Please help resolve a disagreement in our home
Please help resolve a disagreement in our home
My wife says every family has this drawer. I do not believe every family has this drawer. Do you have this drawer? Do you know a good solution to this drawer?
We have a silverware drawer, organized, maxed out. A sharps drawer, organized, maxed out. Ziplocs, organized, maxed out. Bbq tools and oven mitts, organized, maxed out. But all this shit has no particular category so fuck me right. I gotta have an awkward necessary crap drawer. Maybe I should post all my drawers and crowdsource me some sense into my kitchen.
Every family has this drawer.
Not to brag but I have two of these and a proper junk drawer.
We've got 2
Yep, I have a 'random shit' drawer too
We have two of them.
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.
This guy knows what he's talking about
Don't forget tangled wired headphones, rubber bands, a single battery, loose change, and unevenly folded napkins you'll never use!
Yes, I'm pretty sure everyone has a drawer like that. One thing I'm missing (unless I'm just not looking hard enough) is scissors.
When my daughter was 4, she named it the “Don’t know where go drawer” and that’s how we’ve referred to it since.
I also have a man drawer.
Yep, this is a junk drawer at its nascent stage.
My mother got into the pampered chef selling bulldonkey when I was young, and despite the dozens of items we got from them, only four really stood out, and she still has three of them. The ice cream scoop (how hard is it to make a shaped chunk of metal, after all), the kitchen shears (which were actually good quality), the slap-chop before there was a slap-chop brand (the one that is now missing/broken), and the kitchen organizer thing for the countertop: pic related. It was great for the longer shaped things, like some of what you have in the drawer. If the drawer bothers you that much, consider something that goes on the countertop or on the wall (or even a hanging pot organizer, which I love above a kitchen island.
What is the green thing with the white blades?
Not in my house: We have like, 4 or 5 of that drawer. Between me and my wife we have a shitload of kitchen gadgets and accessories.
Aaaah, the "As seen on TV"+drawer! Yes we have that one.
I am ridiculously organized and clean. I do that 5 minutes of swift pickup/wipe a few times each day.
That said, still have this drawer. There is always a collection of items that don't seem to go "together" but they're always used. That's what this drawer is for.
I don't get the stock picture though. It's an obvious arrangement of tools that haven't even been used.
Why is it on the top. It should be second or third.
I do not have that drawer. Mine is at least twice as full.
Sorry to say, your wife is right. Sorry to say, even if she is wrong she is right.
A messy drawer? There should be at least two: one for the kitchen and one for general.
To say what others have said in a different way. Yes, in almost any categorisation system, you're gonna need to deal with some misc haha.
Where else could these things possibly go? (minus the scales, which in my opinion belong on some flat surface in a cupboard of countertop somewhere, since I use my scales all the time)
We have one of these drawers at home, also. I think your wife is right on this one friend.
I have three small awkward necessary crap drawers, and my apple slicer doesn't fit into them. But my kitchen is so small, I call in the galley (facetiously, it's not actually on a boat).
We do not have that drawer. My kitchen is tiny and only has 2 drawers. As a result, our entire apartment is a mess
Every family has a misc. drawer. Staplers, pens, rubber bands, paper clips. Lots of office supplies usually but it often will broaden out to all kinds of random crap.
That one is not exactly what I’d expect in the misc drawer but it’s not totally out of bounds?
Dear OP, the only odd thing about your drawer is that your garlic press in in there (unless this is your backup garlic press of course). In our household, we have it in the main cutlery drawer.
BTW, we have several such drawers spread out over our home: one in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in the home office and several in the garage.
Found the dad.
This is not a junk drawer. A junk drawer has flashlights, pocket knife, some tools, tape, bandaids, pens. This drawer doesn't have anything like that.
This is the food prep drawer.
I have three food utensil drawers. Dining, serving, and prep.
If you have a small kitchen, maybe you would combine serve and prep utensils into one drawer.
Can opener, cheese grater, scale, rolling pin, whisks, mixer parts, and cooking knives, all go into drawer. But like the bread knife and cake knife go into serve drawer, along with labels, and serving spoons, for example.
My wife has serious ADHD, this is every drawer.
Yeah it's a thing. I've made wood box type things to separate the drawer out and try to keep it slightly organised.
If you already have a maxed out sharps drawer, then you probably don't actually need any of the knives in this drawer. Like how often do you actually use the pizza cutter? I just cut pizza with a chef knife. Or the egg cutter? How often is that used? Sometimes the answer is to go through all your drawers and see what can be tossed to make space for the things you actually do use.
Almost every home has a junk drawer or other junk container. Mine has multiple.
