A Drawer Full of Nonsense

The patch of creeping thyme is struggling. It wants to spread a soft carpet across the rocks but bigger plants have turned up, and everyone is jostling for position. It is too complicated to control, so I leave them to fight it out and look for something else to organise. I trot indoors to play Feng Shui and find the drawer from hell.

Creeping thyme and a chicken

It is not long since sorting the cupboards. and that was epic. Drawers should be easy. This one has layers.

On the Surface

Powdered flower food in case of hungry flowers, fridge manual because I might forget how to switch the fridge on, a roll of address labels, to prevent mystery in the freezer, a metre of used roll backing paper, cat flea treatment…

A drawer stuffed with things

The vet said, ‘give me £12.99 a month and you get free flea stuff.’ Then the press said, ‘Flea treatments decimate the ecosystem.’ The cats said, ‘too right, flea treatments are horrific .’ I stopped using them. The boxes stay, to remind me to talk to the vet, and the cats, about what to do when the fleas come back.

Underneath

A thermometer to tell me how warm the drawer is, 10 wine corks in case somebody takes up fishing and needs to make floats.

Cleaning out a drawer

Homeless things, lip salve, ukulele pegs, string, pens, torch, hair tie, spare shoelaces, 3 shoe brushes in case you need to clean 3 shoes at once, adhesive remover and 12 versions of the same shoe cream. 

Shoe cream grows in drawers because the excitement of buying new shoes comes with warnings from the shoe seller. They talk of acid rain and what it does to stitching if you don’t buy Special Cream. So you do because you are Shopping and it is Exciting to Buy Things. Then it goes in the drawer to dry up and think about itself.

Across the table

I got it all out and discovered the thing for adjusting the boiler pressure. It went missing, shortly after the person who knows how to use it went to France for adventures. Sometimes I call him to ask where it might be and we compare lockdown stories. 

Tissues, light switch, tape, corkscrew, lego, stale cat treats, a dongle, £1.23 which is mostly worthless as the pound coin is old, but it was exciting counting it anyway, hooks, lighter, 14 rubber bands, instruction leaflet for a light switch, candles, pins, nails, 1 key, a plant tie, nice stone, nice glass pebble and a really nice wooden fish.

Stuff all over the table to sort out

The fish was a fridge magnet until the magnets fell off.  Now it is just a fish.  But you can’t throw away a good fish just for not being a magnet any more.

Total 157 Items, which went down to 154 because the cat ate 3 of the treats.

Cat eating treats off the table

If there are 50 drawers in this house, and if they are all like this, that means 7850 items in the wrong place.

If you wake up one day and decide to sort out 7850 items at once you could get overwhelmed.

This is why it is always best to take one day and one drawer at a time. Or better still, go out on your bike and have a chat with a cow.

Bike ride to visit a cow

7 thoughts on “A Drawer Full of Nonsense”

  1. I have drawer like this and it is called Mission Control. That makes it – and it’s contents- sound really important. The one thing that’s never in there is sellotape. But there are lots of very useful things that have come out of Christmas crackers, which might just come in handy in some parallel universe.

  2. That’s so funny Jo. I didn’t realise everyone had a drawer full of random bits of stuff that can “never be thrown away as they will come in useful one day”. They just look like old rubber bands, bottle tops and bent nails to me xx

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *