Inside: Learn how to get rid of the junk drawer in your house and why this is so important!

In this post learn the reasons why you should never have a junk drawer. Plus you'll learn the 4 steps to take to get rid of your junk drawer today.  Click over to tackle this space today!

How many times have you pinned an article about organizing your junk drawer? Or thought, if I just had those awesome dividers from Target, then I would be so organized and know where everything is?

I know I have done those things!!

This guest post from Amanda Warfield shares the secret to having an organized junk drawer.

Spoiler alert: it’s not about the dividers!!

I hope you enjoy the post and learn a few new tips to try in your own home.

If you have any ah-ha moments, please let us know in the comments!

Take it away, Amanda!


I’m sitting at my desktop computer working on my latest blog post, and my husband yells from down the stairs, “Babe—have you seen my basketball shoes?” And, without missing a beat, I tell him exactly where they are, and keep typing. I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to get up and help him look. I don’t have to deal with an area he ransacked trying to look for them because neither of us had a clue. Our day just keeps on moving along. 

Some variation of this happens almost daily in our home. And 99.9% of the time, I know where everything is—because we don’t have a junk drawer. 

You do not need a junk drawer. In fact, a junk drawer is only going to hamper your ability to get organized. I challenge you to get rid of it today, or this week.

Why?

Because the junk drawer is where all of your good intentions about getting organized go to die.

In this post learn the reasons why you should never have a junk drawer. Plus you'll learn the 4 steps to take to get rid of your junk drawer today.  Click over to tackle this space today!

Here are a few more reasons to eliminate that junk drawer for good

Junk Drawers Make You Lazy

When you’re cleaning up or decluttering, and you don’t know immediately where to put an object, you just throw it in the junk drawer. It’s just easier to do so, and that space enables you to allow that. 

The problem is, you’re defeating the entire purpose of cleaning up. Instead of finding a home for every object, you’re just moving the mess from one place to another. But what’s going to happen when that junk drawer gets full? Do you really think you’ll stop this habit, or will a new junk drawer pop up? Maybe the junk will start to pile up on your counter top, or your dresser, or the dining room table. 

You might think I’m being dramatic, but habits don’t change without intentional thought and action. If you’re allowing yourself to just throw things into a junk drawer instead of taking the time to take care of it, that habit will continue.

Junk Drawers Allow You to Neglect 

Not only will the clutter continue to pile up, but they’ll stop you from being intentional with your things. When you’re decluttering or cleaning, you want to hold each object in your hand and find an actual home for it (and no, a junk drawer is not a home). The purpose of finding a home for each object is two-fold.

One, it allows you to be able to find things with ease (like my husband’s basketball shoes). Even if you don’t know the exact location of something, you’ll likely know around where it is. This is especially helpful when you’re trying to find objects that aren’t used super often. 

Let’s say you’re looking for the extra tennis balls you bought a few months ago but never opened. You know that they might be in the garage, because you store some of your exercise equipment in there. But you also know that they might be in your hall closet, because you store the exercise equipment that is often used in there. Even though you don’t know for sure which spot they are in, you’ve got it narrowed down to two places before you even begin. It’ll be easy to find them, and you won’t have to ransack anything and make a mess.

In this post learn the reasons why you should never have a junk drawer. Plus you'll learn the 4 steps to take to get rid of your junk drawer today.  Click over to tackle this space today!

Two, each object having a home allows you to take better care of your possessions. If everything has a home, you aren’t trying to cram it in somewhere, and you aren’t just tossing it here or there. You’ll naturally, intentionally place it in its home. How many times have you dug through your junk drawer to discover that one of those extra Taco Bell sauces you decided to keep “just in case”, but forgot about exploded? All over everything in there. Now you’ve got an even bigger mess and you still haven’t found what you’re looking for. 

Junk Drawers Stress You Out

Your junk drawer is just a junk drawer full of clutter, and clutter stresses us out. It’s that plain and simple. This 2010 study showed increased cortisol levels in the wives that felt like they lived in a cluttered home, but decreased cortisol levels in those that did not feel that they did. Cortisol is the stress hormone in your brain…the more stressed out you are, the higher levels of the cortisol hormone that will be found in you. Every time you open up that junk drawer, or even just think about it, you’re adding unhealthy hormones into your body.

>> Related Post: 25 Benefits Of Decluttering Your Home

So, you’ve decided you want to stop creating a habit of laziness, and you want to stop neglecting your things.

How do you actually do it?

In this post learn the reasons why you should never have a junk drawer. Plus you'll learn the 4 steps to take to get rid of your junk drawer today.  Click over to tackle this space today!

How to Get Rid of the Junk Drawer

Step One: Pull it All Out

Step one is incredibly simple (unless you have one of those exploding Taco Bell sauces), and that is to pull everything out of your current junk drawer. It should take you no more than 5 minutes to do this part, and you’ll already be well on your way to getting rid of that junk drawer. 

Step Two: Sort into 3 Piles

Sort everything into 3 piles: keep, trash, or donate. Only keep things that you actually use. Here’s the thing about junk drawers— they are usually full of things you don’t use or need. 

Why?

Because if they were really important, you’d likely have a home for them. When we struggle to know where to put something, we throw it into the junk drawer where it’s swallowed by the abyss. 

All of those pens and paper clips? If you used them or needed them, they’d have a home on your desk or near your family command center. Those cords and chargers? Would likely be plugged in. Those extra sauces? They’d be eaten! Instead, you’ve kept all of these things “just in case”.

