What if you could organise that drawer and it would stay that way?
You can’t cram anymore in there, but you just don’t know where to start to sort it out.
Here are my tips for sorting that drawer once and for all. No more clutter, everything in its place. Doesn’t that sound good?
Ready?
Grab yourself some shallow boxes, bowls and tubs of various sizes. You’ll need these to sort the drawer contents into categories.
Empty the entire contents of the drawer onto the table. Yep, all of it!
Start sorting. Here’s a few categories to get you started.
Stationary. Pens, scissors, tape, staples, elastic bands, glue etc.
Receipts, business cards,
Personal. Lip balms, hair bands, makeup, nail polishes, bits of jewellery.
Household. Anything to do with DIY. Screws, tools, tape measure, hooks.
Kids! Happy meal toys, bottles of bubbles, party bag toys, paper aeroplanes?! You get the idea!
Stuff that goes with other stuff. The lost things! Dice that belong to board games, playing pieces, half a deck of playing cards, the part of that thing you needed last week that goes with another thing…
It will be useful. Those bits that you’ve kept because you might use them for something.
Everything in its place.
The chances are that a lot of what is in front of you does actually have a home already.
Return what you can to its rightful place. Make up upstairs, the lost things, tools and household stuff into a tool box or the shed. Keeping back anything that you need regular access to, the tape measure or torch for example.
Now look through each category at a time.
Throw away any bits you know you don’t want to keep. The aim isn’t to have a bare drawer! But to have a drawer of things you need and will use most days or things you might need later and don’t want to misplace.
You may be left with some of the following categories.
Receipts/business cards/vouchers
Stationary
Household. (a tape measure, torch and screwdriver are handy to keep back)
Useful things you don’t want to lose
If you are able to shop for drawer dividers you’ll now be able to see how many you need and what shapes and sizes will work. Amazon and Wilkos have lots to choose from to name a few.
If you don’t want to purchase anything just now then grab a few different shaped boxes out of your recycling. Cut the bases of the boxes off so that they are slightly shorter in height than that of your drawer. Now each category has its own box that can sit neatly in the drawer.
How does this help?
Firstly, it’s much easier to find what you need if you just have one box to look in instead of rummaging through a whole drawer.
Secondly, when you go to place something into the drawer, if it doesn’t ‘fit’ into one of the categories you are more likely to put it back elsewhere in the home where it belongs….and also question if it is actually something you need to keep at all!