Most houses have a junk drawer. It’s usually somewhere close to the kitchen or laundry room. Maybe you have two junk drawers. It is the drawer that holds things that don’t seem to go anywhere else, or the things that we need and use a lot and we need them close and easily accessible. Here is a list of the things in a typical junk drawer.

Pencil, pen, ruler, tape, highlighter, stamps, chapstick, batteries, scissors, paperclips, a doohicky that holds an ace bandage on, screws, nails, letter opener, scratch paper, stapler, paper clip, little gold bell, screw driver: standard and Philips, red eraser. some random plastic something that may not be needed, but we are afraid to throw it away because what if it is, whistle, white out, etc.

In the junk drawer we had growing up the most useful and handy item was the ruler. Not for me, but for my Mama. She used it often for all kinds of projects, but on occasion she would need to get one of the brothers back in-line, when they were misbehaving. She could open the drawer and grab the ruler in one swoop and hit one of the brothers on the bottom end with it. They would usually laugh, as they ran from her, because she’d hit them on the pockets of their jeans which provided too much padding. I never worried about the ruler, because she never used it on me. Thank heavens!

Junk drawers are interesting and helpful, and a necessary part of a home.