Declutter: the Junk Drawer

This week, I resolved to clean out the junk drawer in our kitchen, inspired by Crystal's post last week. We only have one actual junk drawer in our home, but man, was it full of JUNK!

To be quite honest, some of the stuff in that drawer was in there when we moved into this rental condo - which means I never cleaned it out then! Yikes. Here is the oh-so-scary "before" picture:

Before

I found so many things in that drawer! Here's an idea of what I found:

• Packing tape, Scotch tape, masking tape (Do ya think we have enough tape?!)
• Brackets for anchoring the appliances - those belong with the condo.
• Three little notebooks - those got moved to the "gift stash."
• A single hole punch - I've never seen this before...maybe it was left behind by a previous renter?
• Two pairs of scissors (what?!)
• Floor guards for our furniture - not needed here because we have carpet in the family room and dining area.
• Four different phone books for various counties, dating back as far as 2009!
• A lightbulb - that was burnt out! (That wasn't ours, either.)
• Cable splitter (?)
• Batteries
• Picture hangers, nails, random tools, measuring tapes
• Pens, pencils, markers, higlighter, sticky note pads
• Two keys - I can honestly tell you that I have no idea what these are for! I'm guessing they were in the condo before we moved in.
• Some random plastic clip-like pieces - We have no clue what these are for, but we found them in the kitchen.
• AND I found my large Sharpie marker! I have looking for that marker for months! I thought for sure it had disappeared in our last move...

After some work, I had a much cleaner and more organized "junk" drawer. Actually, now, it doesn't really look like a junk drawer!

After

There were some items that went directly into the trash can. Other items were relocated to more appropriate places in the house.

All told, this project only took me about ten minutes and it feels so nice to have it cleaned out and more organized. Working on this project certainly gave me some laughs, too!

My next organization project this month is our bathroom closet, which is where I keep our health and beauty stockpile. I am positive that project will take me far longer than ten minutes!!