All that being said, I don't think I've seen a drawer as confusing as this.
It's not a junk drawer, it's specific to kitchen utensils.
Some other comments call it the food prep drawer or the kitchen overflow drawer
I just call that my kitchen junk drawer lol
That's essentially the "overflow" drawer. The only solution is to have less stuff... Or just live with it like i do lol
We have this drawer. Full of kitchen utensils that don't fit nicely into other drawers.
My parents did not have this drawer. Or at least, not nearly to this extent. Idk how they did it with a smaller kitchen than we have.
I have to sat that the additional of a scale to that drawer is a wild choice
I have this drawer.
It's not a junk drawer.
It's an irregular kitchen items drawer.
It's just the cost of being someone who actually uses their kitchen. We have the garlic press, scissors, pizza cutter, bench scrapers, microplaners, thermometers, etc... in there. All useful things that fit poorly with other things, so they get a drawer all to themselves.
The junk drawer with batteries and twist ties is another drawer.
We all have one . Mines right next to the oven so I have quick access to various things I use
Yep. The "junk drawer". Even in my house with my diagnosed OCD mom had one of these.
Not a junk drawer. This is specifically kitchen utensils
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.
I agree but if it's a small kitchen, I wouldn't call the scale out of place.
We have the scale on the top at hand all time and use it for everything. Is pretty good for measuring water.
I keep my scale in the cocaine room.
A junk/misc. drawer? Yes.
This isn't junk/misc, most of those things should have proper places.
This is a monstrous misuse of the misc drawer. The pizza cutter, for example, should be with your knives.
It's so not a junk drawer it should be a proper utensil drawer if nothing else. Get that scale out and just line the others up like you live in a society!
I also don't have that drawer, but I have a box next to the toolbox labeled "useful crap that aren't tools"
Of course, everyone has this drawer. It's called a junk drawer. Where else would you put this crap. What planet are you living on?
Entropy wins.... always. You must free yourself and accept this. You cannot defeat entropy.
Every house has one. My mother with legit OCD had one... though she claimed it was a 'Miscellaneous' drawer and not a junk drawer. (To be fair, it was a well organized junk drawer at any rate.)
But yeah, your wife is right.
Yes, all homes have this drawer. Only way to get rid of it is to move. Just leave it all behind.
It's called a junk drawer and as far as I am aware it's an inevitability. However, I will say it's odd that you have utensils in there. Most junk drawers I've encountered are filled with random crap that rarely if ever gets used.
This isn't a junk drawer, this is something different.
Mine is definitely not a junk drawer since it contains things I regularly use and are all food or cooking related. I do also have a junk drawer.
The problem is not the organization or lack thereof, the problem is that someone in your household buys too many niche specialized single-purpose kitchen tools. Wtf is that thing with the green handle?
I try to donate any kitchen tool that I haven't used in a year or two.
Every family has a junk drawer. Just accept it and move on in your life.
Pfft you call THAT an overstuffed drawer?
I bet you can open it without anything catching the backside of the cabinet, nerd.
But then how do they praise Anoia?
We have long sticks and tools around in case something gets stuck in any drawer, I think last stuck draw was a one of the dinner trays sticking up and we couldnt open the drawer, before that was the cutlery drawer and a long knife sticking up XD
Every family has this drawer.
Every single person does not have this drawer.
Every child has this for every drawer.
TIL my wife is a child
FBI... This one right here
Sorry OP, we've got two in our home.
Throw in birthday candles, rubber bands, and a few coins and you got yourself a proper junk drawer.
Don't forget the batteries which may or may not have a charge. If you want to modernize it, it should also have some wall warts and USB cables.
I actually think they need one or more random sharp objects to almost cut yourself on, just to be on the safe side. Pizza cutters just aren't sharp enough for this application.
Every house have this. And yours is very neetly organised. Congrats. May you "tiroir à bazar" stay this empty of small non identified cluter.
Looks perfectly fine. Ours is the second drawer though. Top one is for cuttlery
I do not have this drawer.
I have two of this drawer.
We have like 3 junk drawers. The get filled with so much shit that we don't know what to do with that we just find another drawer
Don't known, but that big green thing with the clamping white blades...do not put your dick in that.
Not only does everyone have one of these, they suffer from quantum entanglement.
Well this backfired on OP
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.
Bits and bobs drawer. Yep
I'd be more inclined to call this a misc utensils drawer. I have one just like it, with many of the same items, but I also have a true "junk drawer", but it has anything but utensils in it. Like, batteries, screws, magnifying glass, fire starters, a deck of cards, etc. All of the shit that ends up near the kitchen that doesn't have a whole space dedicated to similar things, finds a home in the junk drawer.
