Declutter Your Junk Drawer With A Simple 30-Minute Method

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Your 30-minute junk-drawer-decluttering project starts with high hopes and ends with disparate stacks of items in the garbage. Somewhere in between all of that sits you, just wondering what that errant screw came off and why (oh, why) you've kept all that dental wax from when your kid had braces. It can feel overwhelming, but after you decide whether you should even bother organizing your junk drawer, the key to success in times like these lies in bringing similar junk drawer objects together, taking a look at the items in each group, and only keeping the ones that are useful. Easier said than done, right?

To make this half-hour decluttering chore a success, you'll need to give your items (or categories of items) a home in the drawer. For that, you'll need several shallow plastic storage baskets, such as Glad Plastic Multipurpose Drawer Trays, in multiple sizes. Try finding square ones (some small, some large) and long, narrow ones that could fit items like rulers and pencils. You'll also need trash bags and some cleaning supplies.

You'll also want to do some pre-sort thinking. Determine what kinds of items you want to keep in that particular junk drawer. If it's in the kitchen, should you only keep kitchen-related stuff in there? There's an argument for using a junk drawer to declutter every room in your home – more specifically, for putting items where they actually belong. For example, do you need a hammer in the kitchen junk drawer, or should it go in the garage junk drawer (i.e., in your toolbox)? Once you know what types of items truly belong in the drawer, write out some possible categories of stuff so you'll know how many storage boxes you'll need.

Get comfortable for this. You may want to completely remove the drawer (if possible) and sit it on the floor or the dining table so that you can work unhindered. Pull everything out of the drawer, and sort your items into stacks. If you're working with the kitchen junk drawer, you might have a pile for the charger cords for the tablet you use when you cook (and for the tablet itself), scraps of notepaper, extra fridge magnets, Sharpie markers, and some labeling tape for leftovers. You'll need a container for each "keep-this" pile you end up with to keep the space from feeling cluttered.

After wiping down the drawer, put the storage containers into it, lining them up to maximize drawer space. After that, put your sorted items into the containers. Finally, some smaller items, like pens, may benefit from being stashed in a large zip-top freezer bag before being placed into the container. This keeps them from going dry and from getting lost because they're rolling around. If you want even more space efficiency at the end of your 30-minute tidying project, you could also overhaul your junk drawer with a three-tiered solution, like this OUNAN Multi-Level Smart Drawer Organizer, to hold small tools, loose hardware, and replacement parts.

Finally, there are many ways to make your piles. For example, if you can replace an item in 20 minutes for $20 (the 20/20 rule), toss it, particularly if you don't remember the last time you used it. If the item has sentimental value, like a photo, it doesn't belong in the drawer at all! Put it somewhere for safekeeping until you can deal with it, so it won't keep you from finishing your decluttering project in half an hour.