Junk Drawers

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Today I am grateful for junk drawers.  Whenever I move to a different place the first piece of business is to assign a junk drawer.

When I searched for a good picture to use with this submission I found organized junk drawers.  That’s just wrong.  Un American! Organize your purse, your closet (like me), your dresser drawers, your utensils, your brain. . .but keep your mitts off the junk drawer.  It’s supposed to be a tangled mess of. . .well. . .JUNK!

I heard my husband rattling around in the kitchen the other day yanking and digging and slamming.  I’m smart enough not to expect a surprise dinner so I asked what he was doing.  “I’m trying to get the blasted hammer out of the junk drawer!”  Hah!  Cooking would have been easier.  “It’s tangled in a shoelace and the tape stuck to it and now that little basket that had rogue nails and lipstick and batteries that probably don’t work, and address labels and post-it pads and a nail file and the top to some bottle, tipped over and I’ll never get it back in. And why do we have clay in a plastic bag in there?”  Junk drawers are not for sissies.  They are training for the Tupperware drawer.  He sputtered as he tried to jam the hammer back, smooshing it into a now broken glue stick. “We should organize this thing.”

WE should organize it?  The collective WE?  As in ME?  “Knock yourself out,” I said.  “Lemme know when you’re done and I’ll post a picture.”

I am grateful the junk drawer is the one thing in my house I don’t feel guilty about when it’s a mess.  My husband would have probably had an easier time surprising me with dinner.