Ten, ten, ten, ten for everything everything everything everything

[venta]

Recently, someone I was talking to (I forget who) made disparaging comments about someone having a "bloke drawer". I assumed that this was going to refer to, for example, a drawerful of porn. It didn't.

No, they went on, a bloke drawer contains things like spare batteries, and screwdrivers, and string.

I paused, baffled.

What? You mean there are people (of any gender) who don't have at least one drawer like that? Crazy!

The bottom drawer of my desk, which doesn't particularly have a name, contains all those things, plus various oddments of padlocks, elastic bands, scissors, paper clips, gaffer tape, electrical tape, screws... y'know. Useful stuff. It should contain a pair of "81s" (long-nosed pliers, surely the most useful thing ever invented) except my pair has gone missing somewhere. Perhaps they eloped with my Stanley knife, which is also AWOL.

At my parents' house, there is a drawer which fulfills this function which is known as The Everything Drawer. When my parents replaced their dining room furniture, the burning question of the moment was which of the newly-arrived drawers was going to take on the function of being The Everything Drawer. If you need a piece of string or a paper clip, it's that one over there, under the stereo, on the left.

Obviously it doesn't really contain everything - there are many useful things which will not conveniently fit into a drawer, for a start. Like power tools (in the shed), old newspapers (cupboard under the sink) or binbags (cupboard under the stairs). But any thing which is suitably useful, and suitably small, and doesn't seem to have an obvious other home goes into The Everything Drawer.

Do you have a designated location for such small and useful everyday items? Does the location have a name?

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's clearly not an Everything House! The principle of Everythingness is stuff all bundled in together - yours sounds positively organised, ordered, and neatly filed!

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Oh, how wonderful if that were true! The former library assistant in me would delight in such order. Sadly there are craft knives in almost all those different places, and power tools in several of them, and I am never sure whether to keep large files with the toy soldiers (where they will be most commonly used) or in the DIY cupboard (with the hand tools, where they strictly belong), and there are several other multi-purpose hand tools that could be filed in almost any of the aforementioned places, and if I want to do leatherworking I probably have to get the leatherworking tools from the shed, some stuff from the sewing desk, AND some leather from the loft...