10 minute cleanout: the junk drawer February 8, 2011

You know you have one. You may even have several. It’s probably in your kitchen, it’s probably overflowing, and you probably have no idea what’s in it.

The junk drawer.

It’s okay. I have one, too. Where else are you supposed to put your spare car key, your rubber bands, your address book? It’s not a terrible thing to have a catch-all space for those little things that don’t belong anywhere else. It gets terrible when you have so much stuff in the drawer that you lose track of what’s actually there, and can’t find what you need when you need it.

Here’s the ten-minute cleanout for your junk drawer:

Take the contents and put them on a large, flat surface. You can use your kitchen counter (the table is better) or even the floor if you have to. Get the garbage can and keep it nearby. Most of what is lurking in this drawer will probably end up in the trash. In fact, weed out whatever is obviously trash right away. Bits of paper you no longer need, tubes of crazy glue with the lids glued onto them, dead pens. Throw them away; you don’t need them.

What’s left? There are probably a few things in the pile that you do want to hold on to – but not as many as you have. You don’t need hundreds of twist ties or rubber bands. A handful will do. Gather them all together and put them in a sandwich bag so that they’re easily accessible and not getting tangled up in everything. Take a few pens – maybe 2 or 3 – and put them back in the drawer as well. The rest can go in a desk or wherever else you do the most writing. The same with post-it pads or notebooks. You only need one in there, the rest can go with your office supplies. Check any coupons to see if they’re still valid. If they are, and you want to keep them, paperclip them together or put them in another sandwich back to keep them from floating around.

One thing that definitely should NOT be in your junk drawer is knives. The last thing you want is to slice your hand open while you’re looking for a post-it note. Plus, it’s bad for the knives to be bumping into all that stuff all the time. (Don’t laugh; I have seen it happen.)

Before you put the rest of the items back in the drawer, consider whether they actually belong there. A lot of the time, we throw things in the drawer because we’re too busy/lazy/distracted to put them where they actually belong. If the item actually does have a proper home, put it there. Putting it back in the drawer is not going to solve anything.

You should have pared down the contents of the drawer considerably (it may even close without some creative shifting now!) and it only took a few minutes of your time.

What’s left in your junk drawer? What did you get rid of?

10 minute cleanout: dresser drawers February 5, 2011

When people talk about clothing organization, they always talk about closets. They review the pros and cons of closet organization systems, of having or not having doors on the closet, on what clothes to keep and what clothes to toss. While everyone should go through their closet at least once a year to weed out what they no longer need, cleaning out a closet can be a time consuming process.

Cleaning out a drawer, however, goes much faster. That’s what we’re going to do today. Taken in ten-minute, one-drawer-at-a-time bursts, you can probably get through your entire dresser in a single day.

To do this, you will need two boxes/bags – one for trash, and one for donations.

First, either make or strip your bed – you will need a large flat surface to work on and you don’t want to get tangled in the sheets. Once you have that squared away, empty a single drawer onto the bed. It could be shirts, pants, underwear, whatever. Everything in the drawer goes on the bed.

ONLY items that meet the following criteria should be returned to the drawer (neatly folded!):
-Things that you love.
-Things that you wear on a regular basis. Really. Not things you would like to wear, or would wear if you had someplace to wear them, or that you used to wear all the time. Things you actually wear.
-Things that fit. Women are particularly terrible about this category. We keep things that we hope will fit someday, or will fit on a skinny day, or fit before our last diet success, hanging on to our fat clothes just in case we gain weight. Unless your weight regularly and consistently fluctuates a great deal, pitch the fat clothes (you don’t need a security blanket authorizing you to gain weight), come to terms with the fact that some things just don’t fit you anymore, and keep only what looks flattering and fits well. Try things on, and get a second opinion if you have to.
-Things that are in good condition. Weed out things that are stained, ripped or torn. Don’t make a pile of things to repair – you’re not going to repair them. Unless the damage is less than a week or so old, it’s safe to assume that if it was so important to you to fix the garment, you would have done it by now. If it is worn through, faded out, or otherwise unsalvagable, get rid of it. Do not keep crappy clothes “for yard work” or “for painting” unless you actually do yard work and painting on a regular basis, and then only keep what you need. For most weekend warriors, we’re talking 2 or 3 t-shirts and one beat up pair of jeans. That’s it.

