How to Make Over Your Junk Drawer

Everything needs to have a “proper place” in a home, but then there’s the junk drawer. Amazing how much fits in there! Here’s how to clean yours out.

• First up: Emptying the drawer’s contents.
• All stray change should go in your home’s change collection site – we use a glass Mason jar – with the plan of bringing it to a store with a Coinstar. Where is a Coinstar kiosk near you? Press here to find out.
• With the drawer empty, clean it with a damp sponge and a little spray.
• Now comes the fun part! By the way, as an organizer, I believe everything but take-out menus can find a good home.
• Those extra cords? Wrap them up neatly and keep in an office closet or stash in a plastic bin in your basement or garage.
• Pieces of old technology you don’t have a name for? Toss.
• Old batteries, don’t toss those. Give them a test to see if they’re actually out of power and find out the date of your town’s next Hazardous Waste Day. (Store in a plastic bin in the garage until then.)
• What to do with all the pens you find: Test each on a paper that’s headed to the recycled bin, then find a new home for them in any kind of container for the desk area where you keep your computer. Toss the pens out of ink. No use saving those!
• How about those seed packets? If the packets are several years old, give some seeds a germination test to see if they’re still viable for planting.
• That recipe you ripped from a magazine? Folder. Store the folder near your cookbooks.
• If you clip coupons, make sure yours aren’t expired. Store in an envelope.
• Those CVS extra bucks? Your wallet if it’s not expired!
• For those of us who have a stockpile of soy sauce packets: time to toss. Sure, we all need to recycle. But old soy sauce packets? Honesty is best when cleaning. If you know you won’t use it, toss or recycle.
• Take-out menus? They can stay. Just make sure you don’t have doubles or old menus or menus from restaurants that have closed. Keep your menus in a nice little stack and even better, store in a folder.