floor and got ‘er done). 2) Taking those thirty minutes out to do this will probably save me an hour a month if I stay on top of these drawers and keep putting things back where they go (since it’ll be much easier to find things that I search for regularly- thereby saving me time). 3) There’s nothing like waking up to a freshly organized junk drawer on a sunny Thursday morning. Yeah, that’s right. I know how to have a good time. It’s the little things, right?
What little things are you guys up to these days? Any organization to be had? Hope you find at least one floppy disk (or evidence thereof) somewhere. Ah, those were the days. John and I were just reminiscing about dial up internet. I can still perfectly mimic the sound of connecting to the modem. Oh yeah- I’m that shrill. Once again $herdog proves she knows how to have a good time.
Christina says
Hi! I’ve been a long-term lurker around these here parts (since you two were this young house!) and I absolutely CANNOT wait until you remodel your new kitchen and dining area! It’s going to be fantastic, I just know it!!
Have a Happy Weekend :)
Red Red Completely Red says
I’m intrigued by the heavy duty Velcro. Our daughter, Tilly, is about to turn one, and will pull anything off the wall, which has prevented me from my dream of a frame wall. I’d love to know how/where the Velcro goes in hanging pictures. And does it ruin the wall?
Also, totally envious of you being able to remove your fireplace — that’s number one baby danger in our house, and is currently blocked off by oh-so-beautiful posterboard. :)
YoungHouseLove says
It’s made my 3M so it’s easily removable without damaging the wall (you tug on this weird tab and it detaches, but kids can’t do that to release the frame since that clips in). Hope that makes sense! Just check it out at Target or JoAnn or Michael’s. Good luck!
xo,
s
Jessie says
Did you guys recently have a security scare or something? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed you guys talking about privacy or security, so it surprised me to hear you mention it in two posts in a week. I sure hope nothing happened at Casa Petersik!
YoungHouseLove says
Haha- no worries at all! We just like to assure people who worry (like a few well-meaning readers, but mostly my mom, haha) that it’s all good and we always have security in mind. We don’t want it to seem like we don’t take that stuff seriously (because we couldn’t love our house or our little family more- so of course we go out of our way to safeguard ‘em)!
xo,
s
Mel V. says
“John and I were just reminiscing about dial up internet. I can still perfectly mimic the sound of connecting to the modem. Oh yeah- I’m that shrill.”
I think I might just have fallen a little further in love with you. Er, in an entirely platonic, non-creepy way, that is!
MommaMcCarthy says
We use post-its for one thing around here: child entertainment. Think customizable (usually with scribbles) stickers that are removed without leaving a sticky residue. Probably long enough entertainment to clean out a junk drawer!
YoungHouseLove says
Oooh, very intriguing. Maybe we’ll try them out at Grammy’s house since ours are gone. Haha.
xo,
s
Kacie says
I LOVE a good Spring Clean. Organizing always makes me feel so much better.
Kacie
http://www.acollectionofpassions.blogspot.com/
Rocky B says
I am finally catching up with you recent posts! I can’t agree more about how good it feels to organize the “junk drawer” or in our case the “junked out” garage. A few Sunday’s ago I spent 7 hours organizing and cleaning. I didnt spend a dime and it feels like we completely transformed a room of our house! Yay for organizing! I can also pull my car in for the first time since we moved in, double score!
Heidi P. says
Hi! This isn’t so much a comment about the junk drawer (although, I must say, I love kitchen makeovers so I’m really excited to see how yours turns out), but I couldn’t find a question I wrote a while back and your response to it, so I’m responding to that again…here. Anyway, I asked about spray painting an old coffee table, and you were so, so nice to respond quickly. So THANK YOU!!! Seriously, thank you. And I thought I should let you see the finished results… that I just barely posted to my blog. It’s at dhperezfamily.blogspot and it’s the second post down. Thanks again!! You’re awesome!
YoungHouseLove says
Woah- that looks awesome. Love the crisp and clean look of it. So glad it worked out!
xo,
s
Leslie says
I’m envious of your drawer space! We only have 4 shallow drawers in our kitchen, so I use a clear hanging shoe storage thing on the wall inside our coat closet to wrangle all of our ‘junk drawer’ items. It makes it easy to put like with like, and each pocket will only hold so much, so I don’t have to worry about deep piles. The fact that the pockets are clear so I can see everything without having to dig down to the bottom is icing on the cake:)
Jess says
I must be losing my mind, but when I first saw that picture of the floppy disk it looked like a stamped imprint of Judy Jetson waving. Something akin to Jesus’s-face-on-a-slice-of-toast. Ok done being weird now. :-)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha- comment of the day. Just for being so random.
xo,
s
Rae Ann says
Ha! My in-laws still have dial-up. Can you believe it? It takes literally five minutes to load gmail. Gah.
Kim S says
Just came back to this post after organizing my own junk drawer this afternoon, and now I’m curious…what did you end up doing with John’s old soccer button? I found something similar in my own organizing spree today (my husband’s old passport from when he was 12 or so…he had lots of stamps!) and I just can’t decide what to do with it.
YoungHouseLove says
It’s in a little shoe box of memorabilia that we keep (we only allow ourselves one shoebox and when it overflows with movie stubs and notes and old pics and stuff we sort it and cull it down so it fits again).
xo,
s