Every home in the nation has one. It is usually in the kitchen, it is usually the second drawer from the left, and it is usually the only drawer that will not close all the way. The Editorial Board has been asked to take a position on the junk drawer. It has taken several, and it has not yet been able to keep track of them.
The case against the junk drawer is serious. It contains batteries of unknown charge, a key to a lock that is no longer on any door, and a single rubber band that has outlived two marriages. Those who oppose it say that a household ought to know what it owns, and that a drawer holding a birthday candle, a takeout chopstick, and a warranty for a blender discarded in 2019 is not a drawer at all. It is a question no one has answered. The Board takes these objections seriously. The Board has, in fact, opened the drawer on several occasions, and has done so with its full attention.
The case for the junk drawer is also serious. Its defenders point out that it is the only place in a house where a thing may go before anyone has decided what it is. A screwdriver without a handle, a map of a town since renamed, a receipt for a lamp the household has never owned: these are not clutter. They are a reserve. Someone, one day, will require a small flat piece of metal and a coupon for a pizza place that closed in 2017, and on that day the drawer will be ready. The Board found this argument difficult to refute, and then found that it was in no hurry to.
Both sides, in the Board’s view, have shown great seriousness. Neither has claimed that the drawer is a good idea in the abstract. The Board commends the defenders of the drawer for their faith in the future, and the critics of the drawer for their insistence on the present. It regrets that these two qualities have never been found in the same kitchen at the same time.
The matter is more complicated than either side believes. The Board wishes to say, first, that it does not propose to empty the drawer. An emptied drawer would become a second drawer, and within a season the second drawer would be as full as the first, with the added burden of having once been organized. Second, the Board does not propose to sort the drawer into compartments. A compartment is a promise, and the drawer has never been asked to keep one. Sorting would require a plan, and the Board has seen what becomes of plans in the second drawer from the left.
What the Board proposes is more modest, and more fitting. It proposes that the drawer be left closed, not because it is ready to close, but because it has earned the right to remain as it is. It should be acknowledged, opened once a year on a day of the household’s choosing, and shut again with a firm push. The drawer will resist. The household should accept this as the drawer’s opinion.
Accordingly, the Board is for the junk drawer. The Board has reservations. These reservations are substantial, they are carefully weighed, and the Board will not be enumerating them, in the interest of allowing each household to discover its own. Several members of the Board have already found theirs. One of them is a rubber band.
In closing, the Board is moved to say that the drawer, taken as a whole, represents a remarkable achievement of domestic storage. It hopes the nation will go on keeping one, as far as it is able, for the day when something small is needed and no one can say where it went.