Jenifer’s Shelter Island Journal: Junk drawer confidential

In this age of Orwellian “doublespeak,” when the granite pillars of our society suddenly seem to be turning into sand, and all I want is to channel Tom Paine or Emile Zola and exhort my fellow citizens into action, but what I need, at least here, with you and my 800 words, is a safe subject, something pleasant and neutral, and maybe slightly informative.

Something with a springtime theme, perhaps —“Black-thumb gardening?”  A scientific deep dive into “Spring fever?” But it was the topic of “Spring cleaning” that led me to the allied subject of “Junk drawers.”

As I began my research, it soon became clear that in this moment in America, when the nation is suffering from a chronic divisiveness, which hasn’t been seen since the Civil War, a time in which no common ground seems to exist at all between citizens, we may be overlooking the commonest of grounds. Yes, ubiquitous junk drawers, which might hold the key (or very likely several) to putting our country, piece by piece, back together again.

According a 2024 survey by the website, Junk King (junkking.org), “An astounding 95% of Americans admit to having at least one junk drawer in their home, with half of the population (50%) maintaining just a single repository of randomness. Yet, a dedicated 16% have taken it to the next level with over three junk drawers in their home. It seems that women are more likely to have multiple junk drawers, with 54% having more than one, compared to 47% of men.” O.K., this is a survey mounted by “Junk King,” but even if it’s only 85%, say, of households “admitting” to having a junk drawer, it’s an amazing statistic.

If Junk King’s credentials seem a little light in the scientific research department, know that interest in the potential psycho/social significance of junk drawers was evidenced as far back as 2019 by the rarefied likes of the New York Times. Ronda Kaysen’s NYT article, “The Joy of the Junk Drawer,” while in the main a light-hearted anecdotal exploration of the century-old phenomenon, looks at the human motivations and purposes behind having them. 

Just last year, in her June 24, 2024 Readers Digest article,”What your junk drawer reveals about you, according to a psychologist,” author Brittany Hilton Andersen asked Jeff Temple, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist, to be the junk-drawer expert: “We asked Temple to pore over pictures of readers’ junk drawers and analyze what their drawers say about the owners — which will help [the reader] to figure out what their drawers might say about them.”

In her conclusion, Andersen says, “A personality test like this is one part silly fun and one part science: How you choose which things to keep, how you organize your things … how you clean your space (or don’t) is rooted in psychology. These types of little habits can reveal a lot about the inner workings of your mind.”

Having just reviewed the photos of “junk drawers” included in the above article, I realize that I was remiss in not defining my term, “junk drawer” at the outset.

Several of the pictures show somewhat anally organized drawers separated into neat compartments filled with like items. It is not my place to judge if these hyper-organized drawers qualify as “junk drawers,” so I will rely on the totally objective, open-minded-to-the-point-of-mindlessness font of all-or-nothing expertise, A.I., which provides the following definition of “junk drawer:” “A ‘junk drawer’ is a drawer, typically found in kitchens or other storage areas, used to store small, miscellaneous, and often less valuable items. It’s essentially a ‘catch-all’ for odds and ends that don’t have a specific designated storage location.”

Certainly that definition reflects what I believe a junk drawer may physically look like, but, as has been the case with all the articles used in researching this column, it is very limited in its description of the uses and motivations behind the establishment of such a drawer.

It seems to be much more than just a “catch-all,” a convenient purgatory for random items lying between usefulness and the dump. Far as I can tell, there are all kinds of philosophical implications alive in one’s junk drawer: guilt, hope, love, sadness and, for some, a kind of Sea Biscuit optimism that defies reason. By the way, junk drawers are developing a social media presence — and they’re being monetized. They’re available online — brand-new, interest-intensive designer junk drawers — the perfect gift.

Too bad.  The real junk drawer, with its fascinating, idiosyncratic contents, may shortly be subsumed by the powers-that-be, just when it might’ve become a tiny but unifying point of tangency for those of us who can’t seem to find our way to connection.