“The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t.”― Joshua Becker
We all have that drawer. You know the one. I call it the homeless drawer, you probably know it as ‘the junk drawer’. It’s the one where you put ALL the things you’re not quite sure what to do with. All the miscellaneous junk ends up in this drawer, it gets (over)full and then you go searching for a lighter (that you swear you put in there last year) to light your daughter’s birthday candles and you have to (embarrassingly) pull out all that crap stuff out onto the counter in front of everyone to find it. {Or so I’ve heard.}
I hate this drawer (and this about the only four-letter word I don’t like to use). So I decided to stop creating space for one in my house. Full disclosure: Because I have three young children, when I find something odd, I have a spot where I keep it for about a week. If no one claims or asks for it, then out it goes. A great example: I found this weird rubber thing that looked kind of like a connected ‘x’ and ‘o’ in my car last week. I had NO idea what it was, but instead of tossing it, (which honestly is my first inclination) I stuck it in my little spot. Well thank goodness because Monday morning when my daughter was filling up her water bottle for school it wasn’t latching properly. She says, “oh I need the little rubber thing I left in the dirty floor of the car. Ahhhhh, it was the thingy that keeps the water from leaking out. Hallelujah I kept that or I’d be shelling out another 16 bucks at Target for a new one right now. {Shew}
So you can’t mindlessly toss everything, but what you can do is mindfully find a home for everything that is hiding inside your junk drawer. If it doesn’t have a home, then most likely it doesn’t belong inside your home. Simple as that. All those pens and glue sticks and post it notes and AAA batteries (who knows if they’re even good ones) and screws and marker lids and pennies and paper clips…they need to hit the road back to where they came from. Unless, of course, you’d like your drawer to be part of your command center and then definitely keep the pens and post its, etc. But go through the pens and make sure they work, find a little box to put them in, tidy the drawer up and make a commitment to keep it that way. (This is the one place in the house which needs constant clutter maintenance. Because we’ve all become accustomed to having a junk drawer, it can clutter back up in the blink of an eye). But at a minimum create a purpose for the drawer. Give it a title…announce it to your family, whatever. Just make it serve you in a way other than a clutter catcher.
The great thing about de-cluttering is it creates a domino effect. Once you see how clean and amazing that one drawer or counter top or shelf looks (and subsequently makes you feel) it creates momentum and you want to keep it up. So start with the junk drawer in your kitchen, then move on to the next drawer and so on. Just keep moving. Soon you’ll have a nice filled up donation box to bless someone with AND drawers you aren’t scared to open.
Light and Love,
♥k