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.
the average electric drill is used for 7 minutes in its lifetime.
This smells like a fact pulled from someone's ass. This article thinks so too.
Supposedly, supposedly. There were lots of links in Steffen’s post, but no source was provided for the assertion that the average power drill is used for a total of just six to twenty minutes during its lifetime. (I find the numbers highly suspicious. I wrote to Steffen asking for his source, but haven’t heard back.)
I use drills everyday for work and have one at home that doesn't get used much because if I want to get handy I don't want to drive to work to get one.
Transaction costs, in this context, might also be called pain-in-the-butt costs, and pain-in-the-butt costs don’t have to get very high before you say, “Screw it, I’m buying a drill.” You accept, even welcome, low levels of utilization in order to avoid onerous transaction costs. And, yes, you are being totally rational. Utilization isn’t everything.
I use drills everyday for work and have one at home that doesn't get used much because if I want to get handy I don't want to drive to work to get one.
The average person has fuck-all experience with power tools, they don't use them every day. They can pull the trigger and it goes brrrrrrr but they don't know what the options on the rotation piece are, they don't know about different types of chuck, they don't know which gear setting to put their drill in. They use it for the absolute minimum amount of time possible and then put it away. You're clearly a professional if you're using them every day, most people are not.
I don't know whether the 7 minute claim is true or not, but the idea that most drills barely get used and spend most of their time sitting about is not very difficult to believe. I'm quite a handy person, and even my drill spends most of it's time doing nothing because I'm not drilling every single day, just as and when DIY jobs come up.
In a world drowning in ewaste, and lithium being a precious resource, why are we collectively wasting so much on individual drills when, as JubilantJaguar said, we could own these things communally and not create so much waste.
The idea of a communal toolshed for your street, block, tenement, whatever, isn't the same as having tools sitting at work. Work for most people is a commute away. Communal toolsheds would be local. They ideally shouldn't be any more than 10 mins walk away. Can you really begrudge a 10 minute walk for the sake of your wallet, environment, and community?
This also helps the young get into DIY easier. Most of my mates growing up barely did any DIY or tinkering, not because they weren't interested, but because the cost of getting the necessary tools was prohibitive as a teenager. It's taken me years to accumulate the toolbox I have now, and many of the items in there are hand-me-downs or second-hand. A communally owned toolshed gives everyone instant access to tools regardless of personal wealth or resources. If a power tool dies, £150 spread between multiple households is nothing compared to £150 for an individual household.
Managing it, caring for the tools, ensuring they're returned, and in a good state, are obviously hurdles to be addressed, but if communal toolsheds were the cultural norm then they could easily be overcome. We manage to do it with books easily enough, why not anything else?
I'm guessing that 6-20 minutes is like the actual time spent driving screws or drilling holes. Each one takes maybe a few seconds. 6-20 minutes in that case translates to hundreds of screws driven, even on the low end. So not nearly as worthless as the time makes it sound.
Sure, it's a factoid. Maybe it's 20 minutes. But we all know it's very low. Seven minutes is an overestimate for my drill.
have one at home that doesn’t get used much because if I want to get handy I don’t want to drive to work to get one.
Yes, and it's a problem. The possibility of borrowing one from your neighbor is passed over entirely and the alternative is to drive to get another one already in your possession.
All of this is completely unsustainable behavior at the scale of the planet. I suppose you'll get in a huff and take this personally but I really am talking about all of us. As I said, I have a drill myself and bought it for exactly the reasons you cited. I just think we could all do better.
How do people do without an electric drill? Why don't they use it?!
In fairness 7 minutes with an electric drill will get you a lot of holes!
The problem is that it's an incredibly inefficient use of resources. Most drills sit unplugged virtually the whole time. If we could only find a way to share them, we could have the same number of holes for a tiny fraction of the resources and the pollution. And as a bonus it might even strengthen local communities, which would be another obvious win. IMO the electric drill shows the dysfunction of consumer capitalism in microcosm.
I do have it.
Ah yes, the "junk" drawer. I have three! :-)
where's the sauce packets?
Packet drawer, organized, maxed out
There isn’t a house in existence that doesn’t have one of these. All houses that exist have one of these by celestial mandate.
Shit not only does ever house have this drawer, every restaurant I've ever worked in has a utensil pan like this.
I by myself only have a single drawer(don't need/have more) but for my parents this is devinetively true. They have one for metal pieces, one for plastic pieces and one for cutlery. The fourth drawer is for all the stuff that isn't really needed that often or simply to big to be put into one of the other drawers.
