The mob scene in the drawer
My first fascination with the junk drawer was based almost entirely on the fact that I thought my mom was calling it the "drunk" drawer.
I knew that "drunk" had something to do with liquor. But since my mother drank hardly at all, I first wondered whether the drunk drawer was the permanent effect of some one-time bender she went on and if it now served as a cautionary tale she was sharing with her offspring. Sort of like, "See, kids, this is what happens when you hit the hard stuff." ...
Still, as a child, I would often peer into the drunk drawer in the kitchen and marvel at its little mob scene. The can of mink oil, the outdoor flag mount with a refrigerator magnet stuck to it, the thimbles, the screws, the Irish coins and all matter of miscellany that, together, carried a metabolic air of menace and mayhem to which I was exceedingly drawn.
In a standard-issue, American, spic-and-span kitchen, here was a place where things got a little out of hand, and everyone seemed to be looking the other way. Clearly, with the spice rack above it and the silverware drawer below it, order and logic had the drunk drawer surrounded. Over the years, I began to see the drunk drawer's contents as squatters with principle, and they weren't about to surrender peacefully, if it ever came to that.
Made perfect sense to me. I was hooked — actually, once, literally, by a fishing lure while trying to retrieve a clothespin.
Fast-forward 32 years. I've got a house of my own. And I've got a drawer in my kitchen that looks as if it were trashed by Led Zeppelin and its road crew. My own drunk drawer — er, junk drawer — filled with all the little doodads that we didn't want to throw away but that were collecting dust. It's an orphanage for wayward widgets, a dump in miniature. And we couldn't be happier.
Except there's a problem. Cultural forces are afoot that seek to wipe out all things unorganized. Just last week, Joyce Dorny, a former homemaker in Northborough, launched the inaugural issue of the glossy, upscale magazine "Organize," which bills itself as the first magazine dedicated solely to helping people tackle their organization needs. And Reader's Digest — also last week — launched a publication, "Organize Your Whole House." Indeed, the research company Freedonia Group estimates that sales in the United States of home organization products will grow more than 5 percent annually through 2009, reaching $7.6 billion.
Sadly, this crusade to organize has now infiltrated the junk drawer itself.
Indeed, just when I was starting to get pretty proud of my cluttered collage of so many failed or interrupted intentions — this mysterious and benevolent drawer of junk — I see the advertisements for all the "junk drawer organizers" being hawked these days. The Clutter Buster Drawer Organizer comes to mind, with its movable dividers and color-descriptive stickers. "Turn your junk drawer into organized nirvana," the ads say.
Organizing clutter is one thing, but organizing a junk drawer is a sure sign that madness has gone mainstream. Trying to tame a junk drawer is like trying to tame a zebra. It's impossible; the junk drawer is a horse of a different stripe.
Sure, I may never, ever use that money clip shaped like a Celtic cross or the map of downtown St. Paul, but I know where they are should I need them in a pinch. Plus, these objects have spunk. I like seeing them whenever I'm digging for, say, the anti-tip bracket kit for the air-conditioner, or a piece of string, or a spare bulb for my Virgin Mary nightlight.
Above all, a good junk drawer is the drawer of the optimist. It represents hope — hope that we WILL find that thing we need. Hope that an answer exists for most problems at hand. Hope that we have the right-size wing nut or some kind of a thingamajig that we can somehow twist or cut or flatten into some kind of a "thingamadude" to prevent the gutter from falling down. Hope that we don't have to run to the hardware store and ask for a thingamadude.
Embrace the junk drawer, wart cream and all. Go ahead, if you haven't already, and open up an empty drawer. Toss in a doorknob or a piece of sidewalk chalk. Feels good, doesn't it?
"It's a place for everything, and everything is in there someplace," my mom says. I'll drink to that. (She'll decline.)
And when the drunk drawer starts overflowing, buy a shed.
I knew that "drunk" had something to do with liquor. But since my mother drank hardly at all, I first wondered whether the drunk drawer was the permanent effect of some one-time bender she went on and if it now served as a cautionary tale she was sharing with her offspring. Sort of like, "See, kids, this is what happens when you hit the hard stuff." ...
Still, as a child, I would often peer into the drunk drawer in the kitchen and marvel at its little mob scene. The can of mink oil, the outdoor flag mount with a refrigerator magnet stuck to it, the thimbles, the screws, the Irish coins and all matter of miscellany that, together, carried a metabolic air of menace and mayhem to which I was exceedingly drawn.
In a standard-issue, American, spic-and-span kitchen, here was a place where things got a little out of hand, and everyone seemed to be looking the other way. Clearly, with the spice rack above it and the silverware drawer below it, order and logic had the drunk drawer surrounded. Over the years, I began to see the drunk drawer's contents as squatters with principle, and they weren't about to surrender peacefully, if it ever came to that.
Made perfect sense to me. I was hooked — actually, once, literally, by a fishing lure while trying to retrieve a clothespin.
Fast-forward 32 years. I've got a house of my own. And I've got a drawer in my kitchen that looks as if it were trashed by Led Zeppelin and its road crew. My own drunk drawer — er, junk drawer — filled with all the little doodads that we didn't want to throw away but that were collecting dust. It's an orphanage for wayward widgets, a dump in miniature. And we couldn't be happier.
Except there's a problem. Cultural forces are afoot that seek to wipe out all things unorganized. Just last week, Joyce Dorny, a former homemaker in Northborough, launched the inaugural issue of the glossy, upscale magazine "Organize," which bills itself as the first magazine dedicated solely to helping people tackle their organization needs. And Reader's Digest — also last week — launched a publication, "Organize Your Whole House." Indeed, the research company Freedonia Group estimates that sales in the United States of home organization products will grow more than 5 percent annually through 2009, reaching $7.6 billion.
Sadly, this crusade to organize has now infiltrated the junk drawer itself.
Indeed, just when I was starting to get pretty proud of my cluttered collage of so many failed or interrupted intentions — this mysterious and benevolent drawer of junk — I see the advertisements for all the "junk drawer organizers" being hawked these days. The Clutter Buster Drawer Organizer comes to mind, with its movable dividers and color-descriptive stickers. "Turn your junk drawer into organized nirvana," the ads say.
Organizing clutter is one thing, but organizing a junk drawer is a sure sign that madness has gone mainstream. Trying to tame a junk drawer is like trying to tame a zebra. It's impossible; the junk drawer is a horse of a different stripe.
Sure, I may never, ever use that money clip shaped like a Celtic cross or the map of downtown St. Paul, but I know where they are should I need them in a pinch. Plus, these objects have spunk. I like seeing them whenever I'm digging for, say, the anti-tip bracket kit for the air-conditioner, or a piece of string, or a spare bulb for my Virgin Mary nightlight.
Above all, a good junk drawer is the drawer of the optimist. It represents hope — hope that we WILL find that thing we need. Hope that an answer exists for most problems at hand. Hope that we have the right-size wing nut or some kind of a thingamajig that we can somehow twist or cut or flatten into some kind of a "thingamadude" to prevent the gutter from falling down. Hope that we don't have to run to the hardware store and ask for a thingamadude.
Embrace the junk drawer, wart cream and all. Go ahead, if you haven't already, and open up an empty drawer. Toss in a doorknob or a piece of sidewalk chalk. Feels good, doesn't it?
"It's a place for everything, and everything is in there someplace," my mom says. I'll drink to that. (She'll decline.)
And when the drunk drawer starts overflowing, buy a shed.
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