Organization Challenge Day 1 - The Junk Drawer

Today is the first day of the organization challenge and it is all about the junk drawer. In part of our kitchen cabinets there is a desk area and both drawers get filled with junk. Here are the before photos:

Ugh. I can't wait until I have time to tackle the project of repainting the bottom half of the kitchen cabinets! The drawers themselves look gross even without the junk in them.

I keep everything for paying bills in one of the drawers. To organize them, I used a couple of folders from Dollar Tree 3/$1. Here, in one pocket I have bills that need to be paid and an envelope for coupons. In the other pocket I have everything I need for bill paying: checkbook, stamps, blank envelopes, and address labels.

In this folder, the first pocket holds things that need to be put in the filling box: receipts, bills that have been paid, paycheck stubs, etc. The other pocket is for items that should be shredded like credit card offers and bill statements that have been paid but don't need to be saved.

I discovered several chargers for our small electronics. I put each one in a snack size ziploc bag and labeled it with what item it is for. I put the bags in a plastic shoe box ($.97 each from Home Depot) and moved the box to the closet.

Here is the finished bill paying drawer. It now holds the folders I put together, my calendar, the zippered pouch I keep change in, and an envelope to hold boxtops for education.

Here is the finished office supply drawer. I just pulled out all of the chargers that were hiding in here, put the twist ties and rubber bands into snack size ziploc bags and put the remaining supplies in their designated dividers.