Every house has at least one. There’s one beside my dresser in the bedroom. And another one in the kitchen just below the counter. The basement has one too. Searching through it is like a small archaeological dig.
They’re junk drawers.
Junk drawers are the great equalizers of American homes. Rich or poor, young or old, every family has at least one. They’re one part time machine, one part museum, and one part landfill.
A junk drawer is where useful things go to wait until they become useless – or where useless things go because you just can’t part with them.
Mine contains, among other things: fingernail clippers, toenail clippers, dead watches, an expired driver’s license, pocket knives too dull to cut a banana, eyeglass repair kits, a VCR instruction manual, a half dozen mystery keys, enough loose screws to assemble a lawn mower, four old batteries, three Bic pens, two toy cars, and a partridge in a pear tree.
And underneath all that clutter is a pile of more pennies than you’d find in a wishing well.
If my whole life were like this, I would have already appeared on “Hoarders.”
Every junk drawer contains items no one can identify. Parts that look like they might be important, but you can’t remember what they go to.
“What’s this little plastic doohickey?”
“I dunno, but don’t throw it away. The minute we do, something in the house will quit working.”
I use the junk drawer as a general depository. I’ll put something in there so I know where to find it. However, by putting everything in the drawer, it defeats the purpose. Six months later, I’m digging through a tangled mess of charging cords that looks like a bowl of linguine. What was I thinking?
And my junk drawer is so heavy it nearly falls out of the dresser when I open it. That is, if I can even pull it out. Usually, it’s so overstuffed that something makes it hang up. About the only way to pry it loose is with a tire tool. Which is in the basement junk drawer. Naturally.
Once I get the drawer open, I spend five minutes rummaging through paper clips, expired coupons, and enough twist ties to secure every loaf of bread in Alabama – only to discover the item I needed wasn’t in there after all. It was in the kitchen junk drawer. Naturally.
When did opening a drawer become a visit to the
Twilight Zone?
And I say I’m going to organize it someday. I’ll buy little plastic trays, label the sections, and finally bring order out of chaos, for a little while. Then about two weeks later, I’ll casually toss in a key chain, a handful of change, and a couple of leftover screws. And the next thing I know, nature has begun to reclaim the habitat.
The answer is not a bigger junk drawer. Junk is like water, it seeks its own level. A bigger junk drawer just means more junk.
As I rummaged through this mess, I discovered that somewhere beneath the rubber bands, dried-up markers, and mystery parts are little pieces of my life. A ticket stub. A Boy Scout pocketknife. A key to a house we no longer own.
For example, the most recent addition to my junk drawer was my dad’s watch. Sadly, parts for it are no longer available. But that old timepiece still seems far too important to throw away.
I suppose it’s the same reason I don’t take my mom’s contact information out of my cell phone. I know she’ll never answer. But somehow, deleting it would feel like losing her one more time.
Maybe a junk drawer isn’t just full of junk.
Maybe it’s just where memories wait until we need them again.
Except for the toenail clippers.
Joe Hobby is a standup comedian, a syndicated columnist, and a long-time writer for Jay Leno. He’s a member of Cullman Electric Cooperative and is very happy now that he can use Sprout from his little place on Smith Lake. Contact him at jhobby2000@aol.com.
