5 Tips for Keeping Your Junk Drawer Under Control

The time has come to face that age-old enemy within every home: the junk drawer. If you’re anything like us, you dread the topic of the junk drawer being brought up and deny its existence to everyone. Unfortunately for us deniers, it is very real and it demands to be organized. To help us all get our junk drawers organized, we’ve put together a few tips and tricks to use during the process.

Sort While You Declutter

This first tip may seem straightforward and obvious, but you’d be surprised how difficult it can turn out to be. When you first open the dreaded junk drawer, your brain probably goes wild thinking of how much there is to sort through or how messy and chaotic it all looks. We’re looking for a full refresh and clean up so you’re going to have to fully empty everything out. But don’t just dump everything in a pile. To help you stay on track and organized, we suggest finding a few boxes to use as sorting bins while you empty the drawer. This way you’ll be able to see what general purpose every item serves and you’ll have an easier time finding what can go and what needs to stay. Don’t forget to be thorough and mindful of what you throw out and keep.

Clean up & Line up

While you have the drawer empty, it’s a good time to vacuum away any questionable debris and dust and give the drawer a good wipe down with a disinfecting wipe. One of the best ways to keep any and all of your drawers tidy is by adding a drawer liner. We suggest choosing a liner with a gripping texture so that everything stays put and doesn’t roll around when you open it. Many have opted to choose a more stylish liner or even a textured wallpaper to line their drawers for aesthetic purposes. There are even some drawer liners that are scented to keep your clothes smelling fresh after washing. Ultimately however you line your drawers is up to you, the goal is to create an easy-to-clean barrier within the drawer itself. We won’t judge if you love the look of a glittery hot pink drawer liner, it probably looks amazing.

Divide to Conquer

Once you’ve sorted, decluttered, cleaned, and lined your drawer you start with the process of replacing the items you’ll be keeping. But first, you’ll want to find a set of drawer inserts to keep everything organized. The inserts you choose to use can be bought or made depending on your crafting abilities. There are tons of inserts and dividers for a variety of drawer sizes and depths so you can really mix and match to find a system that works for you. You can also upcycle old cardboard boxes to create your own custom trays and dividers, proving that recycling can be useful in your own home. Whatever organizational system you go for will work perfectly for you and your home so there’s no need to second-guess how it works together in your brain.

Uniform Storage Solutions

One of the best ways to keep track of everything in the drawer, besides your newly created organizers, is by keeping small items in labeled containers. Labeled containers are every professional organizer’s best friend, so why not make them work for you? We suggest finding a set of uniform containers to keep in your drawer so that you know everything fits and so that you’ll be motivated to keep it all organized. This works especially well for spice drawers or utility drawers that can have a huge variety of smaller objects that fall into the same category. Uniform containers can help you keep everything in one place, with the added bonus of looking very nice and tidy within the drawer.

One Purpose Per Drawer

Our final tip for keeping your junk drawer from coming back with revenge is to designate a purpose for each drawer in your home. In the kitchen, you may have a spice drawer, a utensil drawer, a utility drawer, or an office supply drawer. In your bedroom, you could have a shirts drawer, a pants drawer, a sock drawer, and an underwear drawer. As long as you have a set rule for what items belong in each drawer it will be far easier to maintain organization around the house. When one drawer becomes the fallout drawer where nothing has the same purpose or category, that’s when the junk drawer resurfaces. But by sticking to a system, and maybe even labeling your drawers so that everyone in the house remembers, you can say goodbye to the dread of the junk drawer and live chaos-free.

Have you tried any of these junk drawer hacks? Do you have any hacks you can share? Let us know in the comments, we love hearing from you! If you’re looking for a bit of professional help to get your junk drawer in order, we’ve got you covered get more info here and contact us today to see how we can help you tidy your home.