I'd be more inclined to call this a misc utensils drawer. I have one just like it, with many of the same items, but I also have a true "junk drawer", but it has anything but utensils in it. Like, batteries, screws, magnifying glass, fire starters, a deck of cards, etc. All of the shit that ends up near the kitchen that doesn't have a whole space dedicated to similar things, finds a home in the junk drawer.

At my parents we had a similar drawer with miscellaneous stuff but it was organised so it looked somewhat tidy. Currently I don't have a drawer like this, cuz I have a tiny kitchen with only one drawer which is reserved for cutlery.

There isn’t a house in existence that doesn’t have one of these. All houses that exist have one of these by celestial mandate.

We have two OP. That drawer is as american as low taxes for the rich.

as others have said, "yes" most people have the misfit drawer. We always called it the "horrible drawer_ because ladles and can openers and things would often catch and make it hard to open. I say embrace it, everyone deserves love even if not everyone fits in perfectly

Close the drawer?

And yes there's always a bucket drawer for things that can't be categorized

We moved to a new house, and I was storing things like a hammer, nails, screws etc. In a kitchen drawer for hanging the 5 millions things to go on the wall. My wife asks me if the drawer will eventually be cleared out.

It's been 2 years.

You could get rid of half of that stuff at least

Everyone has that drawer. You can tidy it with spacers to make it look a bit less hectic but it will still be that drawer full of random specialty shit.

That's easy:

We have four of these drawers. What helps is organization trays of different sizes and a junk cupboard.

Long skinny things fit here, curved things go here, bulky things get piled up in the cupboard.

Sorry OP - we all hate it too, but everyone has this. Your drawer doesn’t even look that bad. (You were able to OPEN it!)

Every home has that drawer. What is the problem that needs a solution?

To say what others have said in a different way. Yes, in almost any categorisation system, you're gonna need to deal with some misc haha.

Where else could these things possibly go? (minus the scales, which in my opinion belong on some flat surface in a cupboard of countertop somewhere, since I use my scales all the time)

We have one of these drawers at home, also. I think your wife is right on this one friend.

Bachelor here, and I do indeed have a random shit drawer. As did my family when I was growing up.

We don't have one like that. Though most of our kitchen is well organized in drawers.

It's the stuff drawer. Why are you like this?

Everyone I've ever known personally has a "junk drawer." It's where various random doodads and thingamajigs go when they don't neatly fit any other category. And batteries.

For every item in that drawer, ask yourself: "When was the last time I used this?"

If it's more than a year ago, it's not in the right place.

If it's less than a year ago, it's also not in the right place.

I am proud to say that I don't have this drawer. I grew up in a house with this drawer and always hated it. Nothing new is added to the kitchen without considering the actual need and anything that goes unused for any length of time is getting reevaluated.

Could you un max out other areas? Eliminate duplicates elsewhere so things in this drawer could be moved to the newly made space?

We have this drawer. Full of kitchen utensils that don't fit nicely into other drawers.

My parents did not have this drawer. Or at least, not nearly to this extent. Idk how they did it with a smaller kitchen than we have.

I have to sat that the additional of a scale to that drawer is a wild choice

Yes, every family I've ever known has had a drawer with bulky oversized kitchen utensils and gadgets. The harder you try to organize these things, the more you will realize that you'd just end up with an entire drawer taken up by a single pizza cutter, garlic press, or zester. Theoretically, if you had enough storage space in your kitchen you could do that, but these things are used so infrequently that they either get shoved into one drawer which fully takes up that one space with disorganized chaos, or placed in a receptacle of some sort to sit on the countertop for when you need it, which is ugly and takes up then takes up the counter space instead.

Nobody has this drawer. They're all lying to you, it's some big in-joke like that reddit thread where that person was asking how to switch from Spanish to English and everybody replied in Spanish. You should stand your ground and tell your wi--I can't even joke about the level of gaslighting that would entail. Everybody has this drawer.

I'll be honest though, the scales are a poor fit and probably make it way more cramped. You can stand those up sideways at the edge of a cupboard or in whatever place that you keep cutting boards, because they're a similar shape.

Depending on how often each thing is used, you could optimise by figuring out a hanging solution for some of them. That's quite a common thing, hanging under cupboards or on the backsplash part of the wall. Your wife might appreciate something like that as long as it's agreed on. You'll never totally get rid of this though.

Correct, we have this drawer. And what sucks is that it has been broken for about 20 years.

It's called a junk drawer and as far as I am aware it's an inevitability. However, I will say it's odd that you have utensils in there. Most junk drawers I've encountered are filled with random crap that rarely if ever gets used.

I'd filter out metal things that has handles like this pizza cutter and meat hammer and try to give them some sort of a stand or a magnet surface to stick them on.

It's your house's shrine to Anoia. Rattle it every once in a while.

I'd just point out that most of that drawer could be replaced with a good knife. I mean is cutting garlic really so onerous you need a fancy doodad? Even the zesters functionality could be done with a knife. I hate to be judgey bastard, but that drawer smacks of consumerism and excess. With the exception of the mixer prongs and the scale I'm not seeing anything needed in a residential kitchen.

The only reason I don't have such a drawer, is an overall lack of drawers in my house, don't really have one to spare to be a junk drawer.

Which is a damn shame because I could really use a drawer to throw some miscellaneous odds and hands that don't have any other designated place to live.

We don't have one, we have multiple

Sorry man but I have to side with your wife here. We have even one such junk drawer per room.

• In the kitchen with scissors, jar opener, potato peeler, nut cracker, sticks, tooth picks...
• In the living room with matches, candles, coasters, birthday decoration, fertilizer for house plants, ...
• In the bedroom we even have one per person with protective gear for sports, single socks that have their partner missing, scarves, baseball cap, luggage straps, ...

Could go on with bathroom, laundry room etc. Junk drawers for the win!