My workshop attendees often ask, “where is a good place to get organised at home?”. The first thing I reply is the kitchen junk drawer.
Follow these 6 easy steps to turn your junk drawer into a utility drawer and find anything you need within a few seconds.
6 steps to organise a junk drawer
Step 1 – Empty out the drawer – set aside a good chunk of time to tackle the drawer. Allow time to pack up at the end. Empty everything out the drawer onto the kitchen bench and or into another box. Vacuum up crumbs and then wipe the drawer out and dry it thoroughly.
Step 2 – Put like items together – sort the items you have taken out of the drawer. Put pens, batteries, paperclips, tools etc together until you have all like items in a group.
Step 3 – Declutter – Decide if all items are going to be returned to the drawer. Put a few pens in the office or donate to Pencils Community if you have too many in the one spot. Return tools to the shed (a few screw drivers and a pair of pliers are handy in the house, but you don’t need the whole tool box).
Step 4 – Dividers – Organise the drawer with shallow cardboard boxes, purpose bought dividers or purpose bought cutlery trays (you can pick this stuff up at the op-shop too!).
Step 5 – Return all items to their new permanent home. Take time to match the collection of items with a container that fits. Rearrange the items and containers so they fit neatly into the drawer.
Step 6 – Keep it up – be diligent and return everything to its new home every time you use it
Putting the steps into practice
I had some fun with my junk drawer last week. It’s usually fairly neat, but I thought I’d try a couple of other dividing techniques to see if I could improve on its functionality. Which one do you like best?
My junk drawer
This is a picture of my junk drawer
Junk drawer with purpose made cutlery tray
Here is the junk drawer organised using a cutlery tray purpose made for the drawer. I found this a bit restricting because of the specified size of the compartments. It looks nice, but I couldn’t fit as much in the drawer.
Junk drawer with Kmart dividers
Here is the junk drawer organised using Kmart cutlery tray and an array of dividing containers. This worked quite well as there was space to put varying sized items. All white looks neat too.
I also found that the small containers take up a lot of room. Yes, it is nice to have each little item in a neat container, and it looks great, but it’s not really that practical. Again, I couldn’t fit as much in the drawer as you can when you pile a number of items into a larger container.
Check out my Pinterest board for more inspiration.
Follow the 6 steps above to organise your junk drawer and let me know how you go info@spaceandtime.com.au
Need help arranging your junk drawer? Contact me here.
Julie Cliff, Professional Organiser at Space and Time specialises in helping families get organised at home. Her clients find they can achieve a lot with hands-on help and expert advice from Julie in a few short hours. Contact Julie today to get started on that job you have been putting off because you don’t know where to start.