Ask Lemmy

Your wife is correct.

I’m lucky that my drawer like this is actually inside a cutting board cupboard. The inconvenience helps give it purpose: awkward unnecessary crap we rarely use

You guys can open THE drawer?!

Yes, every household in the developed world has a drawer like this. It's for things that you hardly need or never need, but might do, one day, probably (not).

Why it bothers me: in a more sane world, this stuff would be shared. Every community would have a junk tool shed - not every household of 4 people, or 2 people, or (increasingly) one person. It's reminiscent of that drill statistic: the average electric drill is used for 7 minutes in its lifetime. This is madness. Our planet is overflowing with junk. As a species we need to be smarter.

you have too much stuff. time to minimalize!

You could build our repurpose something like a silverware organiser, but fitted to the items in there.

But the true travesty: the scale should be easily accessible and in constant use tsk tsk

(We don't have such a drawer btw)

I want to know how OP would like this drawer to look instead. Random kitchen utensils always seem to get shoved in a drawer like this

That's easy:

This is true. It is the "occasional use kitchen drawer"

Proud junk drawer owner checking in.

We have four of these drawers. What helps is organization trays of different sizes and a junk cupboard.

Long skinny things fit here, curved things go here, bulky things get piled up in the cupboard.

Sorry OP - we all hate it too, but everyone has this. Your drawer doesn’t even look that bad. (You were able to OPEN it!)

Yes. Most kitchens have a junk drawer. This is often where the household hammer is kept, among other random things.

Compromise in marriage means not organizing everything to death and allowing your partner to maintain some jumbled spaces. A junk drawer is organized, out of sight chaos that still maintains a certain logic.

We’ve also floated the idea that not having a junk drawer in the kitchen may be a marker of psychopathy. I jest, but also not. Just know, junk drawers are common, diverse, and almost as expected as silverware drawers.

One drawer? We have house full of these, cupboards and a garage XD

Every house has that drawer.

Yes we all have it.

It's the stuff drawer. Why are you like this?

Every family has this drawer

I also have this drawer

Looks good

We have 3 of them: misc kitchen utensils and tools, misc containers, and misc stuff that does not even belong in the kitchen, but ends up there because that's the only drawers in the house that don't have clothes in them.

If you want to organize it some, you can build or buy dividers and split it up.

3d printed some Gridfinity stuff and fixed a couple of these drawers. The rest are under way.

I have whole cabinets like this

Yep, we all do. Although you might be going a little far in putting the food scale in there.

its the miscellaneous drawer, its normal, we have a whole misc cabinet.

Every family has this drawer

My wife got snap apart customizable drawer organizers and it's a big difference. She showed me the way.

I don't get why it bothers you, well, maybe it's not a serious disagreement idk.

Not in the kitchen but I have a (very large) one for electronics and batteries and it's the worst. Tools and screws. Office supplies.

This kitchen one you could neat up a bit if it really annoys you. Put the scales in a cupboard upright against the side. Maybe get a nicer scale, that one looks naff. Trash the salad shears. What a terrible idea. Put the pizza / dough metal thingie on a wall mounted magnet for knives and stuff. Maybe put some of the other metal stuff there idk. Everything else is pretty small so you can put in dividers for that. The grater and ladle go in the same compartment.

Unless of course you think your wife should tidy up this drawer in which case you can just absolutely fuck off. Into the ocean. Die and get eaten by scavengers.

Edit: oh, that's a meat tenderiser, not a ladle. Everything else stands.

The misc tools drawer? I have one that's overflowing. My parents have multiple drawers and cabinets of this.

I regrettably also have this drawer.

Attempts at cleaning it usually end up with the drawer now being somewhere else, but it clings to life somehow.

I think they're just a fact of life at this point.

At my parents' place, EVERY drawer is like that!