We have two OP. That drawer is as american as low taxes for the rich.
I live alone and have this drawer.
Your wife is correct.
We have this drawer.
Every family has this drawer
You guys can open THE drawer?!
There are probably houses out there somewhere that do not have one of these, but I have never encountered one. They appear with the same frequency as 10 million dollar lottery tickets.
I have 2 of these drawers. 1 in the kitchen and 1 in the garage.
Yes. Most kitchens have a junk drawer. This is often where the household hammer is kept, among other random things.
Compromise in marriage means not organizing everything to death and allowing your partner to maintain some jumbled spaces. A junk drawer is organized, out of sight chaos that still maintains a certain logic.
We’ve also floated the idea that not having a junk drawer in the kitchen may be a marker of psychopathy. I jest, but also not. Just know, junk drawers are common, diverse, and almost as expected as silverware drawers.
There's no way 'can it end the rabbits' is a psycho. no way.
'can I tend the rabbits' is a stand up guy however.
I’ve got four of those.
Edit: wait, that’s a useful disorganized kitchen drawer. I’ve got two. I should do something about my four junk drawers, and today’s the day, goddammit!
You could get rid of half of that stuff at least
She's right. Always.
You could build our repurpose something like a silverware organiser, but fitted to the items in there.
But the true travesty: the scale should be easily accessible and in constant use tsk tsk
(We don't have such a drawer btw)
The scale goes with the small baggies for putting dime bags together
In countries, where metric is standard, we use the scale for baking and all our recipes are by weight and not by volume.
I was just jokingly remarking, that all countries should go full metric (so just the USA, Canada's kitchens and the UK's streets are missing)
At first I was thinking I don't have this drawer, but I suppose I have a version of it. Anything that doesn't get used weekly goes into a misc. box that I store in the pantry to keep clutter out of drawers, e.g. icing spatula, fat separator, some baking items, etc.
My knives are upright on my counter and my scale is in my cabinet though, so that also frees up space. A few trays in your drawer might help?
I have this drawer.
This is true. It is the "occasional use kitchen drawer"
Every house has that drawer.
3d printed some Gridfinity stuff and fixed a couple of these drawers. The rest are under way.
That's easy:
We have four of these drawers. What helps is organization trays of different sizes and a junk cupboard.
Long skinny things fit here, curved things go here, bulky things get piled up in the cupboard.
Sorry OP - we all hate it too, but everyone has this. Your drawer doesn’t even look that bad. (You were able to OPEN it!)
I want to know how OP would like this drawer to look instead. Random kitchen utensils always seem to get shoved in a drawer like this
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.
What?
I also have this drawer
A drawer full of emergency makeshift weapons? Yes. Also a junk drawer? Yes, more than one.
The misc tools drawer? I have one that's overflowing. My parents have multiple drawers and cabinets of this.
Every family has this drawer
It's the stuff drawer. Why are you like this?
Yep, we all do. Although you might be going a little far in putting the food scale in there.
These misc drawers are the best way to worship anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers (also luck).
GNU Sir Terry
And a slight odour of cigarette smoke ...
its the miscellaneous drawer, its normal, we have a whole misc cabinet.
Every household has a junk drawer. Be thankful you don't have more than one.
This is not a junk drawer! This is a cooking utensil (mostly baking) that has no other good place drawer!
The junk drawer got like, loose screws and scotch tape and batteries and scrap paper and whatnot
This guy has it right. That’s basically my mom’s kitchen gadget drawer. Junk drawer has duct tape, 3 leftover zip ties, some loose AA batteries and the big screwdriver everyone seems to have
The takeout chopsticks on the right must have escaped from the junk drawer/ packet drawer, looking for a better life.
We have 3. And they're packed. But I know what's in there!
As a household that has thankfully many drawers, we unfortunately have more than one.
Every drawer is a junk drawer when I'm around 😏
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Proud junk drawer owner checking in.
We have 3 of them: misc kitchen utensils and tools, misc containers, and misc stuff that does not even belong in the kitchen, but ends up there because that's the only drawers in the house that don't have clothes in them.
If you want to organize it some, you can build or buy dividers and split it up.
I don't get why it bothers you, well, maybe it's not a serious disagreement idk.
Families only have one drawer like this?? How do they manage?
I’m lucky that my drawer like this is actually inside a cutting board cupboard. The inconvenience helps give it purpose: awkward unnecessary crap we rarely use
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
One drawer? We have house full of these, cupboards and a garage XD
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.
you have too much stuff. time to minimalize!
This drawer is the solution. To everything...
...except getting something out of the drawer.