Sometimes, there are objects in there that you need and use, and those are what you need to find a home for. No more procrastinating on this. Find them a home, or get rid of them.

Everything else?

Trash if it’s no good for anyone, or donate if someone else could love it and use it. 

In this post learn the reasons why you should never have a junk drawer. Plus you'll learn the 4 steps to take to get rid of your junk drawer today.  Click over to tackle this space today!

Step Three: Find Homes

Like I said in the last step, you have to find actual homes for all of the objects in your keep pile. You might be looking at that pile and thinking that it’s impossible. Look at all these random, tiny objects! Where in the world do I expect you to put them, right? 

You can do this. It is possible. We do not have a single junk drawer in our home. Not one. Those stacks of take out menus? Put them on the side of your fridge, or in your family command center. The paper clips? Get a dish and put them on your desk. The random Chapsticks? Grab a  jar and put them all there in one spot. 

Step Four: Don’t Allow Yourself to Relapse!

It can be so easy to relapse back into using a junk drawer. An easy way to stop that from happening is by creating a new purpose for the drawer. If it’s in use by something else, you can’t just throw things in there! 

A second way, is to use the 5-minute rule in your daily life. If it takes you less than 5 minutes to put something away—do it now. Sometimes when we’re cleaning up, we come across an object that needs to be put in a box that’s under our bed, surrounded by other boxes, and we feel like it’s just too much to deal with right now. So, we toss it somewhere more convenient and tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later.

You won’t.

Deal with it now.

Even though the process feels involved in your mind, if it takes less than 5 minutes to handle, it’s really not that involved. You’ve got the time, so go ahead and take care of it. 

>> Related Post: 10 Rules To Prevent Clutter Creep

In this post learn the reasons why you should never have a junk drawer. Plus you'll learn the 4 steps to take to get rid of your junk drawer today.  Click over to tackle this space today!

Maybe you’re reading this and already feeling overwhelmed because you know that you let the junk drawer problem get out of control. You’ve got 3 or 4 or even 5 junk drawers throughout your home, and thinking about dealing with all of them is sending some serious cortisol into your brain.

Breathe, friend.

You do not have to deal with all of them at once. Set a goal for yourself: tackle one junk drawer a week for the next however many weeks until they are all taken care of. Focus on just one drawer, and just one step at a time. One object at a time. Don’t look at the big picture, but instead each tiny step. Little steps will add up to big progress that you’ll be proud of—you don’t have to make giant leaps all at once, okay?

Your goal here is to be able to direct your husband or child to what they are searching for without making more work for yourself. No more stopping what you’re doing and losing focus or concentration to help them fid what they need. No more cleaning up a mess they made while looking. 

Even better?  Being able to tell a guest in your home where something is, and lead them directly to it with only words. It always feels really good to be able to direct a guest to the wine opener without having to even turn around. 

I believe in you, friend. Want more on living a simplified life? Grab a copy of my free Basics of Simple Living workbook.

What is your best tip to get rid of your junk drawer?

Let us know in the comments below!

About the Author

Amanda Warfield is the owner and creator of Live Organized, Live Simple. She’s a recovering perfectionist turned simplicity lover, routines enthusiast, and capsule wardrobe expert. Her mission is to use her passion for teaching and her love of minimalism, organization, and productivity to help every overwhelmed woman find rest through simplicity. 

Amanda is married to Russell, the funniest guy she knows. They are South Carolina natives living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest and enjoy traveling, reading, and all things Disney (okay, maybe that last one is just Amanda).

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In this post learn the reasons why you should never have a junk drawer. Plus you'll learn the 4 steps to take to get rid of your junk drawer today.  Click over to tackle this space today!

7 Comments on Why You Should Never Have a Junk Drawer (And How to Get Rid of It!) | A Guest Post by Amanda Warfield

  1. I’m sorry, but I don’t know what is wrong about having a junk drawer. It’s an American Family tradition. I’m keeping mine.

    • Hi Linda! I totally appreciate your feedback on this post. I think the point Amanda was trying to make is for everything to have a place so you don’t waste time and energy trying to locate things around your house. If you know what’s in your junk drawer or would know to look in your junk drawer for something, then more power to you! That’s the beauty of living a simplified life…everyone can do it differently and do what works for them. 🙂

    • Hi Linda! Thanks for reading my post, and thank you for sharing your opinion! Tara is absolutely right, a great reason to get rid of a junk drawer is so that you can save yourself time. Time is the one resource we can’t make more of, and I’m passionate about using simple living to help us spend our time on things that matter. A junk drawer may be an American tradition, but our lives as Americans are changing rapidly. We live in a culture consumed with busy-ness, and we feel that we have less time than we ever have to get things done. Which is why I think getting rid of your junk drawer is a good idea to help save yourself some time. However, I’m a firm believer that you have to make simple living work for you— you can’t copy/paste what someone else does into your life and expect it to magically make a difference. I hope you’ll consider my point of view, and then ultimately make the right decision based on both sides and what’s right for your lifestyle. Best of luck 🙂

  2. Thank you! I was looking into how to get rid of my 3 junk drawers, this is exactly what I needed!

    I am thinking that it may be that the UFO’s need to go (UN identified found objects), ‘is this yours? Do you know what it is?’ If the answer from family is No definitely toss it.

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