Everything that does not go back into the drawer should go in one of your two boxes/bags to either be trashed or donated. When you’ve finished with your drawer, leave the two boxes open and ready to go for the next drawer. You can get through an entire dresser in a day if you do one drawer at a time, a little bit here and a little bit there. You’ll feel like you spent no time at all one the project, but you’ll actually accomplish quite a bit!

10 Minute Clean-Out: Medicine Cabinet February 4, 2011

Do you know what is in your medicine cabinet? Can you find it all easily? Do you open the door oh-so-tentatively, hoping that everything doesn’t crash to the floor? Straightening up your medicine cabinet is a quick job that can save you time, money, and sanity.

First, empty out your medicine cabinet entirely. Take everything and put it on a countertop, on the floor, on the toilet lid, whatever. While you have the cabinet empty, wipe down the shelves.

Go through your medications and get rid of any of the following:
- Medication that has expired. At worst, it is no longer safe to use. At best, it is no longer as effective as it should be. The expiration date should be on the box or bottle. Make a note of anything you want to replace right away so that you have it on hand, such as headache medication or cough drops, but keep in mind that if you had so much that it expired before you used it all, you might not want to buy such a large bottle next time.
- Old prescriptions. Even though we all know we’re not supposed to do it, a lot of people hang on to leftover pain killers and such in case they are needed later. Once you are over whatever ailment got you the prescription in the first place, you should not be keeping the medication. If the problem recurs, go back to the doctor and get a new prescription. This will ensure proper care as well as non-expired meds. If you are not sure how to dispose of a prescription and are wary of just throwing it in the trash, bring it back to the pharmacy.
- Medications no one can use. If your children are no longer infants, you have no reason to hold on to infant medications. Likewise, if you purchased a medication only to find out that you are allergic to it, there’s no point in keeping the remaining doses. You should also not be holding on to medications for people who do not live in your house – things people left when visiting, or bottles from roommates who have long since moved out. Either give it back or throw it away.
- Medications that are temperature-sensitive. Assuming that you have a shower or tub in your bathroom, it periodically gets pretty hot in there. Medications that are sensitive to temperature (usually prescriptions, and the information should be on the label) should not be stored in the bathroom. They may need to be refrigerated, or kept at a constant room temperature. If that’s the case, relocate them to a kitchen cabinet (not above the stove) or to the bedroom.
- Medications you’re not going to use again. If you tried a cold medicine and found it ineffective, you’re not going to use it again, so why keep it? If you switched vitamin regimens, you don’t need to keep what you’re no longer using. And the diet pills that you tried even though you knew the chances of them working were slim? Pitch them.

You may also have a few non-medicine items such as band-aids, hair clips, and toothpaste in your cabinet. A medicine cabinet is not supposed to be long term storage. You only use one tube of toothpaste at a time, so put any backups in a linen closet or cabinet under the sink. Same with your hair spray, mouthwash, etc. Get rid of any empty tubes or bottles (of toothpaste or anything else). Consolidate what you can – if you have several open boxes of band-aids, you may be able to fit all of the contents into a single container.

Try to keep the contents of your medicine cabinet to things you use regularly. You’re not going to dye your hair every day, or even every week, so take the hair dye and move it to the linen closet or another cabinet. Same for hair or skin products that you use infrequently. If you don’t use a product at least once a week, find somewhere else to put it.

This should clear up a good amount of space in your cabinet. Put back what you are keeping, and turn everything so that you can easily see the labels when you open the cabinet door. Group like items together – medications in one place, shaving supplies in another, etc. You may also want to assign shelves to each member of the household so that you’re not picking through other people’s stuff in an effort to find your own. This process should also give you good idea of what you have and what you don’t have, which should save you a few late-night trips to the pharmacy and duplicate purchases.