The junk drawer

[mamster]

I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore. It just took me upwards of two minutes to find my vegetable peeler. This (depending on where you're reading) is America, baby! Something's gotta give.

Like many of you, I suspect, I have a "junk drawer" in the kitchen. It has at least fifty things in it. We are blessed/cursed with deep kitchen drawers, so nothing stays in one layer. In addition the peeler, there are two thermometers, a flat grater, potato ricer, chicken pounder, bench knife, corn holders, and straws. And that is just off the top of my head. There are probably solid gold doubloons in there somewhere, and I will never find them.

A while back, we tried "organizing" the drawer by putting in a shoebox and filling it with the six most common items. This worked for about four days.

How do you organize your gadgets? I have a little bit of wall space to play with, but I'm not sure how I'd use it. Counter space is at a premium (we have annoyingly low cabinets), so I don't think crocks will work.

Whoever makes the best suggestion will win all the doubloons I find.

[Jinmyo]

Throw the stuff out, retaining: peeler, ricer, perhaps the grater. If there's a mandoline in there, keep it. If not, buy one.

Thermometers are for candy makers.

[cakewalk]

Best solution: move to New York City, where your kitchen will be so small there will be NO ROOM to have a junk drawer. You will be lucky to have ANY drawers! And watch out for your bloomers, too!

[mamster]

Throw the stuff out, retaining: peeler, ricer, perhaps the grater. If there's a mandoline in there, keep it. If not, buy one.

Jinmyo, you raving minimalist, perhaps you missed my big-rig-driving jingoism.

Actually, though, I'm emptying the drawer and so far I've found that we have two ice cream scoops and two jar openers. I have two jar openers on the ends of my arms. Also three sets of measuring cups. Next thing you know I'm going to be asking what to do with all this drawer space.

I do have a mandoline but I keep it safely in a cabinet and never have trouble finding it. And the chicken pounder and bench knife are essential.

[tommy]

i keep all stove-top type utensils upright in one of those clay wine chiller things. i find that those long spatulas, spoons and wisks take up the most drawer space, and are generally the hardest to push aside when trying to locate something smaller.

and, as jinmyo suggests, just get rid of your junk. if you're like me, you have 3 meat thermometers and 2 microplanes in there somewhere.

[LaurieA-B]

So you will understand: mamster and I are referring to the same drawer.

tommy, we have two containers of the type you describe (one is a ceramic jar, one is a basket designed to hold a bottle of wine). They are stuffed with various wooden spoons, rubber spatulas, pancake turners, and whisks. I never have any trouble finding what I need in those.

Some time ago Matthew installed a magnetic knife holder which holds our knives and Microplane (which gets daily use around here). It is very handy and I sometimes consider magnetizing everything (like Tom Douglas's kitchen as shown in the book Great Kitchens).

He also nailed a couple of small nails in the wall to hang the measuring spoons on, which was an extremely good idea.

We just went through the drawer and threw out about seven things, including all duplicates and the pickle puller.

I think we may need to take out anything that is used at least once a week and hang it in a visible place.

We tried moving to New York, and did in fact have a kitchen without drawers. We dined out a lot.

BUT I must add that Matthew inaccurately called this a junk drawer. A junk drawer is the little drawer filled with receipts, rubber bands, twist ties, keys you don't know what for, random screws and nails, and fuzzy Lifesavers. As our kitchen only has a few drawers, we don't even have room for a real junk drawer. The drawer to which he refers is a utensil drawer, lacking real junk (especially since we just threw away the broken salad tongs and extra thermometer).

[Aurora]

I too have a junk drawer, but not really. It's more like a drawer that has things that I need but don't always have an immediate use for. This is where I store my mill, candy and meat thermometers, pastry bags, bamboo skewers, tartlet pans, etc.

My kitchen is a big rectangle with no counters (more like a second living room with running water), so I remedy that with a work table and two butcher block tables with drawers. What I am fortunate to have is a small pantry. That's where the drawer can be found.

