Junk Drawers without Guilt

We are knee deep (progress over hip deep) in unpacking and I am finding most of it humorless at best. Although there are moments of pleasant surprise when we uncover the electric cord that matches up with the cordless drill, external hard drive, or other electric device. I try to celebrate these moments of reunion to get me through the other less pleasant tasks.

However during this boring process I had a moment of revelation. I was unpacking another box labeled "Miscellaneous" and trying to decide the appropriate destination for the hodgepodge of items that we could not imagine living without.

As I randomly (although I prefer to call it 'contemporary chaotic') started to place paper clips, staplers, craft paper, rubber bands, hard drives, zip drives, etc. into neatly arranged piles within the built in cabinets and drawers I suddenly had my moment of epiphany. Brace yourself for a notion that will free you from untold guilt and agida:

The reason a junk drawer creates mental anguish is that once an item is placed in a junk drawer(s) we fear and generally experience never being able to find that item again when we need it. Thus: as long as we can find the item when it is needed there is no reason to overly organize almost anything!

This is all thanks to a little bit of technology that could also be replicated with only a bit more effort with a manual system (e.g. index cards that can be alphabetized for those anal retentives that can not let go fully).

As I placed the items in the various cabinet locations I entered into my spreadsheet the item description (e.g. box of big mother paper clips), and the specific cabinet and shelf location (e.g. upper first cabinet, left door, middle shelf or U1LM in order to use an ADLA (another four digit acronym)).

So at anytime in the future I will be able to do a search on the description or part of the description and know with certainty the exact junk drawer/shelf where the item is located! While it may be a mess I will know those big mother paper clips are somewhere in that damn drawer.

Of course this presumes that when someone retrieves the box of big mother paper clips, takes one or two out, that in turn they return the box of paper clips to the original location. I am still waiting on an epiphany for a technique to address this risk.

So give it a try and let me know what you think. I might try and patent the idea or least write an app for the iPhone/iPad.

iJunk