What sucks is when you end up super frustrated getting everything to fit, so you rip apart the drawer and put everything back in all nice and wow would you look at that you can fit everything and close it easily!
For two days. Tops.
Ours is a little more organized with dividers, but it doesn't look much better. Everyone I know has a drawer like that. I'd take the scale out and put it on a shelf. Scales are delicate.
PS, we have the exact same can opener, pizza roller, and grater as you guys.
Attempt at organizing said drawer of ours
Is this a screenshot of the camera app?
They probably zoomed in on a picture then screenshotted it instead of cropping a photo. Of course they would then have had to crop that photo to remove battery time and notifications.
Not in the kitchen but I have a (very large) one for electronics and batteries and it's the worst. Tools and screws. Office supplies.
This kitchen one you could neat up a bit if it really annoys you. Put the scales in a cupboard upright against the side. Maybe get a nicer scale, that one looks naff. Trash the salad shears. What a terrible idea. Put the pizza / dough metal thingie on a wall mounted magnet for knives and stuff. Maybe put some of the other metal stuff there idk. Everything else is pretty small so you can put in dividers for that. The grater and ladle go in the same compartment.
Unless of course you think your wife should tidy up this drawer in which case you can just absolutely fuck off. Into the ocean. Die and get eaten by scavengers.
Edit: oh, that's a meat tenderiser, not a ladle. Everything else stands.
This is not a junk drawer, there are no coins or condiment packets.
This looks to be a kitchen accessories drawer although I'm unsure why you have a pill cutter in there.
I had way too many of these drawers 🫠
Team junk drawer. Where else do you keep your used batteries?
In a special box for hazzard waste?!
But they might still have some charge left that you might need for that particular remote that can run on low charges longer than others in case you run out of actual fresh batteries because you forgot to stock up on actual ew ones. Maybe. Which probably won't actually happen in the next decades, but it might, and boy, will you be sad then, having thrown those valuables away!
Yes. I've tried to sort it, but there are too many small things that don't go anywhere else, so they are dumped together.
Trust me, that one is fine
I have whole cabinets like this
I have no drawers that are not this drawer.
We have that drawer. Two of them in fact.
My wife got snap apart customizable drawer organizers and it's a big difference. She showed me the way.
Link?
Definitely got one of those.
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.
It can be sorted quite nicely if you get an organiser division thingy. Even if you're only going to keep one thing in each section, it's nice to have each thing in its own place. The difficulty with that is remembering where it's supposed to be, and that it takes more space.
A little basket is suitable for keeping most of those things if you simply accept that them being in the same basket is actually the correct placement for them.
One basket is practically the same solution as one drawer.
That one drawer won't look messy, if every drawer looks like this. *taps forehead *
What do you mean? This is organized! And I have such a drawer too. This is the collection of slightly large kitchen tools that are not large enough to place them in the cupboard.
Whether every family has this drawer or not, I wouldn't know, so I'm not very helpful with settling your argument. I'd bet, every family has this drawer though. Because everyone must have those kinds of utensils, and there's no other logical place to store them. Some people hang some of them on the wall, but even then, there are some that cannot be hung on the wall. Those go into this drawer.
Yes we all have it.
At my parents we had a similar drawer with miscellaneous stuff but it was organised so it looked somewhat tidy. Currently I don't have a drawer like this, cuz I have a tiny kitchen with only one drawer which is reserved for cutlery.
Yes, and as others have mentioned, the scale sits on the counter since it's delicate.
The only surprise is that your family didn't have this drawer, apparently?
Correct, we have this drawer. And what sucks is that it has been broken for about 20 years.
Looks good
As others have said, this isn't even a junk drawer, this is the miscellaneous kitchen tools drawer. My homes have always had one of them plus an actual kunk drawer full of keys, batteries, loose pens and caps, tape, rubber bands, stamps, and lighters. This thing is organized and coherent and i jave no clue what your complaint is.
The junk drawer is a load bearing drawer. No home can exist without it.
At my parents' place, EVERY drawer is like that!
I wish my drawer was that empty.
Junk drawer. Yes, everyone has one.
We have a junk room. LOL.
Yes, everyone has this
I prefer this song about the drawer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIIdTcWIUOk
Don't forget The Man Drawer.
🤣
The only reason I don't have such a drawer, is an overall lack of drawers in my house, don't really have one to spare to be a junk drawer.
Which is a damn shame because I could really use a drawer to throw some miscellaneous odds and hands that don't have any other designated place to live.
The "junk drawer" is supposed to have old receipts, loose batteries, the toy(s) you took from your kid when they threw it at your head, some vaguely kitchen-esque looking tool you got as a wedding gift but don't know what it is....crap like that.