All the things that I need on a regular basis are on top of the butcher block by the stove. The surface is large enough to hold a scale, a knife block; a small crock that holds measuring spoons, peelers, tongs, and the ice cream scoop; and a large crock that holds whisks, silicone spatulas, large spoons, ladles, metal spatulas, turners, and wooden spoons. I don't dare put my microplaner in there for fear of hand zest--that goes in the drawer below.

I have some cabinet space for pots and pans, but it isn't much. Anything else that can be hung on hooks (like large copper cookie cutters and cast iron skillets) is.

After that, I leave it in the dish rack.

[Fat Guy]

Drawer? Drawer! You've got to be kidding. If your kitchen junk is contained within the confines of a single drawer you've got nothing to complain about. You're junk amateurs. Stop wasting bandwidth with your petty complaints and come back when you have a junk room and that room is called the kitchen, and you have two junk annexes one of which is the bedroom and the other of which is your office. I have junk that won't even fit in a drawer. It won't fit in anything. There's junk in my kitchen that exceeds the size of my largest cabinet so it sits on top of the refrigerator -- like three different devices that exist only to mix stuff, something I do maybe once a year and I use the hand mixer anyway because it's too much trouble to clean the dust off the big machines. I've got a salad bowl so big you could bathe an adolescent capybara in it and the only place it fits is on top of my bookshelves. I bet I have 500 pounds of kitchen junk in my apartment, not including food junk (a completely separate category that includes dozens of jars and cans and packages of stuff I'll never use, and if I do use it I'll regret it). And I'd never get rid of one bit of it. That's completely un-American, getting rid of junk. I can't believe what a whiny Communist place this site is turning into.

[Rachel Perlow]

In my old kitchen I had two miscellaneous utensil drawers and a flatware drawer, and a junk drawer in the kitchen desk (as defined by Laurie, above). I'll actually have less drawer space in the remodeled kitchen (we're on hiatus right now, some cabinets had to be reordered). I did have those (non-junk) drawers semi-organized though. What I found helpful is simple drawer organizers.

I have several simple plain white ones I bought at Ikea and a few others found at garage sales. Like these:

and

These are in use in bathroom cabinet drawers as well as kitchen drawers. While not ultra-organized (it's not like they're labeled* or anything), the organizers help keep all the bamboo skewers in line and my fingers out of danger from poking, protects the glass thermometers from breaking, all the garnishing tools are in one spot, separate from the blades for the electric knife, etc. These organizers weren't big enough to fill the whole drawer, so the open areas held big flat things like a bench scaper and porceline ginger grater, or chunky things like measuring cups. Oh, and I also had a smaller drawer next to the stove, that was used exclusively for spatulas and other chunky stove-top gadgets, like a potato masher. The counter top container (next to the stove) was exclusively the home of wooden spoons and rubber scrapers.

Basically, one drawer held the pretty useful stuff and the other held the rarely useful stuff. Items in use practically every day, such as the Oxo Good Grips vegetable peeler and measuring spoons, were actually kept in the flatware drawer with the miscellaneous spoons and butter spreaders. The flatware drawer is the only one that had a specialized organizer in it (with the utensil shaped openings), similar to this one, but mine has a couple more compartments including big and little spoon outlines:

Once again, this helps to keep the big forks seperate from the salad forks and the soup spoons from the teaspoons. It has a couple extra compartments that said butter spreaders, demitasse spoons, vegetable peeler and small flat grater go in.

* I do own a Brother P-touch and did label cabinet shelves. I will now admit to having a housekeeper once a week and it helps to keep things in the right place. I also use it to label generic spice jars, vacuum sealed mason jars and DVD shelves (by genre).

[mamster]

(At RPerlow's suggestion, I've moved this to general)

FG, thanks for reminding me that I haven't had a good capybara salad in ages.

So, here's where we're at. Yesterday we filled a box with stuff to give away: jar opener, tongs we never use, second thermometer, and then some. I've started to make note of how many of the remaining things have a hole for hanging. It's probably about half. I'm going to tear around the kitchen sticking nails into everything. Hmm...if I hang utensils on the front of cupboard doors, will they fall and pierce my foot when I open the door?

FG also reminded me of a completely separate topic that I will post on a new thread.

