Junk Drawers

The other day I was looking for something and was almost certain I knew where it was. It was supposed to be in one of our junk drawers.

I imagine most of you have a junk drawer somewhere in your house where you keep pens, pencils, paper clips, rubber bands, coupons, nails, tape measures, old messages, etc. Well I was looking for a particular type of glue.

We are fortunate. We have two junk drawers. One is for nails, screws, bolts, nuts and such. The other actually is more of my wife's than mine. I digress.

Anyway, she is out of town and I needed the glue. So I went looking. I knew I was in trouble when I could only get the drawer three inches open. So I started putting my hand in trying to either pull out or press down whatever was keeping the drawer from completely opening. That took five or six minutes of odd contortions, but I finally got that bugger open.

Then I decided it would be easier just to remove the whole drawer and begin looking. I'll skip to the end and tell you the glue was not there. But that isn't the story.

The story is what I found. Let's see, I counted 85 ink pens of various varieties. I found about a pound of rubber bands. Trust me, I was once a paper boy and we purchased them by the pound. I found paper clips, scissors I didn't know we had, and a bunch of little luggage locks without keys.

There was an assortment of note pads for taking telephone messages and instructions for a couple of telephones and an answering machine. We don't have the telephones or answering machine any longer. But we are well equipped to take a message if we happen to be in that area with our cell phone. Since I have my phone and she has hers, we don't have to take messages for each other any longer.

I found recipes, photographs, film negatives...negatives? There were receipts for various things including groceries purchased in 2002, gas in 2005, and even one for a book. I found a gift certificate for coffee at a little shop in Vicksburg. Maybe we can go over there for coffee one day. And some emory boards with political advertising for a candidate who has been dead for almost 20 years. I hope he got our vote before he died.

And then there were coupons. Some of the coupons expired in 1998, but we still had them. Maybe that shows our intent on making a purchase ten years ago.

Yep, a great assortment of things had found a resting place in that drawer. So I spent probably an hour going through each little slip of paper, organizing the rubber bands and paper clips and the 85 pens.

I actually threw away about half the rubber bands. Since our paper person doesn't use them any longer, we don't get a fresh supply on a regular basis, so I saved a bunch for "the future".

Since I didn't find the glue, I peeked in the other junk drawer. Oh my, not another clean up job! I quickly shut the other drawer and headed to WalMart to get some more glue. It was faster, and I probably wouldn't have found the glue in that drawer anyway. One of these days I'll check to see.