Minimalism and the junk drawer

Our junk drawer resides in a butler's pantry adjacent to our kitchen.  Well, one of our junk drawers.  We placed others at strategic locations around the house, but this one is the most photogenic.

It is fair to say that junk drawers are anything but minimal.  A ball of string, at least two screwdrivers, scissors, goggles, face masks, a waterproof wallet, a tape measure, Band-Aids, batteries, a sewing kit, a stapler, and so on.  This drawer also contains a bag of random hardware that we inherited from the previous owner.  I assume that they are replacement parts for something (as yet unidentified) in the house, but that is probably what the previous owner thought, too.  More likely they are the remnants of an unfinished project started before World War II.  A lot of things can happen in a hundred-year-old house.

Minimalists note that stuff takes time, attention, and effort to maintain.  No argument from me on that point. Clothes need to be cleaned and stored. Old cars are in constant need of repairs and replacement parts, and even a new car needs to be washed, tuned, inspected, and powered.  And a house?  A house is a never-ending, pitched battle against the forces of nature and decay.

So if holding on to stuff is a drain on resources, letting go of stuff must leave you with more time, more attention, more money.  Right?  But what about the junk drawer? How much of my precious time and energy is consumed by the junk drawer?

My best estimate is none.  To the contrary, the junk drawer takes no effort to maintain and probably saves me time.

As long as the drawer is closed, there is nothing but a reasonably decorative silver handle to indicate that the junk drawer (or any of the junk inside) exists.  You have to pull it open to get at the goodies.  Keep it closed and it costs nothing.

Opening it might save you some time.  All that junk didn't wind up in the junk drawer by chance.  Most items are in there because that drawer was nearby when the item was last used.  Even the random hardware probably sits in the drawer because some previous owner was assembling furniture in the dining room and wanted it close at hand.  My waterproof wallet is in the junk drawer because that is the last place I transferred cards into my regular wallet.  More  likely than not, that will be the next place I'll need to use it and, voila, there it will be.  No muss, no fuss, and no wasted time.

My theory of the junk drawer is that it functions like a computer cache.  The processors in your laptop or cell phone are constantly fetching data and instructions from a memory chip.  This process takes time and energy.  To speed things up, frequently used information is stored near the processor in a little chunk of memory called a cache.  The cache is small and fills up quickly.  So your computer needs to have a rule to decide what stays and what goes.  Pick the rule well and the processor always has what it needs close at hand.  Pick it badly and the cache fills with useless information that gets in the way and slows everything down.  Sound familiar?

Perhaps a good replacement rule is the key to a good junk drawer.  Or maybe that is where the theory breaks down.  Most of the stuff in our junk drawer is useless clutter.  If I haven't been able to identify a use for the random hardware in seven years, I doubt that I ever will.

But is it worth the trouble to sort through the drawer's contents to clear out the true junk and then find some way to dispose of it?  Not yet.  My 2010 calendar of Greek icons is resting comfortably and in no pain; I'll leave it be for now.