That's just a normal large/specialty utensil drawer.
Oh we have like 2 of these easy but the junk drawer is for things that don’t touch food
So you have two junk drawers and this drawer. Welcome to the club my friend.
Every family afaik has at least one of these drawers. Just accept it and live your life.
We don't have one, we have multiple
Mine is more organised (without dividers, similar stuff simply each has its own space) and still roughly looks like yours.
We have a miscellaneous drawer of utensils and kitchen tools. Also another drawer of non-kitchen stuff that's just "the kitchen drawer" - screwdrivers, pliers, paper clips, rubber bands, magnets, ruler, magnifying glass.., not exactly "organized" but randomly deposited in compartments of an old generic drawer organizer so at least it's not just a pile. We just call it "the drawer".
Ahh. The good ole junk drawer.
I've had one in every home I've lived, even when I was the minor.
Wife says the same.
Hate to say it, but just about everyone I know has a junk drawer, myself included. Same as you with the other drawers, organized to the max, but the junk drawer will always be the junk drawer.
Of course I have that drawer. Why do you need a solution? What's the problem?
To an extent, we always had a junk drawer. Over the years it got smaller and more organized. Utinsels have an actual drawer for them all. So no pizza cutter in our junk drawer anymore. Almost everything in your picture has a spot for us.
Here's our junk drawer now.
Yours is a nice junk drawer. It's like their junk drawer combines a baking drawer also. And the pizza cutter should probably go in their sharps drawer.
Put a lid on that Crayola marker, you savage!
I've thrown so many markers away because the kids just get to them and lose the lids.
Of course after drawing on any surface they can find first.
Bachelor here, and I do indeed have a random shit drawer. As did my family when I was growing up.
If you don’t have this drawer you simply don’t have drawers.
I don't have this drawer. I have several drawers organised by use. Baking, cooking, eating, etc. All are barely organised.
Wife's right. This is an example of the pareto principle. 80% of your shit fits in 20% of the categories needed to properly organize your shit. 80% of the needed categories account for only 20% of your shit. 20% of your shit (and 80% of the needed categories) are in that drawer.
Dude the Pareto principal has started some shit in this household. We don’t even bring it up these days.
Poor Vilfredo. First the fascists coopt his theories, now...
Which side of the shit were you on?
We have 2 drawers like that. What's the problem with it if you don't have a better place to put that shit?
My family has a junk home, not just a drawer :)
as others have said, "yes" most people have the misfit drawer. We always called it the "horrible drawer_ because ladles and can openers and things would often catch and make it hard to open. I say embrace it, everyone deserves love even if not everyone fits in perfectly
Close the drawer?
And yes there's always a bucket drawer for things that can't be categorized
We moved to a new house, and I was storing things like a hammer, nails, screws etc. In a kitchen drawer for hanging the 5 millions things to go on the wall. My wife asks me if the drawer will eventually be cleared out.
It's been 2 years.
My husband has a saying that when you move and you’re unpacking, think very carefully about where you put stuff as that’s where it’s going to end up living.
Yes, every family I've ever known has had a drawer with bulky oversized kitchen utensils and gadgets. The harder you try to organize these things, the more you will realize that you'd just end up with an entire drawer taken up by a single pizza cutter, garlic press, or zester. Theoretically, if you had enough storage space in your kitchen you could do that, but these things are used so infrequently that they either get shoved into one drawer which fully takes up that one space with disorganized chaos, or placed in a receptacle of some sort to sit on the countertop for when you need it, which is ugly and takes up then takes up the counter space instead.
Yep.
Yeah, everyone has such a drawer. But what is that green thing at the top? Something for baking?
I don't know, but my guess is maybe a tool for cutting butter into pastry dough?
Edit: never mind, further down the thread someone's shown it's salad shears.
I would like to hear more about this
I have no drawers but at least one box per room for this purpose
im afraid that everyone has the forbidden drawer. the drawer that should never be opened except as a last ditch effort to find that one appliance that seems to elude you in every other drawer. you can try to destroy the drawer, but it will always come back in some form.
Have you ever visited other people's kitchens? Everyone has that drawer.
Everyone has that drawer. You can tidy it with spacers to make it look a bit less hectic but it will still be that drawer full of random specialty shit.
This isn't a true junk drawer in my mind because it looks to be all cooking implements. I have a junk drawer, but it contains like rubber bands, rando pencils, gum, etc.
I'd filter out metal things that has handles like this pizza cutter and meat hammer and try to give them some sort of a stand or a magnet surface to stick them on.
