I am not a fan of drawers.
Drawers (the storage kind, not the wearing kind of course) are arguably terribly useful things, especially in small spaces. They allow a much greater amount of storage than what can be accomplished alone by closets and shelves, the other two choices.
And yet - as I am reminded as we prepare to move - I am not a fan.
Why? Because they become lazy persons' organizational strategy (and to be clear, I am that person).
Do not have a place for it? Drop it in a drawer. Cannot take the time to deal with it? Put it in a drawer. Best intentions of dealing with it later? Put it in a drawer. And so it goes.
The difficulty, of course, is that often drawers simply serve as storage spaces and nothing more. At least in my own life, shelves and closets see some level of active use. But drawers? Drawers can go weeks or months without being opened.
Is that true across the board with drawers? Not necessarily. The drawers in our kitchen get regular use - or perhaps better said, some of the drawers in our kitchen get regular use. Silverware drawer, yes. Kitchen Gadget drawer, yes. Backup Kitchen Gadget drawer, lesser, but yes.
Drawer that ends up holding operating instructions and single serving condiments or the one that has "the other stuff" we could not otherwise categorize? Not so much.
It is not as if they do not have their uses. Small drawers in shops for hardware are blessings, and dedicated units for things like clothing or sewing or crafts or those giant shop ones on toolboxes for holding tools are incredibly useful.
But the household ones? At least for me, they just become "thing" sinks, where 90% of the items go to an ignominious existence in the limbo of not quite used but not quite forgotten.
One of the things we are discussing in the move to New Home 2.0 is some kind of desk unit. If we get one - and to date, the kitchen breakfast bar is just the right height for standing and typing - I am going to push for minimal shelves, or even none at all. If we are going to have the magical ability to do some kind of fresh restart, I would like to not give myself the opportunity to start squirreling things away in drawers again.
So moving boxes will become the new "drawers"?
ReplyDeleteJust kidding, mostly. ;-)
Good luck, TB. :-D
You all be safe and God bless.
Do not laugh, Linda - when we first moved to New Home, we lived in a rental for about 4 years. When we relocated to our house, we found boxes that we had not opened from the previous move in 2009. So apparently whatever was in there was not terribly important.
DeleteBut yes, I suspect living out of boxes will become a "thing" for a bit.
Thinking throughout our house, I can't think of too many drawers that are rarely accessed and thus accumulate junk. I can think of some though. Back when we moved in, I built a custom desk complete with overhead cabinets and eight drawers of built in filing underneath. Since that time, nearly everything has become digitized so I only use one drawer for actual filing papers and another for filing genealogy information that I don't want to toss. The other six are largely empty but do collect stuff over time. I just bought and updated my office computer so used that time to go through two of the drawers that collected electronic gadgets and cables and got it sorted down to half a drawer of stuff that is still useful to me.
ReplyDeleteElectronics has certainly changed a lot of what and how we keep things, Ed. The amount of papers I print and keep become less and less with time, although I will confess being able to reference some things by just finding them instead of having to try and remember what I called them on the computer.
DeleteMy biggest weakness is saving things that I think I "might" use, without ever thinking of what that use might be.
I found a restaurant supply place that sells trays. I like trays for projects. I bet they'd work for whatsits. Can't hide what's on a tray.
ReplyDeleteOh, I like that idea STxAR. It is similar to any concept of kitting items in my line of work where all the elements for the job are provided together. And an open tray makes them very hard to hide.
DeleteDownsizing I moved into a tri-plex in the country. All units have wire shelves in all bedrooms. Full and spilling over. Amazon sells very reasonable dividers. Super easy to install and every sweater and sweatshirt are neatly folded and sorted by color. Soothes my ocd.
ReplyDeleteOh, that sounds like a very good response to a problem. The sorted by color is my kind of bonus.
DeleteDrawers! We hates the drawers we do, my Preeecious.....oh yes! ...... :) Couldn't resist TB, just couldn't.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of - the Hobbits had drawers, Gollum had nothing. Makes sense.
DeleteFun post, TB, and I can see the truth in it. We do have some drawers that never (or rarely) open to see the light of day - holding stuff we'll rarely, if ever use. You've exposed something here! That said, since organizing many drawers in our new home with organizers (the first being the kitchen drawers, the bathrooms, then my craft/sewing room), I do find these drawers more effective places to keep things. And I'm happy to have stuff in a container I can close.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing here that I do, is create open holders (like trays as you and Ed describe), sometimes using open boxes, often I use pretty baskets to hold textile projects and all their necessary components.
Sorry, not Ed, but STxAR
DeleteBecki, your downsizing (and moving) may have indirectly created the post.
DeleteI do think clear containers and "job boxes" as STxAR describes are just the thing - as long as you can see it, it either gets used or at least acknowledged. It is when it is hidden away that it becomes an issue.