Our junk drawer was so bad that we could not close it. The drawer front sat half an inch proud of the cabinet because something — we never figured out what — was wedged against the back. It stayed half-open for three months.

I finally emptied the whole thing onto the kitchen table and confronted the mess. Here is what I found: seventeen pens (four worked), three tape measures, a birthday candle from 2019, and an unopened pack of AA batteries that had corroded.

The dollar store solution

You do not need a fancy drawer organization system. Go to the dollar store and buy small plastic bins, drawer dividers, or even shallow food storage containers without lids. The key is that they fit inside the drawer with the drawer closed. Measure the depth before you shop.

I bought six small bins for a total of six dollars. Each bin holds one category of junk drawer stuff.

How to sort the chaos

Dump everything out. Sort into piles based on what the items actually do. My piles were: writing tools (pens, pencils, markers), adhesives (tape, glue, stickers), tools (screwdrivers, measuring tape, box cutter), batteries (all sizes), office stuff (paper clips, rubber bands, stamps), and random (the birthday candle, a single key that fits no known lock).

Throw away anything broken, dried out, or mysterious. The corroded batteries went straight into the hazardous waste bin. I tested every pen and tossed the dry ones.

Assign bins and commit

Each category gets its own bin. Label the bins if you share the drawer with other people. I used masking tape and a marker because I am not precious about aesthetics. My wife upgraded to a label maker the next day.

Put the bins back in the drawer. The bins should fit snugly so they do not slide around when you open and close the drawer. If there are gaps, fill them with smaller containers or leave them empty — empty space is better than cramming something in sideways.

The maintenance rule

The junk drawer will try to revert to chaos. Once a month, take sixty seconds to put things back in the right bins. If a bin is overflowing, either purge some items or upgrade to a larger container.

I also made a rule: nothing goes into the junk drawer unless it fits into an assigned bin. No loose items allowed. This rule alone has kept the drawer closable for six months and counting.

We found what was wedged against the back, by the way. A wooden spatula. Nobody remembers how it got there.