I went to my junk drawer in the kitchen the other day to get some glue after I knocked something off my office shelf and broke it.

I love junk drawers. They are like magic – you never know what you’ll find there. They catch everything. However, despite their usefulness, they fall short of their intended purpose.

Our junk drawer, like most, is handy – at the end of the countertop, next to the door to the laundry. It’s great for extra keys, misplaced earbuds, and Chinese restaurant menus.

Someone, not me, had cleaned out our drawer. The only thing there were scissors, a butane BBQ lighter, two Philips screwdrivers, some AA batteries and a tape measure.

It was no biggie, as the drawer had been overburdened lately and needed cleaning. I acknowledge that whoever cleaned the drawer – there is only one other person it could have been – had reduced the contents of the drawer to some basic needs.

So what if I had to take a few extra steps out into the garage to check our other junk drawer there. At least our environment is well ordered.

The junk drawer in the garage is less organized as it is the receptacle for things we don’t want in the kitchen junk drawer.

In the drawer in the garage, I found medicine bottles filled with single sized nails and screws, a small freezer bag with miscellaneous nuts and bolts, a box of three-inch drywall screws and several rolls of duct tape – no glue.

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The other drawers in the garage each have a purpose – sandpaper, drill bits, light bulbs, etc., but no designated drawer for glue. I ended up checking all the drawers in my garage, found a few misplaced items and rehomed them before slamming the last one shut.

Where was the **** glue. And what is the purpose of a junk drawer if you can’t keep junk like glue in it?

I headed to the barn and the junk drawer there. It's where we have sprayer tips, old paintbrushes, small garden tools, rope and much more.

There was some wrangling and some cursing as I contended with a door with hinge problems and hand tools that were in the way

I finally opened the drawer, and there sat five containers of glue in among the rubble, all seized up and hardened.

So again, what good is a junk drawer if you can’t find the junk you need?

I know everyone has at least one junk drawer in their shop, maybe more. More than once, I’ve set out to find something in the shop and ended up finding something even better than what I had set out to find.

And what purpose is there in cleaning a junk drawer if in the end you hit three other drawers to get something that’s useless anyway?

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