Junk! Blog Challenge #10

This week Suzanne's blog challenge is junk: "Fun junk! Open a junk drawer...it's probably in your kitchen, your garage or your desk. Post a photo of one item that's been there for a long time and explain why you haven't thrown the item away yet OR post a photo of the whole drawer and talk about how it came to be a junk drawer and what kinds of stuff go in there."

So here's mine!

Originally *I* wasn't going to have a junk drawer. I've cleaned it out at least a dozen times, especially when I've been on-board with The Flylady. But there are always those things that just don't have another "home" right now. They end up here.

Our junk drawer is the smallest drawer in the kitchen, at the end of the row.

Yes, those are paint brushes. I see liquid nails, what used to be sterile tape for bandaging wounds, anti-bacterial hand cleaner, batteries (AAs -- we never have enough of these), Marks-a-lot markers in 4 cheery colors (red, green, blue and black), a wheel off one of my plastic drawer storage containers (the only remaining one, I'm willing to bet), a spool of thread, post-it notes, an emergency candle and a flashlight, a scissor sharpener, the box (just the box) from a pocketknife, crayons, a spool of ribbon, postage stamps from not-one-but-two price increases ago, a couple screw drivers, a pair of vise grips, and a balloon.

I get teased about having OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) tendencies. I'm not, but it's people's way of letting me know I'm stressing over "the small stuff," in their opinion. I've relaxed A LOT since having children. Children teach you to smell the roses, not arrange them; to play with the toys, not collect them. But, "reveals" like these always remind me of Monica from the television show Friends. Remember her?? She was completely obsessive about cleaning and organization. So much so that on one show, when her brother, Ross, stops dating a young woman because of the state of her apartment, Monica asks if she can clean it! Just the mental image of the other woman's clutter was keeping Monica from sleeping. But in another show, we discover that Monica has a secret -- a locked closet full of disorganized JUNK. I'm just reminded that no matter how "together" someone appears, there's probably some area of their life that's disorganized, or about which they are insecure, lack confidence, or experience emotional vertigo.

In fact, I'm convinced that being too organized, too rigid, too uptight is unhealthy. We need to have some chaos in our lives. We need some area where we can let our hair down. We don't always have to be in control, right, and systematized; sometimes we can just BE.

Ya! That's it! My clutter is healthy!!