I was cleaning my apartment one afternoon when I came to that most loathsome of tasks: sorting through the the junk drawer. “Today’s the day I throw all this crap out!” I told myself. Opening the drawer, I looked down upon the formless mass, a chaotic jumble of trinkets, tchotchkes, and other seemingly unremarkable items, and was reminded of a Rorschach test. “What does it all mean?” I asked myself while suspending one object after another over the trash can, threatening, as I have so many times before, to throw it all into oblivion. Then, in each case, a memory hit me, as memories invariably do, that kept my hands from releasing anything; not an old beer-stained concert ticket, a faded Jr. High School bus pass, even remains of a raggedy-old belt was spared. It was only after examining these objects more closely that I realized I had grown a strange attachment towards them—a kind of Stockholm syndrome for knick-knacks—that held me captive to the inexplicable ties that bound us together. To break the chains of my dilemma, rather than ridding myself of this flotsam, I decided to find a way to celebrate it. And what better way was there to pay homage to these little wonders than to make a museum out of them? That’s right, a museum! A paean to my junk drawer trash.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, the fact is that I’ve presumably saved these items for
a reason. While thinking about what these reasons were, I came to the conclusion that my junk drawer (like your own, I’m quite certain) amounted to a kind of tangible, personal diary. A life-journal for those of us too lazy to keep one. At first, these items seemed dispensable and unimportant. But then, as I thought more about them, they all seemed more like artifacts. Each, in its own way, offered a link to my past, which reminded me of a story, and these stories, woven together, comprised a life. In this case, mine. So it is through remembrances that are associated with these objects that I have finally come to terms as to why our junk drawers matter—while simultaneously unearthing some rather amusing anecdotes from days gone by. Somewhere in your home, I’m sure, there lies a junk drawer graveyard of your own. I hope the following stories will stir up your memories and encourage you to take a look at your “junk” drawer in a different light. The ancient Egyptian pharaohs stuffed their tombs with artifacts they deemed important enough to take with them to the afterlife. I like the idea of paying this sort of tribute. But why wait for the afterlife?
