Good news: With the help of our valiant personal organizer, Bea Copeland, you don't have to live in fear of your junk drawer. Like most otherwise-tidy apartments, Bea's has a secret black hole in its kitchen — a drawer teeming with scattered quarters, displaced throat soothers, tangled headphones, and one very '90s-looking calculator.
Luckily, Bea has a battle plan, beginning, as always, with the most painful step: Take everything out of the drawer, and decide what function it should actually serve. Once you've identified your drawer's clear purpose (Is it where you keep your first aid supplies? Your phone chargers and tech accessories? A dreamy pile of Anthropologie catalogs?), sort through everything that was once in the drawer, moving all the clutter to its rightful place (loose change, meet wallet).
Next, use small boxes and bins to create order within the drawer itself, building in some neat, easy-to-maintain boundaries around each group of items. Finally, put the relevant stuff back in the drawer and offer a moment of thanks to the Gods of Tidiness. Remember: Even if the drawer slips back to its old, messy ways, you've now got a strategic plan of attack to whip it into shape again.
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