What I found While Decluttering My Husband's Junk Drawer

Why you should spend 7 mins to clean out your junk drawer now. 

Yes. My husband has a junk drawer. We both do. Our junk drawers are neater than most though they serve the same purpose as most. They both hold items frequently accessed like money and keys, and items that have yet to find a permanent place in our home. Some may never find a home and just need a little marinating time before they are thrown away. 

We perform regular maintenance of our junk drawers to decide what to keep and what to trash. During a recent maintenance session, I found some interesting things which led to unexpected journeys that I’d like to share with you. I hope you find the story interesting enough so you are inspired to clean your junk drawers and see where the journey might take you. 

This is what I found: 

My sister’s car keys – I found some car keys that I knew didn’t belong to us. We sent a few messages to people we thought they might belong to, and it turns out my sister had misplaced them much to the consternation of her husband. That was just the beginning of my journey. After speaking with my sister, we decided that she and my brother hadn’t seen each other for a while so she decided to host us for a Sunday dinner. We made family plans and connected last weekend. It was a wonderful afternoon of typical sibling banter resulting in lots of laughs and some excellent food. The food part leads me to the next treasure found in the junk drawer: a recipe for ricotta pie. 

Ricotta pie recipe – On one of my mother-in-law's visits, we discussed one of my favorite foods that I rarely eat: ricotta pie. She hand-wrote her ricotta pie recipe that was given to her from her Italian Aunt Susie. I filed it in the drawer, and it became buried until my maintenance exercise. I immediately called her and told her I had found it. We chatted for a while, I told her we were having dinner at my sister’s, and she suggested I bake it. I know that brought her joy. I made the pie, brought it to my sister's, and it was excellent due to a perfect recipe which I am happy to share if you'd like it. Send a note to heather@theorganizedyou.com.  

Reward Certificate – The final thing that I found was a $60 certificate to our auto care company which expires at the end of this month. I need an oil change and been procrastinating getting it done. Since it was due to expire, I made an appointment to finally get it done. I know I would have continued to procrastinate if I didn’t find this incentive to get me to do something that I hate and I saved a few bucks. 

I hope my story gives you the little incentive to invest 7 minutes cleaning your junk drawer and see what treasure you might find. If it does, here is a link to a step-by-step guide to help you organize your junk drawer along with a few organizing products that might make the task a lot more joyful.