Earlier today I came across a blog post by a CPO (that’s “certified professional organizer”
about your junk drawer. You know, the one that has all those packets of ketchup in it? And those containers of pepper flakes that come with pizza? And your spare buttons, and some batteries, and that piece of paper with the important phone number but not the name of the person whose phone number it is?
And also that thing. You know. That weird metal thing that looks like it was the business end of a tool of some kind, and you’re sure you saw the handle just the other day, and you’ve been meaning to repair it for years, but by now you have no idea what it even does.
Junk drawers, files marked “miscellaneous”, and boxes labeled “random crap” are self-fulfilling prophecies. They will inevitably come to be filled with miscellaneous junk and random crap. They’re also not at all helpful. I had a friend in college who packed up her dorm room one year, carefully (she thought) labeling boxes with their contents, only to discover next year that she had ten boxes with labels like “science textbooks” and “winter clothes”, and ten boxes labeled “miscellaneous”. She had to unpack all 20 boxes to find her bathrobe.
What to do if you can’t have a junk drawer or a random file folder? I’ll give you a hint: if it’s important enough to keep, it’s important enough to have it’s own name. For more information, check out Room-inations from Neatstreak.