It doesn’t matter what you call it ‘the man drawer’, ‘drawer of doom’, ‘bits and bobs drawer’ we all have at least one of them – the junk drawer.
It’s the place where things get shoved when the don’t really have any other place to go, where you stash paperwork you might need one day and where you sweep clutter into when you’re trying to have a quick tidy up (It’s ok, we’ve all done it)
Allen keys that come with flat packed furniture? They’re probably in there along with spare batteries, spare keys, a random safety pin, maybe some of those little packet wet wipes you get from KFC, bits from kids toys – it’s a literal treasure trove of stuff BUT is it stuff we need?

We talked the other week about decluttering when you feel overwhelmed and the junk drawer is a great place to start as its a nice contained area. Our junk drawer lives in our kitchen and is often times full to bursting so I thought what better way to show you how to declutter and organise your junk drawer by doing it myself!

How to organise your junk drawer

Tip it!

First things first, tip it all out! Ok so maybe not tip it out but remove everything from the drawer so you can give it a good wipe down. Get any crumbs, dust and little bits and pieces stuck in the corners out and give it a wipe over with anti-bac spray.

Sort it

Have a look through the items you have and organise like with like, in our case we had a pile of batteries, medicines, pens and pencils, mini screwdrivers and Allen keys – you get the idea. Throw away any bits of rubbish you find and then have a proper look through what you’ve got and declutter anything

Contain it

The easiest way to organise a junk drawer is to find a way to contain the different areas of junk. Let’s be honest, we all know we can’t do without a junk drawer so I’m not going to tell you to get rid of it but I will insist that you at least get it a bit more organised.

We have a lot of little bits and pieces in our junk drawer but they are all similar so it makes sense to store them all together so I’m going to use a box I already had. The organiser box I’m using is on I bought from Home Bargains years ago but you can get similar on Amazon – just search for clear organiser box. There are also things like these clear storage box/divider trays that can be handy if you’re trying to organise stuff that you need easy and regular access to.

For some reason we have a ton of batteries rolling around in the junk drawer, so I’ve sorted them into their own little compartments at the bottom of my box – they are matched up in battery size and then there is also a section for solar rechargeable batteries too (we have a lot of solar lights in the garden). We’ve also got a collection of cup hooks and cable ties, again, all mainly to do with garden or plant based projects and we will no doubt need lots of them again this summer. There is a nice little collection or Allen keys and some USB cables, I know the orange one is to charge the Ring doorbell but I’m not sure what the black one is for, daren’t thrown it away though

Put it all back

Once you’ve organised the smaller bits and pieces, put it all back in the drawer (neatly!) and marvel at your lovely organised junk drawer.
It’s also worth letting others in your household know that you’ve reorganised and tidied up the junk drawer so that they don’t spend ages wandering around the house looking for throat lozenges that you decided to start actually storing in the newly designated medicine cabinet in the downstairs loo…

Keep on top of it

The nature of the junk drawer means that we all know it’s likely to get messy again and potentially fairly regularly. The easiest way to remedy this is to build the job of organising your junk drawer into your cleaning routine and maybe do it once every few months.