It's your house's shrine to Anoia. Rattle it every once in a while.
I can understand just about everything in this drawer because I have a drawer that looks like that ...
What I don't understand is that lettuce knuckle duster thing .... were you planning on going to war with the vegetables?
The green thing, right? I have no idea but I need to know
I found it here ...
https://www.chefn.com/products/saladshears-salad-chopper
But of all the unusual things I've had in my kitchen, I've never had something like this ... it looks like some sort of weird ninja boomerang or something
No drawer. Probably due to the kitchen layout, we don't have smaller drawers, so the tools and such go into their own container.
Looks like a junk drawer or a multi purpose drawer in any kitchen. There is often one near the sink. In some larger cabinet sets, the small drawer like that is on the end. But it varies where everyone has it. Maybe all the decent sized kitchens do.
Every home has that drawer. What is the problem that needs a solution?
Everyone I've ever known personally has a "junk drawer." It's where various random doodads and thingamajigs go when they don't neatly fit any other category. And batteries.
Sorry man but I have to side with your wife here. We have even one such junk drawer per room.
- In the kitchen with scissors, jar opener, potato peeler, nut cracker, sticks, tooth picks...
- In the living room with matches, candles, coasters, birthday decoration, fertilizer for house plants, ...
- In the bedroom we even have one per person with protective gear for sports, single socks that have their partner missing, scarves, baseball cap, luggage straps, ...
Could go on with bathroom, laundry room etc. Junk drawers for the win!
For every item in that drawer, ask yourself: "When was the last time I used this?"
If it's more than a year ago, it's not in the right place.
If it's less than a year ago, it's also not in the right place.
Heard that, this drawer is exclusively for things that were used exactly one year ago.
Huh, that's very insightful! I'll be using that on my own junk drawer
That can be true and also I'm not gonna do anything about it
My family's junk drawer is stuff we use on a regular basis, but doesn't require its own specific drawer. Pens, batteries, post it notes, Xbox 360.
I wish I could open mine.
Every household, family or sole occupant, has this drawer. Sometimes there are more than one of these.
We have this drawer, maybe 2. My parents recently thinned and organized theirs. You can get cut-to-fit drawer Inserts if it bothers you.
We have several of those drawers.
I think there are some sharp as well as blunt instruments that can be used to help resolving that disagreement.
My work does one of those round robin steal it gift exchanges. One of my coworkers would just dump her junk drawer into a bag. It had the best stuff!
We have several junk drawers. Maybe they all are.
Man, I wish I had the space for several junk drawers.
I have this drawer, and also the junk drawer. This is the correct solution to 'uncommonly used tools of an awkward shape'
I'm sorry you had to find out this way.
This drawer is government issued when a house is built. Every family had this drawer. It is load bearing. Removing the contents of this drawer will cause irreparable damage to the house.
I'm pretty sure ours still has junk in it from the last family that lived here.
Instructions unclear. I now have a sink hole under my house.
We have that drawer, plus a bowl in a cabinet full of stuff like that.
I have that drawer, a bit more full tho.
It's the one where everything is oddly shaped and can't stack easily.
I wouldn't put the scale in there but yes, miscellaneous drawer.
I have one and my parents have one
In Yorkshire they call this a rammel drawer
Every family I know has this drawer, sorry mate
Every kitchen has this, but I'd work on your layout. You could put about 50% more gadgets in there.
Also, store the scale vertically somewhere for maximum efficiency
I have several. It takes a few months before the order becomes chaos. I do know where to find my stuff though.
How did you get in my house!?
(yes, we have this exact drawer, though I moved the scale to another drawer)
Everyone has that, except for my parents, its not just a drawer, but the entire basement floor. Filled. With. Junk.
😕
In my house it’s a whole room instead of just a drawer.
Yeah, I've got that drawer
We had one when I grew up. Now that I'm living elsewhere with my own family we don't; we have two.
Yep we’ve got a large utensil drawer
Where else would you sort the strange kitchen tools?
They don't belong anywhere in particular, so they are clumped together.
It's more of a "Junk Drawer" in my family. Just for things that have no relevant places or are easily categorized, but are important enough not to keep somewhere more out of the way. Always contains at least one item that makes it near impossible to open the drawer on first pull and requires manipulation to open. For my family, it's usually a hammer.
Your junk drawer game is weak. We have 3 of them in the kitchen and the least bad of them is worse than that.
that drawer is a small scale representation of my home.
Technically, mine isn't a drawer, it's a shoebox tucked under the coffee table, but yes.
Every family without a gigantic kitchen has that drawer.
