Ask Lemmy

I also have this drawer

I do not have this drawer.

I have two of this drawer.

We have 3 of them: misc kitchen utensils and tools, misc containers, and misc stuff that does not even belong in the kitchen, but ends up there because that's the only drawers in the house that don't have clothes in them.

If you want to organize it some, you can build or buy dividers and split it up.

Bits and bobs drawer. Yep

I don't have this drawer. The ambiguous items just get a place assigned to them with their less ambiguous brethren. And some of these more three dimensional things I keep in a cabinet, like the funnels. I usually keep my scale out on the counter at all times because it's part of my coffee setup in addition to just baking/cooking

I'd be more inclined to call this a misc utensils drawer. I have one just like it, with many of the same items, but I also have a true "junk drawer", but it has anything but utensils in it. Like, batteries, screws, magnifying glass, fire starters, a deck of cards, etc. All of the shit that ends up near the kitchen that doesn't have a whole space dedicated to similar things, finds a home in the junk drawer.

I am proud to say that I don't have this drawer. I grew up in a house with this drawer and always hated it. Nothing new is added to the kitchen without considering the actual need and anything that goes unused for any length of time is getting reevaluated.

Could you un max out other areas? Eliminate duplicates elsewhere so things in this drawer could be moved to the newly made space?

Looks like a junk drawer or a multi purpose drawer in any kitchen. There is often one near the sink. In some larger cabinet sets, the small drawer like that is on the end. But it varies where everyone has it. Maybe all the decent sized kitchens do.

There isn’t a house in existence that doesn’t have one of these. All houses that exist have one of these by celestial mandate.

Mine is more organised (without dividers, similar stuff simply each has its own space) and still roughly looks like yours.

We have a miscellaneous drawer of utensils and kitchen tools. Also another drawer of non-kitchen stuff that's just "the kitchen drawer" - screwdrivers, pliers, paper clips, rubber bands, magnets, ruler, magnifying glass.., not exactly "organized" but randomly deposited in compartments of an old generic drawer organizer so at least it's not just a pile. We just call it "the drawer".

Nobody has this drawer. They're all lying to you, it's some big in-joke like that reddit thread where that person was asking how to switch from Spanish to English and everybody replied in Spanish. You should stand your ground and tell your wi--I can't even joke about the level of gaslighting that would entail. Everybody has this drawer.

I'll be honest though, the scales are a poor fit and probably make it way more cramped. You can stand those up sideways at the edge of a cupboard or in whatever place that you keep cutting boards, because they're a similar shape.

Depending on how often each thing is used, you could optimise by figuring out a hanging solution for some of them. That's quite a common thing, hanging under cupboards or on the backsplash part of the wall. Your wife might appreciate something like that as long as it's agreed on. You'll never totally get rid of this though.

At my parents we had a similar drawer with miscellaneous stuff but it was organised so it looked somewhat tidy. Currently I don't have a drawer like this, cuz I have a tiny kitchen with only one drawer which is reserved for cutlery.

You could get rid of half of that stuff at least

To say what others have said in a different way. Yes, in almost any categorisation system, you're gonna need to deal with some misc haha.

Where else could these things possibly go? (minus the scales, which in my opinion belong on some flat surface in a cupboard of countertop somewhere, since I use my scales all the time)

We have one of these drawers at home, also. I think your wife is right on this one friend.

I can understand just about everything in this drawer because I have a drawer that looks like that ...

What I don't understand is that lettuce knuckle duster thing .... were you planning on going to war with the vegetables?

as others have said, "yes" most people have the misfit drawer. We always called it the "horrible drawer_ because ladles and can openers and things would often catch and make it hard to open. I say embrace it, everyone deserves love even if not everyone fits in perfectly

That's easy:

We have four of these drawers. What helps is organization trays of different sizes and a junk cupboard.

Long skinny things fit here, curved things go here, bulky things get piled up in the cupboard.

Sorry OP - we all hate it too, but everyone has this. Your drawer doesn’t even look that bad. (You were able to OPEN it!)

Close the drawer?

And yes there's always a bucket drawer for things that can't be categorized

We have this drawer. Full of kitchen utensils that don't fit nicely into other drawers.

My parents did not have this drawer. Or at least, not nearly to this extent. Idk how they did it with a smaller kitchen than we have.

I have to sat that the additional of a scale to that drawer is a wild choice

We moved to a new house, and I was storing things like a hammer, nails, screws etc. In a kitchen drawer for hanging the 5 millions things to go on the wall. My wife asks me if the drawer will eventually be cleared out.

It's been 2 years.

It's the stuff drawer. Why are you like this?

Everyone has that drawer. You can tidy it with spacers to make it look a bit less hectic but it will still be that drawer full of random specialty shit.

It's called a junk drawer and as far as I am aware it's an inevitability. However, I will say it's odd that you have utensils in there. Most junk drawers I've encountered are filled with random crap that rarely if ever gets used.

I see enough squish things tools to designate it the squishing drawer.

Bachelor here, and I do indeed have a random shit drawer. As did my family when I was growing up.

This isn't a true junk drawer in my mind because it looks to be all cooking implements. I have a junk drawer, but it contains like rubber bands, rando pencils, gum, etc.

Correct, we have this drawer. And what sucks is that it has been broken for about 20 years.

Everyone I've ever known personally has a "junk drawer." It's where various random doodads and thingamajigs go when they don't neatly fit any other category. And batteries.

For every item in that drawer, ask yourself: "When was the last time I used this?"

If it's more than a year ago, it's not in the right place.

If it's less than a year ago, it's also not in the right place.