Before & After: The JUNK Drawer

So I needed a quick 20 minute or so kitchen project while Heidi was eating lunch  yesterday, so I decided to tackle one of our kitchen junk drawers (we have 2 total).  I was sick and tired of the feeling I got every time I went to open this drawer, inwardly groaning to myself.  It had become difficult to find things, and I was also sure that there were at least a few things in the drawer that neither I nor Robb had even missed or looked for the entire time we have lived here. I was right!  But first, here's the "before" drawer pic:

A quick rundown of the items I found in here after examining the contents piece by piece:

• 5 rolls of packing tape
• 1 roll of duct tape
• 1 Olympus 35mm camera (WITH film in it - it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to wind the film in order to get it out of the camera - it's currently being developed at Target - can't wait to see what's on the roll!)
• 1 Kodak 2.0 mega pixel digital camera (no, that's not a typo - 2.0 mega pixel) - this was a hand-me- down to Robb from his grandfather several years ago, who is impressively very technologically advanced - he's even on Facebook!)
• 52 assorted batteries
• 1 Winnie the Pooh address book (with addresses that I hadn't updated or added to since 1998)
• Index cards
• Stamps
• Envelopes
• Thank you notes
• Cigar cutter
• Tape measure
• Wind up flashlight
• Smoke detector (with no batteries)
• Staples
• 1 Swingline stapler - BTW, every time I think of a Swingline Stapler, I hear the words "have you seen my stapler?" and see this in my head - does anyone else? But I digress.... 

After examining all of the contents piece by piece in order to determine whether they should even be in the drawer, here are the items which didn't make the cut:

• Olympus camera
• Kodak camera
• Cigar cutter
• Winnie the Pooh address book
• Smoke detector

I plan to donate the/recycle the cameras (anyone have any good suggestions for electronics recycling places?), the cigar cutter was relocated to the dining room with the cigars, and the Winnie the Pooh address Book was tossed in the trash (Facebook and Google and smartphones kind of makes address books obsolete these days anyways...).  I'm still trying to remember what I did with the smoke detector...

Here's the "after" pic of the drawer:

A few things I learned during this process:

1. Battery storage - contrary to popular belief, batteries do NOT need to be stored in the fridge to lengthen their life, rather, it's more important that they be stored with all of the same ends up, and ideally, in their original packaging.  Read more about this here.
2. For deep drawers like ours, it's a good idea to "layer" items based upon frequency of use - for example, our batteries are sitting on a box which houses spare pens, pencils, and markers, since we don't anticipate needing to access that box as frequently as we anticipate accessing the batteries (especially now that we have a 1 year old in the house!)
3. Plastic containers of various shapes and sizes are great for helping to corral like items - and don't think that you need to rush out to The Container Store and purchase designer ones for this - the Gladware that your lunchmeat came in would work just fine for this as well (after a good washing, of course!).  The containers I put to use here were collecting dust in my basement - I knew I would find a use for them someday!
4. You can never have too much packing tape :-)

Ok, now I'm off to find that smoke detector....