Do you want to clean out your drawers? Help is here....read on for fast and easy tips.

If you want to clean out your drawers, I think I know which drawer you mean. We're not talking about the sock drawer - you don't need help with that one. Or the panties or pajamas or silverware. We mean what I have christened The Drawer of Horror. Yes, the dreaded junk drawer. It's a secret shame even highly organized people have. I once had in a professional packer who was having an easy time speeding through my house until she opened a kitchen drawer and stifled a scream. "What do you want me to do with this?" she asked. "Just put it all in a box and label it Drawer of Horror," I told her. In my new home, the first thing I unpacked was the kitchen. And the very last thing was that Drawer of Horror!

Clean Out Your Drawers

And no, I did not create a new Drawer of Horror while the old one was confined to the moving box, like a confined poltergeist waiting to haunt my new house. As you know, Drawers of Horror create themselves we when we're not looking! When I did unpack the contents of Drawer of Horror, this is what I did with them.

First I sorted into definitely useful and other. Definitely useful are things like scissors, tape, tools of various kinds, etc. Other, well, well, well, you know the kind of things that were in my Drawer of Horror. There were lots of keys to start. Door keys that could not possibly be useful since we now lived in a different state. Trash! Parts of unknown origin, stressful but, yes, they went in the trash, too. Instruction booklets for things at our former home, nostalgic trash. Cute little film containers I had to admit I would never use, kissed good-bye and trashed. Wrenches that came with things we'd assembled years before and took up residence in the junk drawer for all eternity.

Feel Good When You Clean Out Your Drawers

After leaving it packed for a month, all that was left out of the junk drawer were the definitely useful implements, the tape measure, the scissors - in other words the things that belonged in the kitchen drawer before it became the Drawer of Horror. It was such an incredible relief not to transplant it to my new home and start fresh that I am always inspired to control clutter everywhere before it controls me. I hope I've inspired you, too. You will feel wonderful when you clean out your drawers and learn to live without clutter.