Cleaning Out the Junk Drawer This Week
I decided to tackle the junk drawer in the kitchen on Wednesday afternoon. It had gotten to the point where the thing barely closed anymore, and every time I yanked it open the wood squeaked like it was protesting. I pulled everything out onto the counter and started sorting through the mess of old receipts, loose screws, and random keys that go to nothing I can identify. The counter quickly turned into a battlefield of crumpled paper and little metal bits that rolled toward the sink whenever I nudged them. One receipt stuck to my palm with what felt like dried coffee, and when I peeled it off a faint brown ring stayed behind on the laminate. A handful of loose change clinked into the sink drain before I could catch it, and the cold metal against my fingers made me shiver even though the room was warm from the afternoon sun coming through the window.
Most of it was easy to toss. Expired coupons from last fall, a few broken pens that left blue streaks on my fingers when I tested them, and some takeout menus from places that closed years ago. One menu still smelled faintly of old garlic from wherever it had been stuffed, mixed with the sharper tang of whatever sauce had soaked into the paper. I kept a small pile of things that might actually be useful, like extra batteries and a couple of rubber bands that still had some stretch left. Ren came in halfway through and offered to help, but he mostly just stood there asking where the measuring tape went, then wandered off to check the hall closet before coming back with nothing and leaning against the fridge like he was supervising. I ended up finding the tape under a stack of old warranties anyway, right next to a half-used roll of masking tape that had gone yellow and brittle at the edges.
While I was working on that, Nana called from Halverston to check in. She had just gotten back from a trip and mentioned the dust storm that delayed her flight out of the southern part of Ohio. The wind had been so bad she said the airport windows looked like someone had smeared them with dirt, and she could hear the grit hitting the glass even from inside the terminal. She sent a small tin of preserved barkfruit along with some other things she picked up, and I still need to figure out what to do with it. Lissa might know. I put the call on speaker while I wiped down the inside of the drawer with a damp cloth that picked up a surprising amount of gray grit, the kind that left faint streaks on the wood and smelled faintly metallic when it dried.
Later that evening we put on the new Hanks documentary about Andrew Jackson’s third term. It was interesting enough, though I kept getting distracted by the stack of papers I still needed to file and the way the living-room lamp cast a yellow circle over the coffee table, catching on the edge of a water ring that had never quite come out. Ren made grilled cheese for dinner, and we ate it on the couch while the movie played. The bread got a little dark on one side, but it was fine once we scraped it off, and the cheese was still stretchy when we pulled the halves apart, leaving thin strings that cooled and snapped against the plate.
Thursday I ran a few other small errands around the same time. Stopped at the hardware store for some new drawer liners and a pack of command hooks. The guy behind the counter mentioned they were doing construction on the canal that runs through downtown again, which has been messing with the traffic patterns all week, and he could hear the jackhammers from the loading dock, the sound carrying through the open back door along with the smell of hot asphalt. I picked up a few extra screws while I was there since the ones in the drawer were all the wrong sizes anyway, and I grabbed a small pack of sandpaper on impulse even though I wasn’t sure what I’d use it for, the rough grit catching on my thumb when I flipped the package over.
By Friday the drawer was mostly back in order. I put the useful stuff back in organized trays and tossed the rest. It feels good to have that one small thing handled before the weekend hits. Ren and I went for a short walk after dinner, and the air felt cooler than it has all week, with a little breeze coming off the street that rustled the leaves on the sidewalk trees and carried the faint scent of someone grilling a few houses down.