The Junk Drawer

 I always swore I would never have a junk drawer. I am happy to say that I don't have a junk drawer... Somehow I ended up with three. Two in the kitchen and one in the washroom. What is the purpose of a junk drawer? It's that place you put things when you don't want to throw them away, but you have no idea what to do with them. If someone calls up and tells you they are coming over, you open the junk drawer and squish everything on the counters into them.

Every so often you have to clean out the drawer. You don't want to, but lets face, you need the space. Probably for more junk. It is scary what the junk drawer can tell you about yourself. It is probably best to have someone who is neutral clean it out for you. If you don't know it has been thrown out you most likely wont miss it. 

I would really like to have more cupboards in my kitchen. I've been trying to figure out a way to make that happen. One day my 13 year old asked me why I needed more space when we don't even use some of the things in the cupboards. I decided that he had a point. This started my spring cleaning kitchen craze. I found things that I didn't even know existed. I found things I wasn't even sure what they were. Suddenly I have a whole lot more cupboard space.

Next to the junk drawers. I decided I only need one and it will be in the washroom. The first drawer wasn't really bad. It mostly held glasses, flashcards, paper clips, and expired box tops. The drawer in the washroom was mostly user manuals to everything we have ever purchased.  Some of them were to things we don't even have anymore. Those were easy to trash. Don't tell Tom. Everything is online anyway right? 

The last drawer was the worst. I didn't even know something twenty inches long could hold so much. It's scary to stick your hand in and hope it doesn't get bitten off by some creature hiding in there. I think there were about seven chargers. There were tons of things with cords. I don't even know what they were. I finally got a box and put everything with a cord in it for Tom to sort out.

You hear about people losing socks to the dryer. I'm pretty sure this is the place that sucks away all of our lost things. It must have a mystic portal. I bet all of our lost masks started out in that thing. Masks are harder to keep track of than Tupperware lids. I started trashing things like crazy. Old hair bands, random screws, expired coupons, batteries, and weird stuff kids bring home from school that they don't really want, but they wont let you throw it away. 

In the end I still had a bunch of random stuff I didn't know what to do with. I have cassette tapes. Cassette tapes. It took me awhile but it is finally organized. One drawer has plastic bread bags and skewers. That's all. It's pretty neat looking. Why skewers? I have no idea. Maybe some day we will have kabobs. Probably not, but you never know. The drawer in the washroom has glasses, command strips, and band-aids nicely organised. The other kitchen drawer is empty. For a minute. Sometimes I open it up just to look at how clean it is. I need to put something in there before someone wants to come over and I get the urge to shove stuff in there.

 It's good to know that most of the drawers in the house are organized. This includes my eleven year old's drawer. All of my kids have a top drawer on their dresser that they can put their special things in. Nobody is allowed to touch it. My little ones put candy and pine cones in them. My eleven year old had the deepest, darkest, messiest drawer. We changed rooms around last month and made him clean it up. I'm pretty sure there was something living in there. I saw candy from every major holiday. Every time I tried to help I got sticky. The kid wants to be a chemical engineer and I think some of his experiments had gotten lost in there. I kept expecting some mutated goop to start slithering away. 

I'm feeling pretty good about all of my extra cupboard/drawer space. There is something liberating about getting rid of things and ruining portals to who knows where. I'm glad to know I'm making the world a safer place. Maybe next week I'll clean out the garage...

Don't You Know How to Spell Mess?

I actually do know how to spell mess. Mess with a Z is sooo...messy. Back story. I love names. I almost love them to a weird extent. I like to see how names in different families go together and what letters they use. I even spent time writing down all of my extended families names in boxes under the letter that they start with so that I could see what the most common letters in our family were. I did that clear back in Jr. High...and possibly again in my thirties. Weird I know. 

When I started having kids I decided that I wanted all of their names to start with a different letter. That seemed like a good way to mark things. Instead of writing a name I just have to write a letter. I also like letters. I'm kind of boring. A few years ago Walmart had some super cute stockings. They were monogramed. This was my nerd dream. I bought one for all of us. It took a lot of effort because I couldn't find all of the letters. I had to turn a fancy T into an I. My oldest goes by a nickname that starts with an X. I never did find an X so we got him an A for his real name.

Hanging stockings on the mantle is one of my favorite things about Christmas decorating. We hung the stockings in order and stood back to admire them. What did we see? Our children's initials hanging on the fire place were A BIG MES! What? We laughed. We were surprised we never noticed before, but it made sense since my oldest usually had an X. 

Time went by and we were expecting another baby. Everyone wanted us to name her an "S" name. I didn't really think we need to advertise that we are a big mess. We also already had an S, so it would go against my rule. It would also give us stress if we were to have another baby. What letter could we use after A BIG MESS? We might have to use a silent exclamation mark at the beginning of the name. Too much of a commitment. In the end I broke my rule, just not with an S. We used another A. Since my first A uses an X, I decided it was okay. That made us A BIG MESA. (We do have a big table.) We immediately gave her a nickname that starts with a Z. This is how we officially became A BIG MESZ.