What is in your everything drawer?
Growing up, we had an everything drawer in our kitchen. As the name implied, it collected all the stuff that didn’t obviously have a home somewhere else.
Need a rubber band? Everything drawer.
Need some tape? Glue? Shoddy screwdriver? Everything drawer.
Key to unknown locks? Cap to pens long lost? Lighters with no fuel? Bent nail? Yup. Everything drawer.
Of course, we still have an “everything drawer”. My sister wrote up the contents of her “everything drawer” — or drawers in her case — for a bit of contest posted by Jules.
Pictured at left is our generic everything drawer. It has looked about like that, with varying contents, for the past five years, even though the contents have moved between houses twice.
Some content highlights:
- Many batteries of various sizes, including a battery pack for an electric screwdriver that broke 2 years ago and
a battery4 battery packs for an “electric fence” that was in our house in CT 5 years ago (and we used once, then shut it off whne it shocked our dog when she entered the kitchen. Poor Janis.). - A shoddy screwdriver and a decent flower print screwdriver.
A strip6 strips of staples that do not fit any stapler we own.- Two things of silly putty that turned to rock a long time ago.
- Plumber’s tape well separated from its lid.
- A dozen or more keys to unlock the unknown.
- Glue. Some may be useful. Some already hard.
- Digital thermometer with no probe.
- Ear plugs.
- Two carpet cutting knives. I think I now have four of these. No idea why.
- Hose bits; two way valves, washers, nozzle.
- LED flashlight eaten by battery acid.
- Christmas light bits.
- Two dozen keys for locks unknown.
- A bent hanger hook.
- A dozen different allen wrenches, but only in two sizes.
And goodness knows what else… OK. Off to clean the damned drawer. Update: Cleaned. Tons of good batteries, some bad. All tools migrated back to the garage.
Of course, I also have specialized everything drawers in my garage. My screw drawer, for example. And my allen wrench drawer. Or the drawer that contains 12 lbs of bottle openers and pocket knives.
What is in your everything drawer?
January 12th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I don’t have an everything drawer at home. I might have one at work. Now I’m going to have to make sure that I go through all my drawers today and clean them all out again. Damn you!
January 12th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
We call ours the hell drawer since it’s full of crap, but never has what you want.
January 12th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
What about an “Everything House”?
January 12th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Copies of an old PC game called YOU DON’T KNOW JACK
Well, that was before we cleaned it out and threw all that crap away.
We do have an “anything room” though.
January 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
You MUST enter this in Jule’s contest.
xoabb
January 12th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
A half dozen 37 cent stamps, a roll of about four dozen 41 cent stamps, some star wars postage stamps, a couple dozen ball point pens (nabbed from the Widget Summit last fall), random post-it pads, some old receipts, and a bunch of other such items. It’s funny how most things that collect in the everything drawer can be counted in dozens.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I spoke too soon……must check the website BEFORE i comment!
January 14th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Interesting — this sort of reminds me of the “open your fridge” thing where people take a picture of the contents of their fridge and post it around for everyone to see. We always called our ‘everything drawer’ the ‘junk drawer’. Ours has tons of junk in it
January 15th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Dear SIL:
since we moved to Florida the “junk/everything” drawer was eliminated.
but not to worry, we have embarked on a new drawer, which already has unknown keys, batteries, bottle caps, some for wine, some for soda, grout cleaner tube.
so we r well on our way.
January 18th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
[...] response to my “everything drawer” post, my mom sent me these pictures in an email and said: We have an “everything [...]