How to Organize Your Junk Drawer, According to a Very Neat Person

It’s come to my attention over the years that some of us are neat, and some of us — i.e., me — are decidedly not. The neat people tend to see non-neatness as a moral failing; cleanliness is next to Godliness, as the saying goes. The non-neat, on the other hand, just kind of dump things in random places and see zero evidence of God being ticked off at all. But recently, I decided to organize my kitchen junk drawer, which, I have to admit, had a TNT-went-off-in-here look that was a bit much. I needed help. So F&W commerce testing editor, former chef, and self-professed very neat person Jennifer Zyman stepped in.

Related: The 16 Best Kitchen Organizers for Streamlined Storage

First, I asked her how a drawer like mine would make her feel if it abruptly materialized in her own kitchen. “Anxious,” she said immediately. “And I would be very angry. And in somewhat of a tizzy, then hyper-focused until I’d organized it.”

"“Kitchen drawers are notoriously disorganized because we use them so often, but they don't have to be.”"

Jennifer Zyman

Clearly, Zyman is not me — I have never been hyper-focused in my life — but equally clearly, I’d gone to the right person. She added, I suspect simply to make me feel better, “On the other hand, it does have a lot of personality. Who has a lot of caviar spoons? It looks like someone is living a good life.”

Let’s be real here: “It has a lot of personality,” when it comes to kitchen drawers, actually translates to “O.M.G., what an unholy mess.”

Related: The 10 Best Kitchen Drawer Organizers for Streamlined Storage

“Kitchen drawers are notoriously disorganized because we use them so often, but they don’t have to be,” Zyman explained. “When you have good-quality stuff, the reason to organize it is so it stays in good shape.”

With that, Zyman recommended her favorite kitchen drawer organizer, the Antowin Bamboo Drawer Dividers. “My kitchen is one place I don’t tolerate clutter, especially since it is basically my office," says Zyman. "I installed these expandable and customizable bamboo dividers to keep all of my utensils in their place, and they were a game changer. Many utensil dividers have fixed widths and lengths, but these come with two different cross pieces so that you can adjust the sections to the exact size you need.”

Jennifer Zyman’s favorite drawer organizer: Antowin Bamboo Drawer Dividers

$36 at Amazon

After she swiftly ordered me new drawer dividers, Zyman outlined the steps necessary for organizing a junk drawer like a pro.

The 4 key principles of junk-drawer organizing

1. Take everything out, and organize it all by type.

2. Clean the drawer. (Me being me, this had not crossed my mind.)

3. Make piles, and throw away anything that doesn’t bring you joy. “Do you really need five oyster knives, for instance?” Zyman asked. I admitted that I did not, in fact, need five oyster knives. “Right. So get rid of three of them and keep two.” This seemed eminently reasonable. If an item in question were to get something disgusting on it, ask yourself: Would you clean it or throw it away? If the latter, tell it goodbye.

4. Categorize. “Put all the sharp things together, like scissors, oyster knives, and vegetable peelers,” Zyman advised. “In another compartment, measuring spoons and measuring cups. Corkscrews, jiggers, and strainers in another, if you don’t have a separate bar area. And so on.”

Related: The 12 Best Kitchen Cabinet Organizers, According to Pros

The results

Personally, I thrive in a certain amount of chaos. Too much order, I start to get nervous. But after following Zyman’s advice and ridding my drawer of nine random wine corks, four caviar spoons, three oyster knives, seven extra corkscrews (wine writer, what can I say), a broken Champagne stopper, two pairs of crappy scissors, one bent julep strainer, a mysteriously sticky eraser, a very large and very sharp carbon steel chef’s knife (not ideal in a drawer, if you enjoy having fingers), several dimes and nickels, five mismatched chopsticks, fourteen miscellaneous screws and bolts, and one mysterious plastic-handle doodad thing shaped sort of like a duck, I have to admit, it did look better. Organized, even. Whereupon the heavens opened up, God looked down upon me, and in His majesty and holy fondness for things being exceptionally neat said, “OK, pal, now what about the closet?”

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