How to organise the junk drawer so it stays organised

The junk drawer is where good intentions go to tangle. Batteries of unknown charge, three tape measures, a bag of furniture bits from a bed you no longer own, a screwdriver that is always the wrong one. Organising it with dividers helps for a week. The lasting fix is subtraction.

Step one: empty it onto the table

All of it. Sort into four piles: tools, consumables (tape, batteries, glue), small hardware (screws, anchors, hooks) and everything else. Most of the everything-else pile is the problem.

Step two: one tool, not six

The drawer usually holds several overlapping tools: two screwdrivers, a loose set of bits, a tape measure, a small hammer, a flashlight. One multitool replaces the set. The Kelvin 36 carries the screwdriver arm, 26 bits, a hammering surface, a 6 ft tape, a level and a flashlight; the Kelvin 23 does the same with 16 bits for a smaller drawer. Give the duplicates to someone moving into their first apartment.

Step three: test every battery, keep the good ones in one place

A battery tester costs very little and ends the mystery. Keep charged spares in a small box labelled by size. Flat ones go to recycling, not back in the drawer.

Step four: hardware in one container

One small compartmented box for screws, anchors, hooks and picture wire. Throw away the furniture-specific bits for furniture you no longer own; they fit nothing else.

Step five: consumables in a row

Painter's tape, super glue, a pencil, a marker, a few rubber bands. Stand them in a shallow tray along the front where you can see them.

The rule

Only things that are used in the kitchen or the room next to it go back. The drawer is a fix-it station, not storage. If something has not been used in a year, it either moves to the garage or leaves.

Why it stays organised

Because there is one tool, it always goes back to the same spot, and the spot is the drawer. The in-body bit storage on a Kelvin matters more here than anywhere: there is no bag of bits to drift away from the tool, so the drawer cannot slide back into chaos one bit at a time.

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