Ask Lemmy

Throw in birthday candles, rubber bands, and a few coins and you got yourself a proper junk drawer.

That's not even a proper junk drawer, that's all kitchen gadgets, but okay... Yes, in my experience, most households have a junk drawer.

where's the sauce packets?

Yes, every household in the developed world has a drawer like this. It's for things that you hardly need or never need, but might do, one day, probably (not).

Why it bothers me: in a more sane world, this stuff would be shared. Every community would have a junk tool shed - not every household of 4 people, or 2 people, or (increasingly) one person. It's reminiscent of that drill statistic: the average electric drill is used for 7 minutes in its lifetime. This is madness. Our planet is overflowing with junk. As a species we need to be smarter.

Your wife is correct.

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

Well this backfired on OP

I have whole cabinets like this

Yes. Most kitchens have a junk drawer. This is often where the household hammer is kept, among other random things.

Compromise in marriage means not organizing everything to death and allowing your partner to maintain some jumbled spaces. A junk drawer is organized, out of sight chaos that still maintains a certain logic.

We’ve also floated the idea that not having a junk drawer in the kitchen may be a marker of psychopathy. I jest, but also not. Just know, junk drawers are common, diverse, and almost as expected as silverware drawers.

Every house has that drawer.

My wife got snap apart customizable drawer organizers and it's a big difference. She showed me the way.

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.

I also have this drawer

At my parents' place, EVERY drawer is like that!

its the miscellaneous drawer, its normal, we have a whole misc cabinet.

Yep, we all do. Although you might be going a little far in putting the food scale in there.

Every family has this drawer

Not in the kitchen but I have a (very large) one for electronics and batteries and it's the worst. Tools and screws. Office supplies.

This kitchen one you could neat up a bit if it really annoys you. Put the scales in a cupboard upright against the side. Maybe get a nicer scale, that one looks naff. Trash the salad shears. What a terrible idea. Put the pizza / dough metal thingie on a wall mounted magnet for knives and stuff. Maybe put some of the other metal stuff there idk. Everything else is pretty small so you can put in dividers for that. The grater and ladle go in the same compartment.

Unless of course you think your wife should tidy up this drawer in which case you can just absolutely fuck off. Into the ocean. Die and get eaten by scavengers.

Edit: oh, that's a meat tenderiser, not a ladle. Everything else stands.

3d printed some Gridfinity stuff and fixed a couple of these drawers. The rest are under way.

I don't get why it bothers you, well, maybe it's not a serious disagreement idk.

Every family has this drawer

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

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.

That one drawer won't look messy, if every drawer looks like this. *taps forehead *

The misc tools drawer? I have one that's overflowing. My parents have multiple drawers and cabinets of this.

Attempt at organizing said drawer of ours

Families only have one drawer like this?? How do they manage?

The only reason I don't have such a drawer, is an overall lack of drawers in my house, don't really have one to spare to be a junk drawer.

Which is a damn shame because I could really use a drawer to throw some miscellaneous odds and hands that don't have any other designated place to live.

I have no drawers that are not this drawer.

We have that drawer. Two of them in fact.

I regrettably also have this drawer.

Attempts at cleaning it usually end up with the drawer now being somewhere else, but it clings to life somehow.

I think they're just a fact of life at this point.

I had way too many of these drawers 🫠

Team junk drawer. Where else do you keep your used batteries?

What?

What do you mean? This is organized! And I have such a drawer too. This is the collection of slightly large kitchen tools that are not large enough to place them in the cupboard.

Whether every family has this drawer or not, I wouldn't know, so I'm not very helpful with settling your argument. I'd bet, every family has this drawer though. Because everyone must have those kinds of utensils, and there's no other logical place to store them. Some people hang some of them on the wall, but even then, there are some that cannot be hung on the wall. Those go into this drawer.

Ours is a little more organized with dividers, but it doesn't look much better. Everyone I know has a drawer like that. I'd take the scale out and put it on a shelf. Scales are delicate.

PS, we have the exact same can opener, pizza roller, and grater as you guys.

We don't have one, we have multiple

These misc drawers are the best way to worship anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers (also luck).

I don't have this drawer. I have several drawers organised by use. Baking, cooking, eating, etc. All are barely organised.

Yes, and as others have mentioned, the scale sits on the counter since it's delicate.

Definitely got one of those.

This is not a junk drawer, there are no coins or condiment packets.

This looks to be a kitchen accessories drawer although I'm unsure why you have a pill cutter in there.

Yes. I've tried to sort it, but there are too many small things that don't go anywhere else, so they are dumped together.

Trust me, that one is fine