Ask Lemmy

I have heard of people without a junk drawer.

Heard of.

Where is the ball of asparagus rubber bands?

Of course, the junk drawer.

I don't think I've ever been in a home without one.

At least one. Usually more.

Empty the drawer into a box. Whenever you use a box item, it goes into a drawer. After a year, donate the box

Every family has that drawer

Every family... I have TWO of them

Every family has this drawer.

Everyone has this drawer, but this one is too organized. It appears to be 100% kitchen tools. You need to add a deck of playing cards, a bunch of soy sauce packets, a few half-used books of matches, a few take-out menus, and some loose keys in order to do this drawer properly.

Yep, we have that drawer. Ours is much larger and much more full. My wife loves baking, which accounts for a lot of it - there's about 5 pie servers in there, for example, along with various spatulas of many sizes. There are also three ice cream scoops so the odds are good I'll have at least one that is clean when I need it. Lemon zester, spoons, all kinds of baking and cooking-related stuff. The rubber things you use to get stubborn jars open. I can't even think of what else is in there, but there's a lot.

This is separate from the drawer that has rarely-used knives (we have a knife block for the commonly used knives), cake decorating materials, and similar stuff.

And both of those are separate from the designated "junk drawer" that has random stuff like box cutters, can coozies, gift cards, coupons, etc.

Your wife is right mate, this drawer is what makes a house a home.

I have multiple junk drawers. Like all of them.

Every household has a junk drawer. Be thankful you don't have more than one.

Yours is actually much cleaner, but you cannot escape the drawer. We are all the drawer. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Yes, I have the where-does-this-thing-go drawer, for food prep items that don't fit elsewhere, and also the junk drawer which includes things like

• Lighter
• Weird long plyers
• Twine
• Self-fusing rubber tape
• Random rubber bands
• Twist ties that came with electronics
• A random assortment of sharpies in various states of abuse
• A weird scissor thing with a blade at 90° to a flat piece of steel
• Random Lego pieces
• Batteries that are good but not in packaging
• Hearing aid batteries (noone in our house has hearing aids)
• A single 12"x18" piece of Scotch Brite
• Matches
• A pencil with the tip broken off
• A pair of 1/2" Cast iron pipe 90° fittings
• A key for a car that nobody can ID
• The manual for the microwave
• A bunch of pennies
• ~~Coupons for McRibs that are expired~~ gone thanks for this thread
• ~~Our home insurance policy~~ nope, 3y out of date
• A replacement impeller for the fish tank
• An iPod charger (FireWire)
• An iPhone charger (usb)
• 2 sets of analog headphones
• A dishwasher cleaning tablet

So...there you go.

Every house has one.

Throw in birthday candles, rubber bands, and a few coins and you got yourself a proper junk drawer.

Jesus fuck, it's fine.

We have 3 such drawers, one in the kitchen, one in a common area and one in the laundry room.

This drawer is the solution. To everything...

I honestly have multiple drawers like it.

Our catch-all drawer has screwdrivers, pliers and enough other tools to rebuild an engine, plus office supplies.

Not to brag but I have two of these and a proper junk drawer.

Remove the scale, electronics don't belong in the misc food prep and niche baking implements drawer. Once you do that you'll easily recognize it as the food prep and niche baking implements drawer. The scale goes on a shelf, or in a cabinet next to the mixer/food proc/salad spinner.

Every family has this drawer

Pfft you call THAT an overstuffed drawer?

I bet you can open it without anything catching the backside of the cabinet, nerd.

You've lost this one, and if this was a hill you were prepared to die on I would get ready to lose a lot more.

every family has this drawer. We have this drawer. The solution to having this drawer is having this drawer.

Yes, every family has this drawer, and every family also has a member who despises this drawer and fruitlessly reorganizes, labels and makes it easy for everyone else but it takes one load of dishes and…

What were we talking about again. Oh yeah, that’s normal.

Yes, every household in the developed world has a drawer like this. It's for things that you hardly need or never need, but might do, one day, probably (not).

Why it bothers me: in a more sane world, this stuff would be shared. Every community would have a junk tool shed - not every household of 4 people, or 2 people, or (increasingly) one person. It's reminiscent of that drill statistic: the average electric drill is used for 7 minutes in its lifetime. This is madness. Our planet is overflowing with junk. As a species we need to be smarter.

Yes. Minus the scale, absolutely. It’s the tools that too big for the utensil drawer but too small to take up shelf space in a cabinet.

Solution: build a new cabinet with a bunch of drawers and put one item in each drawer

What?

Yes, I have a drawer like that. And yes, every family has this drawer.

It's the miscellaneous utensil drawer. We have 2. Up top for common ones like can opener, corkscrew... big one on floor for the lesser used ones like rolling pin, flour sifter, hand mixer....

If you are arguing over this, don't. Not worth it because there's no better answer unless you have a millionaire mansion with a gazillion drawers

A junk/misc. drawer? Yes.

my family has had 2 of these since the 90s and now i have 2 of my own.

Yep. The "junk drawer". Even in my house with my diagnosed OCD mom had one of these.

That's not even a proper junk drawer, that's all kitchen gadgets, but okay... Yes, in my experience, most households have a junk drawer.

Pretty much every house i cooked at i found an equivalent of this drawer, even when they did other things differently. Maybe with the exception of my girlfriend, she's freakishly organized, but she has one massive drawer that includes silverware where somehow all the weird crap fits and it's organized,

Edit: I lied, I looked at her drawer again today, she has a subsection for random cluttered shit

Yep, have one. Its perfectly organised, because those things always go back in that drawer so that's just where they go.

Every house have this. And yours is very neetly organised. Congrats. May you "tiroir à bazar" stay this empty of small non identified cluter.

Every family has this drawer.

Every single person does not have this drawer.

Every child has this for every drawer.

These misc drawers are the best way to worship anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers (also luck).

Well this backfired on OP

I regrettably also have this drawer.

Attempts at cleaning it usually end up with the drawer now being somewhere else, but it clings to life somehow.

I think they're just a fact of life at this point.

Not only does everyone have one of these, they suffer from quantum entanglement.