What's the Best Way to Keep Your Junk Drawer Organized?

In my household, there’s one drawer in our living room chest of drawers allotted to holiday decor. On January 6, give or take, the inventory included: a tiny pink porcelain Christmas tree, two knit stockings purchased at Rite Aid in December of 2020, an ornament for a non-existent real tree that says Engaged AF (my mom bought it for us and even though we are now married I can’t bear to part with it because it makes me laugh), and a mid-century Santa riding a small set of plastic skis, an object my husband spotted in the window of an antiques store and took a shine to.

Now, I love decorating for any and all holidays—I dream about owning a set of Christmas toile dishes, a vintage Easter Bunny, a set of black cat figurines for Halloween, but I don’t, because the Holiday Drawer is full. I can’t bring more holiday items into my home because I wouldn’t have any place to put them, which is a hard-won acknowledgment. Even in a big house with a Real Housewives-y closet and a room dedicated solely to gift-wrapping, holiday items still fall, for me, under the umbrella of miscellaneous," a category that might also include a collection of spoon rests, every possible kind of hot sauce, gym clothes, and heavy blankets for the one month a year when it’s kind of cold but not cold enough to turn the heat on. I know I’m not alone here: in a highly scientific poll of friends and Twitter followers, people offered up oversized books, smallish wine collections, air conditioners, and instruction manuals for electronics as things that are, currently, stuffed into proverbial junk drawers and closets. 

In service of helping us all become more organized at home and thus living happy, healthy, long lives free of stress and concern (that’s how it works, right?), I thought long and hard about how to best store the things that have no natural home. (Don’t worry, I also asked the professionals.)

Reducing bulk, several ways

"Vacuum-sealed bags for coats and linens!" exclaims Hema Persad, principal and founder of Sagrada Studio. "They really shrink things down and allow you to place them in small corners, on tall shelves, or in attics, where they will stay clean and safe until you need them again." Down comforters, flannel sheets, and even really thick sweaters are all great candidates for vacuum sealing, says Persad. What’s more, committing to vacuum sealing will require you to really look at each piece you want to store at the end of a season, making it easier to purge things you don’t want to hold onto.

It can also help to look for storage pieces that are themselves designed to be streamlined: bins that stack neatly on top of each other will always be a better option than a random assortment of boxes and bags, and a wardrobe with mix-and-match shelves and racks allows you to think about what you need and where it should go rather than doing it the other way around.

To storage unit or not to storage unit?

To be clear: I’m not suggesting a storage unit is a solution to everything that ails you, because a storage unit is basically a big closet and it’s easy for big closets to become repositories for stuff we don’t want to deal with. Using a storage unit smartly, though, can free up space in your home for the things you use every day.

Interior designer Ashley Macuga was chatting with a friend about their mutual lack of space, and a solution was born: "We decided to go in on a storage unit together," she explains, "and voila—our problem was solved. Instead of crawling around the hot attic trying to determine which box is Halloween and what is Easter, we drive up to our storage unit, which is organized with baker racks and plastic bins," she continues, pointing out that sharing the space with a friend helps minimize accumulation of stuff she doesn’t use or need.

A label a day keeps clutter away

Labels: they’re good, no matter what a guy you’ve been casually dating for four months says when you ask if he wants to meet your parents at Thanksgiving dinner. They’re especially good when it comes to things you don’t use often, and you don’t have to be fancy about it, though I don’t know anyone who has ever regretted buying a label maker. A strip of masking tape and a marker are all you really need—simply write "Christmas lights" or "beach blankets" or "ski goggles" on the side of the box you’ve put those things in, and free up the part of your brain that would otherwise be used to remember where you’ve put them.

It’s fine to have a junk drawer…

Or even a junk closet. Within reason.

"A junk drawer is small," says professional organizer Jessy Smith, who recently convinced me to say goodbye to a broken suitcase I’d been dragging across the country for the better part of a decade. "Searching through that won’t take that long. But if you have a closet that's full of random stuff all over the place, it will take you a while to find something in the back." It’s impractical to think you’ll always have the ability to keep like with like and nothing else—big bottles of olive oil and vinegar might share a cabinet under the sink with specialty cookware, and an air conditioner might spend the off season in a part of the garage that also holds car washing supplies. Smith says the key here is to try to keep like with like as much as possible: in a catch-all closet, dedicate one corner to household cleaning supplies, like brooms and vacuums, and in another, pack winter blankets away with winter coats, since odds are you’ll be reaching for both at the same time.

Before you designate a junk drawer or a junk cabinet, Smith adds, think about your own relationship to the very nature of organization. "Everyone has their own threshold for clutter," she says. "If you have a low threshold for clutter, your drunk drawer might be full of random stuff, but organized into little sections. And if you have a higher clutter tolerance, it’s just a junk drawer where you go digging for a twisty tie or a piece of gum. Everyone’s miscellaneous space will look and feel different depending on how comfortable they are with chaos."

Top photo by Johnrob / Getty 

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