Junk Drawer

[Pyewacket]

My junk drawer is a magical place where worthless things go, and...with time...age into valuable fasteners, bolts, screws, glues, old medicine for the dogs, wires, tapes, and even computer connectors. Hard to tell what is in there, just that it almost always has something of use.

I was curious how many of you folks have Junk Drawers? Sorta a throw-back from the depression era, but has been a tradition for generations in both my wife's and my family.

[just-a-sip]

got a great junk drawer in the kitchen and another in the garage, before i ever run to the store for that thingAmajig i always check the drawers. funny part is when the wife asks if i have a whosawhatsit, i always say check the drawer, she doesn't even have to ask what drawer or where... she knows exactly what im speaking

[stairman]

only sick people with a compulsion for order and cleanliness don't have at least one junk drawer.....I have a junk shed so it must mean i'm normal

[midwest shinner]

I'm right there with y'all. I think i have a junk drawer for every room as a matter of fact. Does that give me baller status in the world of junk drawers?

[rad14701]

Doesn't every kitchen have a junk drawer...??? Heck, when I was growing up we even had what we called the lost room in our basement...

[S-Cackalacky]

Got 4 in the kitchen, 4 in the dining room, 3 in the living room, 2 in the bedroom, and I'm sure the younguns probably have at least one each. The entire basement could be classified as a junk drawer. Got junk all over the house and even some in the yard.

Just sayin',
S-C

[jollyroger]

I have a few myself...But the greatest junk drawer ever belonged to my grandpa. He had everything you could ever want to find in his junk drawer. One of my favorite past times as a kid on a rainy day was to go through that old drawer. I would Frankenstein so many cool things from the parts...

[Truckinbutch]

My whole house , much to my wife's chagrin , basement to attic . First thing you throw away is certain to be the next thing you need .

[Buccaneer Bob]

I come from a long line of pack rats. It's a proud family tradition with us. When my Grandparents passed away, it took my Mom, Aunt and Uncle three years to go through all of my Grandparents junk because they were really bad about tossing extremely valuable stuff in with a big pile of junk. It wasn't at all surprising for them to find a gold ring in a jar full of nuts and bolts. After all was said and done, I think they found about $30,000 worth of stuff just squirreled away in cardboard boxes.

So my excuse is that it's genetic. No use fighting it.

[frozenthunderbolt]

So my excuse is that it's genetic. No use fighting it.

I resemble that remark - I get it from my mum and dad!
The best thing about my new place (new as of last year anyways) was that it had a garage and a spare bedroom for me to fill with my junk and stuff. I've got about 60 boxes worth of books alone . . .

[Ayay]

Junk is a resourse. Having a junk pile is plain good sense, but my golden rule is..."If I know I have it stashed away but can't find it, then it's not working". I must find every lil bit straight away when I need it.
Filing the junk is the same as filing inportant documents. I use labels on boxes and drawers, decide what are raw materials and what are components, and many components are cut down to raw materials if the component is not needed after a year. For example, a scanner/printer which is not used will yield a handfull of screws, some nice steel rods, a DC motor, and a sheet of tempered glass. These go into the 'screws' box, the 'rods' box, the 'motors' box, and the glass shelf. The rest is thrown. This keeps down the volume because space is scarce.
Periodic culling keeps it more or less under control, which leads to the other golden rule...whatever I threw away yesterday is the exact thing I need today
I console myself by stashing a lot of stuff at the recycling centre.

[Samohon]

Any house than doesn't have a junk drawer has no one living there IMO.

We have one in the kitchen, one in the garage and 2 in the shed.. First place to look for that something you need...

[Black Eye]

My junk drawer is kinda like my sour dough starter. I had a great one growing up, then I left it as I moved along with school. Had another one at my first house, which I'm sure the ex and who ever is there now is enjoying... Now I'm rebuilding it again. Its only 8 months old and I'm still trying to find its permanent resting place. Right now it's spread out in three drawers and a couple boxes. Also, the top drawer in every tool box has one. I'd say the most valuable junk drawer is the one I have in my box at work. That's where all the good shit gets built plus there's a lot of carbide hiding in it.