I have the contents of that drawer in about 4 drawers and 2 cabinets. I have so many cabinets, I don't even have things in some of them and I have instant pots, a tortilla maker and sourdough proofing tools
However, I do have an oversized drawer that has a l lot of stuff in there like the funnels and tenderizer, but it has no sharps in it, and no scale.
Think about it like Socrates, man. Of course there’s gonna be a category for things that don’t fit in any other categories.
You can at least make some compartments so it's not all jumbled together
But yes, I do have a couple of those drawers
This is very common. If you really must "solve" it, the solution world be a shadow box layout. You empty it, lay stuff down where you want it, then take a picture or trace the shapes onto paper. Then model and 3d print an insert to give everything a dedicated cutout or cut it from foam or mill it from wood. This is what folks do in workshops. I've never seen it for a kitchen large utensil drawer, but that's what to do if you must.
We have essentially the same drawer but with no scale and more ladies, measuring spoons, etc.
I'd probably put that scale somewhere else since it's a precision device, and it can't be too healthy for it to live like that.
I’d say that every house has a junk drawer, but I wouldn’t call this a junk drawer. It mostly looks like random kitchen tools. I guess you’re both right, in a way.
Maybe what you need is a wall-mounted rack to hold some of your other stuff without taking up valuable counter space. For example, I’ve heard people swear by magnetic knife holders. You can probably find magnetic tool holders at a hardware store for less than you’d find knife holders at a store that specializes in kitchen stuff.
Or maybe just get some hooks. Perhaps some little shelves. Whatever. The point is, make the stuff you use most often more accessible, and use the freed-up space in other drawers to clean out this drawer. Then turn it into a proper junk drawer, with shit like loose rubber bands, half~dried superglue, an awkwardly shaped pen from a real estate salesperson, and a tape measure that’s branded with the logo of an NFL team for some reason.
Yes everyone has this drawer
You lost this one.. They've even written songs about it....
Bench / pastry scraper next to the end grain cutting board on counter (that's how I clean it most often). Microplane and pizza cutter (Italian chef knife) get hung. Funnel covers a teacup protecting it's rare use from excess dust / atomized oils in the kitchen. Garlic press is a waste of money when you have knife skills. -Citrus juicer likewise (cut 1/3 slabs around the core using the geometry to make squeezing efficient).
Yeah we have a knife skills class we’ve been meaning to book since I received it for Christmas last year
Even the community kitchen I use has one of these...
Brother, it is the junk drawer that keeps you sane. For trying to organize everything is impossible.
every family has a drawer like that, mine has two
I'm too anal about cleanliness and organization, my house typically doesn't have a drawer like this. My favorite mantra in the home, which my chronically disorganized wife is tired of hearing me repeat, is "a place for everything and everything in its place."
However. I inherited my childhood home when my dad passed away this year (my wife and I had already been living here for a few years, in a separate apartment in the house) and my dad had a junk drawer like this. As a matter of fact, my dad was extremely messy and almost every drawer in his house looks like this. It's probably the reason I'm so anal about organization in my life; having to grow up in a constantly messy home.
Growing up in this house, though, my family always had 2 drawers side-by-side in the kitchen which were always filled with random junk. They're still here. I haven't gotten to them yet. So yes, my current house has a couple junk drawers. But if I have my way, they will be organized and cleared out. If there's going to be any messy containers filled with miscellaneous junk in the house, it'll be boxes stored in the garage or basement - not a random drawer.
Yes/no. We dont have a designated junk drawer, but theres one specific drawer we happen to throw random things into. I clean it out maybe twice a year during one of my adhd fueled hyper cleaning sessions.
Consider a spring loaded drawer divider. Keeping everything from sloshing around can make a surprising amount of space.
My drawer in the image used to be a nightmare. Everything used to move around and it would jam when opening sometimes. Adding dividers got it organized enough to leave a third of it free, which is now the rightmost section that's filled with tea.
It's been over a year and I still feel a small sense of joy when I open it sometimes. There's still messes of junk in the back left and right, but they stay put.
Most of my drawers are junk drawers. IDK how I find anything
Sepparate utensils into three groups. Prep and baking tools should be near the largest counter space. Cooking tools should be near the stove. Single use tools should be near the curb.
This is all of the drawers in our kitchen.
Planer, pizza cutter, egg cutter, and scraper go in the knife drawer. Funnel goes with measuring cups, scale goes on the counter or take the stuff out from under it so it sits flat. Garlic press and that chacram looking thing go in the trash.
In our house this is similar to the spoons drawer, the drawer that holds all the stirring utensils for cooking.
We don't have one.
If something isn't important enough to have a specific place, it isn't important enough to own.
