Ask Lemmy

Just to the left of the stove, and the goddamn potato masher always manages to wiggle its way to the top and block the drawer opening.

It’s also how some fruit is grown so leave the drawer ecosystem alone.

Not to brag but I have two of these and a proper junk drawer.

just take the pizza cutter out

Yeah, we have this drawer. There are always going to be some tools you use in the kitchen enough to justify the purchase but not enough to be in any of the daily driver drawers. Honestly, this is not bad, we have a drawer that is the awkward necessary crap drawer for the awkward necessary crap drawer.

Yep, have one. Its perfectly organised, because those things always go back in that drawer so that's just where they go.

my family has had 2 of these since the 90s and now i have 2 of my own.

Yes, I have a drawer like that. And yes, every family has this drawer.

I have a knife drawer with 2/3 of these objects in it and a measuring tool drawer witj 1/3 of these items. My junk drawer contains literally nothing in this drawer.

Pretty hard to avoid the drawer. Maybe find a new home for that scale (maybe sideways in a deep drawer?), throw a few rarely used tools into a ziploc bag, and introduce a caddy or two to corral the small stuff.

Your house is this drawer. Think about it.

Every single organization system will fail. When we try to put things into categories, there will always be some things that don't fit. That is why every organization scheme needs a miscellaneous category. That seems to be the purpose of this drawer, and that's great.

Wife is always right

Wow. Yours looks really clean. We have two of these drawers and they're maxed out double as full.

My life is this drawer.

Not only do we have the "one", we each have one in our own space as well.

I am proud to say that I don't have this drawer. I grew up in a house with this drawer and always hated it. Nothing new is added to the kitchen without considering the actual need and anything that goes unused for any length of time is getting reevaluated.

Could you un max out other areas? Eliminate duplicates elsewhere so things in this drawer could be moved to the newly made space?

We've got 2

When my daughter was 4, she named it the “Don’t know where go drawer” and that’s how we’ve referred to it since.

I also have a man drawer.

Yep, I have a 'random shit' drawer too

Remove the scale, electronics don't belong in the misc food prep and niche baking implements drawer. Once you do that you'll easily recognize it as the food prep and niche baking implements drawer. The scale goes on a shelf, or in a cabinet next to the mixer/food proc/salad spinner.

Nobody has this drawer. They're all lying to you, it's some big in-joke like that reddit thread where that person was asking how to switch from Spanish to English and everybody replied in Spanish. You should stand your ground and tell your wi--I can't even joke about the level of gaslighting that would entail. Everybody has this drawer.

I'll be honest though, the scales are a poor fit and probably make it way more cramped. You can stand those up sideways at the edge of a cupboard or in whatever place that you keep cutting boards, because they're a similar shape.

Depending on how often each thing is used, you could optimise by figuring out a hanging solution for some of them. That's quite a common thing, hanging under cupboards or on the backsplash part of the wall. Your wife might appreciate something like that as long as it's agreed on. You'll never totally get rid of this though.

We do

A junk drawer? ... yes, most houses have one.

Throw in birthday candles, rubber bands, and a few coins and you got yourself a proper junk drawer.

Ah yes. The “nonsense drawer” as my youngest labeled it. It has stuck. In my parents family it was called the junk drawer.

Pfft you call THAT an overstuffed drawer?

I bet you can open it without anything catching the backside of the cabinet, nerd.

A junk/misc. drawer? Yes.

Yep. The "junk drawer". Even in my house with my diagnosed OCD mom had one of these.

This is not a junk drawer. A junk drawer has flashlights, pocket knife, some tools, tape, bandaids, pens. This drawer doesn't have anything like that.

This is the food prep drawer.

I have three food utensil drawers. Dining, serving, and prep.

If you have a small kitchen, maybe you would combine serve and prep utensils into one drawer.

Can opener, cheese grater, scale, rolling pin, whisks, mixer parts, and cooking knives, all go into drawer. But like the bread knife and cake knife go into serve drawer, along with ladels, and serving spoons, for example.

Aaaah, the "As seen on TV"+drawer! Yes we have that one.

Almost every home has a junk drawer or other junk container. Mine has multiple.

All that being said, I don't think I've seen a drawer as confusing as this.

I am ridiculously organized and clean. I do that 5 minutes of swift pickup/wipe a few times each day.

That said, still have this drawer. There is always a collection of items that don't seem to go "together" but they're always used. That's what this drawer is for.

I don't get the stock picture though. It's an obvious arrangement of tools that haven't even been used.

I do not have that drawer. Mine is at least twice as full.

Sorry to say, your wife is right. Sorry to say, even if she is wrong she is right.

That's essentially the "overflow" drawer. The only solution is to have less stuff... Or just live with it like i do lol

Yes, every household in the developed world has a drawer like this. It's for things that you hardly need or never need, but might do, one day, probably (not).

Why it bothers me: in a more sane world, this stuff would be shared. Every community would have a junk tool shed - not every household of 4 people, or 2 people, or (increasingly) one person. It's reminiscent of that drill statistic: the average electric drill is used for 7 minutes in its lifetime. This is madness. Our planet is overflowing with junk. As a species we need to be smarter.