Tutorial: Organizing Your Junk Drawer

Remember our tutorial a few posts ago on how to build a built-in utensil divider for your silverware drawer?  Ya know, this one?  Well, having my utensil divider built-in to my drawer has rocked my world.  So much, in fact, that I made a special trip to Home Depot to buy more melamine so that TJ could help me tackle my dreaded junk drawer.

I was so excited to get going on the project, that I forgot to take a "before" picture.  So, google image search has kindly provided me with a picture of someone else's junk drawer.

I can assure you that my drawer looked a lot like this, if not worse.  I swear to you, I was cleaning out that drawer and organizing it almost once a week and within a few hours, it looked like I had never touched it.  I thought about buying some plastic baskets to try to organize it, but I knew I'd never be able to get the arrangement just right with those baskets.

I started by taking everything out of my junk drawer (and throwing away all the junk I didn't really need).  I cleaned the drawer out, then I started slowing put things back in and trying to figure out an arrangement.  Once I got a section how I wanted it, I would send TJ down to the basement to cut me my piece of melamine to divide it.  Finally, we got it just how I wanted it.

TJ marked where each divider was supposed to be and then he headed down to the basement and nailed them into place.

That's it!  We were finished!  It took no more than 15 minutes and only $5 worth of supplies.  Amazing, I tell you.  Just amazing!  I've had my new organized junk drawer for about two and a half weeks now and I'm happy to report that I haven't had to clean or reorganize a single thing since it's been done.  Hallelujah!