Bright ideas
Marie Kondo, author of The LifeChanging Magic of Tidying, and big on organising and removing useless “tat”, would probably disagree with the advice I am about to give, but I’ll give it anyway.
I love a junk drawer, so much so that I have two. They are full of a variety of apparently useless objects and lots of “they might come in handy one day” items. There are also a few keepsakes in there, at least three tape measures, four half-used rolls of sticky tape and bits and bobs won in crackers.
Leeds-based rubbish removal experts Divert.co.uk are no strangers to sorting out clutter. After conducting an online poll on messy drawers, the firm found that on average, items get abandoned for four years.
The most common items exiled to the drawer were batteries, instruction manuals for long-gone appliances, random keys, spare screws, paper clips, rubber bands, sticky tape, takeaway menus and old technology, including mobile phones and chargers.
Some of the weird and wonderful finds by Divert include baby teeth, 50 hotel room keys, a lock of an expartner’s hair and a taxidermy mouse.
Divert has some tips on cleaning the “messy drawer” and says: “Junk drawers will end up in a mess within a few months if you don’t keep on top of them with regular tidy-ups. Otherwise it’ll be another four years until that last bit of Sellotape sees the light of day again.”
I say clear them out when they are full to the brim but don’t be too ruthless. You never know when that tiny screwdriver won in a cracker might come in handy.