Minimalist Challenge Day 27: Clean out a junk drawer

 

     I know most households have a junk drawer, and we always did up until moving into this house two and a half years ago - but I don't have one now. What I did instead is to go through (again) my personal drawer of stuff in my bedroom. I started with the two jewelry boxes. I'll tell you up front, I own no jewelry of any value. What little I did, and I mean very little, I sold years ago when we were getting back on our feet after losing our home. What I had left were basically gifts from others, things that were special to me for one reason or another, and lots of extra costume jewelry I picked up over the years but never really wear. I tend to wear the same few pairs of earrings, treasure the same 3 or 4 rings, wear about half a dozen necklaces, and maybe 3 or 4 bracelets. The rest I got rid of. If it was a gift I did make a point to wear it recently knowing this was coming up. Sometimes I get gifts and people give me jewelry in colors they wear, but not a color I even own to wear with it. I can either get rid of it, or spend money I shouldn't on a color I don't normally wear, adding to my wardrobe which I've diligently tried to pare down to only items that I love and bring me happiness. What would you do? Exactly, I either regifted it, or donated it to brighten someone else's day. I kept my mother's ring, a sapphire ring I picked out years ago Tim bought me - it's not worth hardly anything but I do love it, and a couple others I do occasionally wear. All the gold colored jewelry, mostly necklaces and bracelets, that I accumulated over the years I also regifted or donated. I only wear silver toned jewelry since gold colored doesn't match my skin tone at all. All my rings are gold though, so I have to trade off with those and don't wear any other jewelry when I'm wearing them. Next I had lots of earrings to get rid of. Most were so tarnished and faded I'd never wear them again anyway. I did keep a gold tone set of shamrock earrings my in-laws brought me back from Ireland over 20 years ago, though. I love them, even if I only wear them on rare occasions. All that fit in one jewelry box, and the other jewelry box was the perfect size for the few oversized pins, coins from other countries, and other odd jewelry type things I want to keep.

     Next I went through the cards I kept in my drawer. I don't save every card, but I do have about a dozen or so favorites with personal notes written in them, or given to me by a special group of ladies who each wrote something for my birthdays, or ones where Tim wrote something in it, and a few I just love. I keep one from my Grandmother because it's from her and one of the last ones where she could still see well enough to write something. I tossed the ones I didn't need to keep.

     I then went through miscellaneous stuff like old cell phones and chargers, cameras, candles, and other trinkets I'd been holding onto. None of it brings value to my life nor joy anymore. They've been replaced by better ones over the years, so most of that went too. Now I have so little in there, it can coexist with my socks and stuff like that in one drawer. In fact, both my husband and I pared down our dresser drawers so much that we each now only use a 3-drawer dresser each, and emptied both of our tall 5-drawer dressers to give to my mother when she moves in this fall. That's it - 3 drawers, and about 30 hanging items in the closet - I own no other clothes and it makes getting dressed so much easier. I like almost everything I own, I'll replace a few things, like getting rid of an outdated formal dress to buy a newer one (probably at a discount or thrift clothing store, or on clearance), and I'd like to add one casual dress in place of a pair of pants and a shirt.

     I suppose most people's junk drawers are in the kitchen, right? Ours used to be. In it there's usually pens, rubber bands, screwdrivers and pliers, loose nails and screws, bread ties, twist ties, fast food sauce and condiment packets, odd little plastic things we don't remember what they go to but they might be important "some day", etc. Other than holding onto maybe a few working writing utensils, a few rubber bands, putting tools where they belong, the rest usually can be thrown out. It's just a bunch of junk we throw in a drawer instead of in the trash, and we almost never get back to it. One of the best rules I've heard from The Minimalists is the 20/20 rule: If you can replace it for under $20 in under 20 minutes, toss it. (Maybe you'd make it a 30/30 rule or something if you live 30 miles from the nearest town?)

     What will you toss out of your junk drawer? If not today, can you get to it this weekend? Can you start the new month with less? I'd love to hear your thoughts.