apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Mine is really a catch all...yes kitchen misc. but also check books, pens, bills, glue, glasses, menus...A mess! The rest of the kitchen...very well organized :)

I have ONE drawer in my kitchen...if that was a junk drawer, I'd be doomed.

Mine isn't really a drawer, it's a basket set in a bookcase. It's got candle ends, matches, paperclips, kitty meds I've never gotten rid of, hole punches and that sort of thing. I've only got four drawers in the kitchen and they have silverware, cooking gadgets and measuring stuff, dish towels and various wraps and pot holders respectively.

I don't know if it is a medical condition, but a drawer like that in my house would probably send me into convulsions. :)

My new kitchen has NO drawers, yikes! Now I just have junk everywhere, but I'm working on that before my boyfriend kills me.

No, because we have precious few drawers in our kitchen and those are very small. Also, we only moved in three months ago, so everything's still pretty organized. But growing up, we had two -- one for miscellaneous utensils and kitchen tools (apple slicer/corer, spatulae, old hopelessly dull knives) and one for office-ish supplies (twine, tape, sundry pens, paperclips, pool passes).

There's a kitchen 'gadget' drawer, but every that goes in there was put there on purpose.

The only freak is a rubber band ball, but I use rubber bands to get my makeshift saran wrap lids stay on things.

I only have 1 draw in my kitchen, so my other bits and pieces actually go in a huge tupperware container under the sink. My day to day kitchen things like whisk, spatula and tongs go in a big jar on the windowsill and my knifes are on a magnetic strip on the wall. Works for me.

Sort of. But it's not nearly as cluttered as that drawer. It holds a few miscellaneous items: cheesecloth, cat fountain filters and a tablecloth. I keep my kitchen gadgets in another drawer. Other household bits and bobs generally have designated places and I've no desire to hoard useless junk.

No way I organize my drawers so they look like works of art. I do have one catch all closet though.

there is one junk drawer in my kitchen. Of course, there are only two drawers, total, so... yeah. My pegboard wall is my salvation. I'd be soooo doomed without it.

When I moved in, EVERY SINGLE DRAWER in the house (there are a number of built in pieces) was a junk drawer. Which is, I suppose, what you get when the guy who lives there has lived there since he was 10, and has lived there on his own since he was 20, with a large number of rotating roommates.

I totally have a kitchen junk drawer and it looks a lot like that pic. I've managed to organize the menus that used to live in there so I'm making progress...actually that's the only progress I've made w/ that drawer.

I actually did a double-take looking at that photo. My husband and I have a really organized kitchen (as in, shelves are labeled "sauce pans" "baking pans" though mostly for him, not me) but we do have the one catch-all junk drawer. Funny enough, it's the most used item in the kitchen. :)

Yay, junk drawers! I have certain random items that I know are in the junk drawer and if I had to keep track of them elsewhere I would never remember (like an analogue phone for power outages when I've also forgotten to charge my mobile).

About a year ago I realized that we had a junk drawer in every room. Every time a visitor arrived unannounced I would dash around the house and stash every thing lying around into these drawers - only they very soon became, well overflowing!!! So I reduced/decluttered all the drawers to just one in the kitchen. I love it - there is nothing of mine in there... but matchbox cars, lego scraps, batteries, half screwdrivers, bits of wires, lonely screws - all the sorts of things my kids think belong on the kitchen counter - slam dunk and they are gone - out of sight and I can breathe!

When I grew up we always had a junk drawer, and it's contents saved many a day! My mother worked as a kitchen designer and she always told her clients to have one more drawer in the kitchen than you think you might need. According to her a junk drawer is as essential to a kitchen as a hob or a fridge. I agree.

This is an interesting question. I have actually been planning to clean up that drawer by throwing everything into a tool box and hiding it all under the sink.

Junk drawers are the gateway to order! In french, we have a term to describe the container where you put your keys, small change, etc. on the landing strip: it's called a "vide-poches" (literal translation : where you empty your pockets).
For me, the junk drawer is just that, but bigger.

It provides a place for the small items you haven't found a nest for yet, and allows fast access to masking tape, small tools like scissors, X-acto and the like, spare screwdriver and small hammer, rope, rubber bands, glue stick and whatnot.

On any given rainy day, I go through it and pare down; but all the main little implements stay there.

Very practical and time-sparing!

I used to have a junk drawer, but not in the kitchen, but in a built in chest in the walk in closet in an old studio I once had and it held all the stuff normally found in a junk drawer, including a hand saw used for cutting the couple of incheses off of live Christmas trees when I used to do those (artificial all the way these days) but it also held the edison fuses needed to keep the kitchen and main living area functioning and all that and I'd get into it at least once a week at times.

Now much of that stuff is in a plastic clear sterilite shoe box on the bedroom closet shelf but now I hardly get into it. :-)