Are all your cupboards and drawers full of rubbish?

Question

Every single drawer is full of: pencils, pens, football stickers, football cards, MacDonalds toys, cereal packet toys, rubbers, lighters, receipts...rubbish!

Answer 1

totally, from an opened bag of those striped drinks straws to that funny looking tool that put the coffee table together that went to the tip two years ago to all the xmas cracker toys from the last three years!!!!.... yes they are and we never clear them out, we just select another one and if we run out of cupboards and drawers we go and buy more cupboards and drawers, oh no more of those funny little tools that put them together, still in case i ever need it again i'll put it in this drawer, sorted!

Answer 2

Oh yes. I'm a minimalist, too. My basic philosophy is:

1) Throw away the minimal amount (thus contributing to the economies in land-fill which we are all exhorted to make). You never know when you might need that bubble wrap/film canister/jam jar/piece of chewing gum/odd piece of string. Waste not, want not!

2) Once something has been used (such as one tap washer out of a pack of 6). Use minimal energy in storing what's left over - it just goes in the nearest handy drawer, pidgeon-hole, cupboard, shelf or whatever.

3) Use minimal sorting/cleaning techniques on the grounds that if you leave things where you put them they will be easier to find when you next need them. Also, we are trying to achieve a low-maintenance life style, aren't we?

4) When you next need to replace a tap washer, use minimal techniques to find the pack you had - why spend 3 hours looking for something when it takes 30 minutes to go to the hardware store? One can count on the other lot being perished, anyway, so if you found them you would need a new pack. Also, the shop would go out of business if everyone used every washer in the pack. The new pack, of course, will be put away in a different place from the last lot, so that the next time the tap leaks, you have twice the chance of finding a replacement.

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Glossary for Americans:
tap = faucet (I'm not sure what you would call a tap washer. It's the circular hard rubber thing with a hole in the middle which stops leaks. Every damn tap has a different type or size.)

jam jar = glass container, sometimes with metal lid (though that is often stored separately and can never be matched), which might have contained anything from instant coffee to pickled gherkins but nominally what we call jam and you call jelly. Useful for storing nails, screws, used paintbrushes (in long dried up solvent) and occasionally sporadic attempts at home preserving.

cupboard = closet (sometimes). We make no distinction between the kind that hangs on the wall and the kind that is built into the house except that one stores clothing (and many other associated items such as cufflinks and the contents of pockets, which may include pens, pencils, rubbers (that's ERASERS!), old bus tickets, bank statements with useful notes on the prices of furniture from 3 years ago and almost anything else which gets taken out of a jacket before it is sent to the cleaners) in a wardrobe.

Answer 3

Whatever you do, DON'T try to do it all at once. Do one drawer or cupboard at a time, and getting one thing cleaned will make it easier to do others. One thing that's helped me is the Slob Sisters books - organizing from a slob's point of view instead of a tidy person's (needless to say, they are very different mind sets!) They even have a web site, which I just discovered as I was looking for details for this answer on Google, and it is www.shesintouch.com (The SHE stands for sidetracked home executives, by the way.) See what you think. And no, I am not connected in any way to them, their books have just helped me, because they make sense!

Answer 4

Of course!
There would be no challenge in our house otherwise when we need a tape measure, sellotape, scissors, a screwdriver, cards, a highlighter, a lighter, a torch, paper clippings I keep for some reason or other, batteries, scrunchies, paper clips, safety pins....jeez I could go on forever.
Often have a mega tidy up and clear out but it quickly resorts to the same jumble of essentials!
;-)

Answer 5

I have three. One in the kitchen and two in the living room.. Every now and then i will have a clear then its the same in a few days. So ive come to the conclusion that everyone is ment to have one and if they don't there must be something wrong with the. LONG LIVE SH*T DRAWERS!!!!!!!!!

Answer 6

Not really. I don't know what happens to all my glasses & silverware. When my sister was down, I only had 1 wine glass & I was drinking out of a measuring cup. When my dad came over for dinner, he got the only fork & the rest of us ate roast with spoons. All my cupboards are fairly empty because I'm one of those shop as last resort.

Answer 7

No.
Every dish, every teaspoon is a monument to my independence. If they could speak, they would tell a tale about the warm bowls of soup on a wintry night or how perfect a frosty mug was after a hard day of work.

Answer 8

Just getting packed to move. All the drawers are full of old but now paid bills, kids school reports, old batteries and supermarket carrier bags!!

Answer 9

we've a field of icecream interior the freezer, (which will in all probability final a pair of month, or till it gets crystally and that i throw it out) and a separate kit of 'candies' for each kinfolk member. (all of us like particularly some issues -- and the field of cookies/candy/etc. is anticipated to final the finished week. We dont' do cakes after nutrition, so our 'snack' candies are it. So I actual have (at present) 0.5 a bag of Milanos. Hubby has 0.5 a field of Oreos. baby has 0.5 an 8-p.c.. of peanut-butter cups. many times ate up at bedtime with a tumbler of milk.) No chips/crisps or something. in basic terms my daughter likes salty snacks, and that i do no longer usually purchase them for her. i think of there's a field of popcorn in a cabinet someplace. We already ate up the apples i offered on the weekend.

Answer 10

no actually they're pretty much full of cups and drawers...except the whatsit drawer, where all those little trinkets go...the ones that you don't know where they're from or what they're for but you know for a fact that as soon as you throw it away you will need it most desperately ....lol