Wednesday 26 July 2017

Quick & Easy Organizing Project: The Junk Drawer!

Disclaimer: I haven't been paid to promote any products, just sharing a smiley little project that made me so happy its silly yesterday afternoon 😊

Hi honeys
How has your week been so far? We're back to rain here.  There's something calming about rain.  At least it's lowered the temperatures a little.  

A quick and easy organizing project for an afternoon: the kitchen junk drawer!

As much as I dislike winter honeys, and I so do (I find walking on snow and ice terrifying) but after suffering a serious asthma attack on Monday afternoon, I'm coming to the conclusion that I should be on my guard during hot weather too. Luckily for me though, very warm weather is pretty rare in Scotland. So, near death experiences aside it hasn't been a bad old week 😊

Yesterday lunchtime with laundry all done I found myself at a loose end.  I wandered off into the kitchen looking for something to do and found a little organizing project to work on 😊

Do you have a junk drawer in your kitchen honeys?  A sort of "catch all" place for all of the stuff that doesn't seem to have a home anywhere else?  Until yesterday afternoon we had one too and it looked like this...



Before: our kitchen "junk" drawer choc full of.... well mostly junk :)

Actually it looked a lot worse than this to begin with.  On top of this collection of assorted stuff was lots of paper clutter.  There were (too many) recipes I'd clipped out from packaging and magazines to "try later" and label stickers for containers which had somehow, maybe the heat in the kitchen? who knows, become all stuck together .... just too much paper!

This was the easiest to deal with.  We have a bin in our kitchen for recycling.  I carried the paperwork over there and went through it standing over the bin.  It all went in.  All of it honeys. A couple of minutes cleared all that paper clutter and also reminded me that I need to set up a system to allow me to save any interesting recipes I find.

My "Aha!!" Moment!  


Looking at our junk drawer yesterday I had a bit of an "aha!" moment honeys.  The assorted clutter in our junk drawer is no different to the other assorted clutter all over our home.  It's just a whole lot of decisions that haven't been made yet.

Things end up living in a drawer or in a basket or in a cupboard or wherever else because we haven't evaluated properly whether we need them or if they should be let go of.  To clear the clutter we have to empty the space and focus our attention on what we've removed from it.  We need to look at each and every item and decide:

  • Do we need it?  If it's to be kept, then...
  • Where does it belong?  Most items have a natural home. A place it's most logical to store them.
  • If it's no longer needed then it has to leave your home.  
  • If it's still in good condition why not donate?  If it's past it's best then into the bin with it, remember to check if the item can be recycled though honeys.  Recycling centres, ours is run by the local council, have sections for everything you could imagine. 
Back to our junk drawer then. Do you remember those little organizing containers I'd used in the kitchen honeys?  You can see the post showing how I used them here.

Set of containers used to organize our kitchen "junk" drawer.


Well I still had a set left and after emptying our junk drawer out and purging all of the actual junk just as I had with the paper clutter which had been sitting on top,  I then scrubbed the inside of the drawer with my always-near-to-hand anti bac wipes, popped the set of three new containers into the drawer, washing everything that was being kept before sorting it into one of the three containers, and this happened...

After: Before: our kitchen "junk" drawer is de-junked and neatly organized :)

This is it! This is all that was kept!

In the top (left hand side) container: a spare can opener, measuring spoons, a gadget to open ring pull cans (the large blue round item) a pack of lid grippers (to help remove lids from jars) sitting on top are two silicone egg poachers and little green gadget is a spray nozzle which can be screwed into an orange/lemon/lime 😊

In the top (right hand side) container: 3 little sandwich knives with miniature sauce bottles for handles belonging to Hubby, a folding "travel cup" an apple corer, an egg timer, a pasta timer.

The bottom container:  A large plastic lettuce knife, 4 green sundae spoons, the green circular item with two arms is used to hold bags upright, like this honeys...

Neat little gadget to hold bags upright while they're filled...

It's very useful and helps when we make smoothie bags to freeze.   Also in the container are: a gadget to make spirals of vegetables, a coke ice cream scoop, a cake slice, long handled metal sundae spoons, a cheese knife.

Almost everything else in the drawer went into the bin honeys and it felt marvelous...

Kitchen "junk" drawer - before & after

In fact it felt so good that I immediately emptied out the drawer next to it!  It was less work though because it's our cutlery drawer, but it still felt sooooo good just to empty it all out, clean the drawer, wash and shine all of the cutlery just because and put it all back again...  

Sometimes it feels so good to just empty a drawer, wash everything and put it all together again... just because :)

I'm loving this honeys! Such a silly thing to be happy about but I'm loving it anyway 😊

What's making you happy this week dear ones?  Have you been organizing?  Whatever you're doing I hope you're having a fabulous week, full of smiles and hugs 😊

Till next time, huggles always x

Huggles Always, Rosie x

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