NO Junk drawers

Professional organizer Peter Wash says..... "have no junk drawers" and I see his point exactly.  Here's my former junk drawer.  As you can see, I had little plastic organizer boxes for this drawer but didn't use them.  They just didn't work for me.  I couldn't keep them in place.  They were constantly sliding around and coming apart plus nothing seemed to fit correctly in the boxes.  A junk drawer is a burial place to keep stuff you will never use..... well almost.  I do use the hammer.  I do use the alfalfa seeds to sprout something green to eat in the winter.  Or at least I used to grow sprouts.  It's been about a year or two since I did.  Hmm.... what else?  Well, I do need the matches for my emergency preparedness kit.  I don't see anything else I really need from the junk coffin.  Time for a clean out and give the drawer a better use.

Okie dokie, it's empty.  Time to give it a three time cleaning just in case any critters has wandered through there lately. 

I took a little break to create my own custom divider to fit exactly what I want in there.  It took me about an hour to create my drawer divider out of cardboard.  There is actually more room in the drawer beyond the end of the divider.  I chose not to use that area because it's very hard to reach anything back there.  The drawer doesn't come out as far as it should.  These utensils used to live in a basket on the counter.  They have a better home in this drawer next to the stove.  Getting them off the counter frees up more room for mixing and things.   I may change this later if it doesn't work right for me.  I have to give it a fair try out before deciding.  Notice the little white box?  I realized I regularly used the rubber bands that were in the junk coffin. 

While I'm in this area I decided to clear off the top of the fridge.  I removed some stuff before remembering to take a before photo. 

On top of the fridge were these Ramen noodle packages.  I had planned to make a purse and a couple of baskets from those.  The ice cream sticks were in the junk drawer.  I had planned to use those for another craft idea.  Out they go!  If I ever decide I want to make those crafts I can save again. 

So now the top of the fridge is better.  I didn't three times clean the top yet.  I'll do that when I clean the whole fridge, top and all the sides.  I wasn't ready to pull it away from the wall just yet either.  I'm afraid of what might be lurking back there and I was not in the mood for getting into a panicked cleaning frenzy.  I'm busy enough already.  Cleaning the fridge will probably be the last project I do after cleaning out the whole kitchen.

I'm very determined to do a complete house clean out.  I'm hoping I can do most of the kitchen area and part of the studio area by the end of this week.  Next week I'll be a bit slower cleaning stuff out because I have a couple of customer quilts I promised to do right after the holidays.  It's taken me years to let my house get this crowded with STUFF, it's going to take more than one week to do a complete house clean out. 

To be continued.......