[rad14701]

My fathers 10+ acre estate, where I now reside, is just one big junk drawer... The house, basement, attached sun porch and breezeway, pool building, 40 x 40 pole barn, the property line, and an old shed were filled when I first moved here... The house, sun porch, and breezeway have been cleaned with many of the worthwhile items now further filling the pool house... My father grew up poor during the great depression, living in a chicken coop, and never threw anything away... Once something made its way onto the property it never left... My grandmother was the same way but I don't possess the trait and the actual junk has to go in order to make the spaces functional and, most importantly, safe...

[rtalbigr]

It's not junk, it's accumulated necessities. Personally I prefer buckets for storing my accumulations.

Big R

[screwgie]

We just moved to a smaller house. I have learned that EVERY drawer is a junk drawer.

[Coyote]

When we bought a new place, 10 acres off site from the ranch and started
moving, I with purpose waited until just last week to go through my carefully
preserved collection of scrap steel, aluminum, and stainless steel.
Thousands of pounds of flat stock, rounds, pipe, that one little piece of whatever
that I might need next week. 10 gauge to 2" thick stuff.

I reduced it to one 55 gallon drum of steel and one of aluminum. Carefully stacked.
Scrap dealer handed me a check that nearly knocked me over.

20 + years of I might need it next week. Tools I had not seen in 15 years.

Wifey calls the ranch shops "Huge Junk Drawers with Doors". Spent yesterday framing
for the new shop at the new place hope to have it closed in before the rain & snow start.

She says the only thing I keep really clean is the Man Cave

Coyote

[Jimbo]

haha, all of us mechanically inclined tinkerers, like us home distillers, gotsta have a collection of fine contraption building hardware (junk). Its a necessity. Every empty cubby hole and corner of my crawl space, basement, attic, garage and shed is crammed wiht crates of motors, pulleys, metal bits, hardware, wood and metal stock, bearings, rope, wire, electrical crap box, plumbing crap box, etc etc etc. Wife rolls her eyes at me, but she's got heaps of shoes and clothes and boots and purses, so I dont let her give me too much grief

[Pyewacket]

Rad's place sounds a lot like our dairy farm when I was a kid--small farm in New Hampshire. It was my grandparents that were coming of age in the great depression, but my dad had the same ideology when it came to frugality; hence my unwillingness to throw out things that might have a possible purpose. We also inherited a lot from my grandparent's farm, as our property became the new junk drawer for their stuff -- age forced them to downsize. In fact, we had 3 generations of these...

We had 3 of them in various stages of decay...amongst metric tons of other various farm tools. I only bring this up because I live in the burbs now...and I would LOVE to go back in time an pick through that stuff. Especially saving the grinding wheels...

Interesting to see that a lot of us do this--and from all over the U.S. and across the pond it looks. Well, like Jimbo says

all of us mechanically inclined tinkerers, like us home distillers, gotsta have a collection of fine contraption building hardware (junk). Its a necessity.

I am sure that has a lot to do with it.

One thing that crossed my mind. If I had one bag to pack, before being plunked down lost in the middle of the wilderness...forced to survive. I think I would be inclined to dump my junk drawer in that bag. I hate to inventory it much, but I believe there is:
Two containers of utility knife blades, two pen light flash lights, at least one utility knife, a lock-blade jack-knife, an ant killing magnifying glass(bought that for the son years ago--couldn't toss it), 3-4 butane lighters, half dozen AA batteries of various charges (scavenged from nonworking electronics-just couldn't throw them away), sewing kit, screws/bolts, vinyl zip ties, length of chain, twine, spools of thin gauged wire, bag of eagle-claw fish hooks, handful of various nails....etc...
I think that stuff could come in handy.

[Xecros]

OH the memories! Seriously! My parents had a junk drawer when I was growing up. You could find just about anything you needed in there. I carry on the tradition. I to, have a junk drawer, and always check it before going out to buy what I'm after....