[Fat Guy]

Don't give away that second thermometer, moron. You'll need it someday. I used to have two deep-frying thermometers. I got rid of one about five years ago. When will I ever in a million years need two deep-frying thermometers, I asked myself. Well, it just so happens that last year I had that Beard House latke competition to contend with and I needed two deep-frying thermometers. So I had to spend like eight bucks on a new one and now I still have two. Big waste of time and effort.

[Rachel Perlow]

Hmm...if I hang utensils on the front of cupboard doors, will they fall and pierce my foot when I open the door?

Yes, so don't hang the sharp things, and use nails with big heads so the things don't easily slip off. How about putting the nails one the inside of cupboard doors? Still accessibly, but your kitchen won't look like the gadget wall at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

[mamster]

Well, it just so happens that last year I had that Beard House latke competition to contend with and I needed two deep-frying thermometers. So I had to spend like eight bucks on a new one and now I still have two. Big waste of time and effort.

Great, can I keep the second one at your house, Mr. I-Have-Room-For-a-Capybara?

[Jinmyo]

Throw it out. Throw them both out.

[TheMan,TheMyth]

I love rummaging through my junk drawer looking for my metal skewers. I can never find them when I need them, but when I am rummaging for something else I always get poked by those ever elusive skewers.

Can life be any crueler???

The Man, The Myth

TapItorScrapIt.com

[cakewalk]

Don't give away that second thermometer, moron. You'll need it someday.

The beginnings of another junk drawer ...

[Rachel Perlow]

I love rummaging through my junk drawer looking for my metal skewers.  I can never find them when I need them, but when I am rummaging for something else I always get poked by those ever elusive skewers.

Can life be any crueler???

I recommend you take my advice from my post above, here's an excerpt, I forgot to mention the metal skewers share the compartment with the electric knife blades.

the organizers help keep all the bamboo skewers in line and my fingers out of danger from poking, protects the glass thermometers from breaking, all the garnishing tools are in one spot, separate from the blades for the electric knife, etc.

[Jenny]

What??? Junk drawer???

I did not know one could have multiple drawers!

I have been living with one solitary drawer in my kitchen, and here I thought it was some crazy zone ordinance thing.........

[Huevos del Toro]

I finally installed a "Grid System" from The Container Store. I use two grids, butted against each other at the end of my tiny apartment kitchen. I hang virtually every tool, including many of my pots and pans from special hooks that snap onto the grid. It turned out to be one of the best investments I ever made for my kitchen. I've paid attention to other kitchens since I installed my system and found few with the blank wall space needed. If you have the space, SERIOUSLY consider this solution to the junk drawer.

The grid is at:

www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml?CATID=187&PRODID=60329

My knives are on magnetic bars as well as rotating wooden holder that swings from underneath a cabinet.

[Varmint]

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that we have no fewer than 18 large drawers in our kitchen. We have one for eating utensils, one for sharps. one for every day gadgets (peeler, cheese plane), one for measuring implements, and so on. On top of that, we have another 20 or so drawers in our dining room for napkins, placemats, etc. Even with all that space, AND keeping many spoons, ladles, whisks on the counter, I still have a junk drawer. It holds all the items that just don't "fit" into a specific drawer's category. It's a bit of an anal-retentive system, but it works.

[tommy]

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that we have no fewer than 18 large drawers in our kitchen.

oooo, i bet mr. city slicker has cold *and* hot running water too.

[Wilfrid]

We have an overhead junk cupboard, and what you can find depends on whether you can bother to stand on a chair or if you just rely on rummaging blindly with your hands.

[Rachel Perlow]

I finally installed a "Grid System" from The Container Store.

I was looking for a picture of that online at the same time when I was looking for those drawer dividers. Yes! I have that too, but not in my kitchen - I used it during college, it was very handy. I wish I had the blank wall space to install it in my new kitchen, very useful.

You know, it would fit on the side of my pantry. Is it very horrible to drill screws into the side of maple cabinets?

[LaNiña]

I have grids above my stove just like that. Between the cabinets and the stove. They're great.

[Varmint]

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that we have no fewer than 18 large drawers in our kitchen.

oooo, i bet mr. city slicker has cold *and* hot running water too.

C'mon, I'm from North Carolina. Here's a picture of our new deluxe bathroom: