Does your home have a junk drawer? It’s often located in the kitchen, and it’s a space that ends up cluttered with odds and ends that might not have a designated spot, and often random things get thrown in. Items like rubber bands and paper clips, restaurant take out menus, scotch tape, pens and pencils, a random band aid and maybe one of those plastic clips that come on the bread bag.
Every once in a while we go through our junk drawer, throw away the pens that no longer work, the broken rubber bands and even the empty scotch tape dispenser (who put that back in the drawer)? I don’t think I need more space, what I really needs is less “stuff.”
Why do we do this, keep some of the things we do?
For many of us, we have a “junk drawer” in our minds. We hold onto things that no longer serve a purpose, but for some reason we find it difficult to let it go. Maybe it was a hurtful comment made to us, or we said to someone else, or a painful memory we are struggling with. Perhaps it’s the driver that cut us off in traffic – several days ago! That mental junk is taking up valuable space in our minds.
I’m thinking about this because we recently had our kitchen cabinets resurfaced which required us to remove everything, and I mean everything, out of our kitchen. Oh my!
I’ve realized the clutter that fills our house can also affect the clutter that is in our minds. As I’ve taken on this project of deciding what to get rid of, and more importantly, what to keep (how many soup ladles does a person really need), it inspires me to think about doing some mental clean up as well.
As stated by author Peter Walsh, who has written a few books on this subject “Clutter isn’t just the stuff in your closet. It’s anything that gets between you and the life that you want to be living.”
This task is not something I will do overnight, or really ever finish. I think it will be an ongoing process of choosing to keep only what is most important and useful to hold onto, both physically and mentally.
My goal is no more junk drawers.
Lisamkurtz.com 
The junk drawers in our minds are the hardest to keep clean. It is a continuing process and seems even harder because memories that you thought were long forgotten have a habit of reinserting themselves; just like those pens we thought we had thrown away. I am going to keep working on keeping mine cleaned out.
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Wow, spot on work in progress…..
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