Tackling That Junk Drawer

A couple months ago, yes months, my mother dumped everything from the drawer into a box and put it on the dinning room table, and that was the extent of her cleaning. I was tired of looking for a pen or scissors or something else usually in the drawer only to be disappointed every time I opened it to find out that once again nothing was in there.  Somehow I kept forgetting that my mom dumped everything out, even though it had been that way for a while.  So, I decided to finally clean it and be able to use it again.

(I don't have a "before" picture on account of my mom dumping the drawer, but here is the "after"!)

The first thing I did was to clean out the drawer, and frankly I'm not sure I really want to know what was hiding in the corners!  I even used a toothpick to get whatever was hiding out because a rag was just not cutting it. Then I got the empty cereal boxes that I had been saving, because I knew I could find a use for them, and I'm glad I did, because I organized the whole drawer without spending any money.  I cut off the bottom of the boxes so they were 2 3/4 inches tall.  I also used some other sizes of boxes to get the sizes that I wanted.  It took me a little bit to find the desired location for each box but I think I finally found it.  Here are the different boxes I have...
     -pens
     -pencils
     -paperclips/rubber bands/paper flip fasteners
     -twist ties
     -box tops
     -Cambell's soup labels
     -pop tabs
     -tape
     -nails/screws plus a tiny screw driver
     -old batteries- because we never know which batteries are good and which ones are bad

Once I cut all of the boxes I found some rubber mat stuff in our laundry room and cut it to the size of the drawer.  Then I put all of the boxes back in there.  I'm still debating weather or not I want to cover the boxes in wrapping paper like she did  here , but I don't really want to waste the wrapping paper in the drawer that really won't be seen all that often.  Plus it would be hard to move the boxes around if I need to change the layout to accommodate other things.  But maybe in the future I will cover the boxes with something.

Here is the rubber matting I was talking about, I'm not sure what the real name of it is though.

Cleaning out and organizing the drawer didn't cost me anything but a little bit of my time, which in my opinion was definitely worth it!  If you decide to do this in your home, just pick boxes that fit your drawer and the things that you need to put into them. Happy organizing!