Some people inherit jewellery. Some inherit antique furniture. Some inherit fine china that’s only ever brought out for special occasions, although nobody seems entirely sure what qualifies as a special occasion anymore. The plates sit in a cabinet for decades waiting for an event important enough to justify their existence.
I inherited a junk drawer.
Not an empty junk drawer, either. A fully furnished junk drawer. It came with the house when I inherited it from my parents, sitting quietly in the kitchen as though it were a perfectly normal item to pass from one generation to the next. Some families hand down heirlooms. My family apparently handed down custody of a drawer full of things nobody had been able to throw away since the 1980s.
At first glance it didn’t seem particularly remarkable. Every house has a junk drawer. Every family has a collection of odds and ends that don’t belong anywhere else. The difference was that most junk drawers eventually get cleaned out. This one appeared to have achieved protected historical status.
Opening it felt less like organising a drawer and more like entering a museum dedicated to household indecision.
“Some people inherit antiques.
I inherited a junk drawer.”
The Museum of Everyday Life
The contents told the story of an entire household one random object at a time. There were electrical cords belonging to appliances that had long since been retired to the tip. Whatever those appliances once did had been forgotten by everybody involved, but apparently the cords still held enough promise to earn permanent residency. Somewhere in that drawer was enough wiring to reconnect technology from three separate decades, provided anyone could remember what any of it plugged into.
Scattered among the cords were disposable lighters carrying only the faintest memory of lighter fluid. They hadn’t produced an actual flame in years, but nobody had quite worked up the courage to throw them away. Nearby sat a collection of elastic bands that had completely abandoned the elastic portion of their job description. They were now just tiny circles of brittle rubber waiting patiently for a purpose they would never fulfil.
There was a tube of mystery cream that may have once moisturised skin, treated a rash, soothed an insect bite, or stopped the dog from chewing itself bald. The label had long since faded into obscurity, leaving future generations to speculate about its original purpose. Beside it sat an envelope you had to lick to seal, which immediately narrowed its age down to somewhere between “old” and “possibly discovered during an archaeological dig.”
And then there was the fork. Just one fork. No explanation. No matching cutlery. No indication of how it had arrived there. It simply lived in the junk drawer as though it had taken a wrong turn decades ago and decided the cutlery drawer wasn’t really for it.
The KFC Relic
Of all the treasures hidden within the drawer, none captured my imagination quite like the KFC refresher towel.
For those too young to remember, refresher towels were once handed out with takeaway meals. Their purpose was simple. You wiped your hands and felt refreshed. This particular towel had stopped being refreshing sometime around the Keating years but somehow survived well into the next century.
By the time I found it, every trace of moisture had evaporated. It felt less like a hand wipe and more like a small square of laminated disappointment. If anything, using it would have left your hands dirtier than when you started. Yet there it remained, occupying valuable drawer real estate as though it were a treasured family possession.
Nobody intended to use it. Nobody even acknowledged it anymore. It had simply become part of the landscape. Like a landmark. Like Uluru. Except smaller and significantly less useful.
Every household clean-out worked around it. Every reorganisation carefully preserved it. Somewhere along the way it had crossed the line from rubbish to historical artefact.
The Things We Might Need One Day
The drawer was built entirely on optimism.
Every single item inside existed because somebody, at some point, looked at it and thought, “We might need that one day.” It is perhaps the most expensive sentence in human history. Entire garages have been built around it. Spare rooms have been sacrificed to it. Storage sheds thrive because of it.
There were keys to unknown locks. Not one key. Several. Each carrying the promise that somewhere in the world there existed a lock waiting to be reunited with it. Whether that lock belonged to a filing cabinet, a padlock, an old car, or another house entirely was anybody’s guess.
There was also a burned CD with no label. It might contain precious family photos. It might contain music downloaded from LimeWire. It might contain enough computer viruses to immediately send any modern laptop into cardiac arrest. Nobody was willing to find out.
Three puzzle pieces lived there too. Not a puzzle. Just the pieces. Were the pieces lost, or was the puzzle itself lost? Had somebody been searching for them for thirty years? Had the puzzle been thrown away while these three survivors quietly remained behind? The drawer offered no answers.
Time Capsules and Pizza Menus
The longer I spent looking through the drawer, the more it felt like a time capsule.
Tucked between old receipts and mystery objects was a takeaway menu from my favourite pizza shop. The paper had yellowed. The folds were worn soft from age. The phone number looked suspiciously short compared to modern numbers.
What surprised me was how little had changed.
The pizzas were all still there. The toppings were all still there. The names were all still there. In theory I could walk in tomorrow and order exactly the same thing.
The only real difference was the price.
A large pizza that once cost less than ten dollars now required the sort of financial planning usually associated with home ownership. Looking at that menu felt like opening a portal to a simpler time when ordering takeaway didn’t require checking your bank balance first.
Nearby sat a business card for a plumber who had probably retired years ago, a packet of batteries marked “new” in handwriting old enough to vote, and an Allen key that had somehow outlived multiple entertainment units. The drawer wasn’t storing objects anymore. It was storing evidence.
“I didn’t know what it was.
I knew I couldn’t throw it away.”
Becoming My Parents
For years I laughed at the drawer. I rolled my eyes at the mystery cables, questioned the logic behind keeping things that clearly had no practical purpose, and silently judged every decision that had led to its existence. Why keep a key that opened nothing? Why save a lighter that couldn’t light? Why preserve a collection of unidentified plastic objects that looked like they might once have belonged to something important? I promised myself I would never become one of those people. If something was useless, I’d throw it away. Problem solved.
Then one afternoon I found myself holding a small piece of plastic I’d discovered while cleaning. I had absolutely no idea what it belonged to. It might have come from a toy, an appliance, a piece of furniture, or something that had already left the house years ago. It wasn’t labelled. It wasn’t recognisable. It wasn’t even particularly interesting. Logically, it should have gone straight into the bin without a second thought.
Instead, I stood there staring at it while my brain performed increasingly ridiculous mental gymnastics. What if it was important? What if I threw it away and immediately discovered where it belonged? What if it was the one tiny component preventing some future household disaster? Within thirty seconds I’d constructed an entire imaginary scenario in which this meaningless piece of plastic became the hero of the story.
So I put it back in the drawer. Not because I knew what it was. Not because I genuinely believed I’d need it. I put it back because throwing it away somehow felt riskier than keeping it. That was the moment I realised the condition might actually be hereditary. The drawer wasn’t simply something my parents had left behind. Without noticing, I had become its next caretaker.
The Next Caretaker
These days the contents have changed a little. New items have joined the collection. Others have finally been retired after decades of loyal service. Yet the spirit of the drawer remains exactly the same.
It still houses things whose purpose has been forgotten. It still protects objects that might be useful one day. It still quietly collects evidence of ordinary life as the years pass by.
The funny thing is that beneath all the rubbish, the drawer contains something genuinely valuable. Not the cables. Not the mystery keys. Not the dried-up highlighter that still gets tested every few years just to see if there’s any life left in it.
The value is in the memories.
Not the big memories. Not birthdays or Christmases or major milestones. Just the ordinary moments. The takeaway nights. The home projects. The family holidays. The everyday pieces of life that seemed completely unimportant at the time.
One day Ruby might inherit this house. If she does, there’s every chance she’ll eventually open that same drawer and discover a collection of mystery cables, unidentified objects, and things nobody can explain.
She’ll probably wonder why on earth I kept any of it.
Then she’ll find herself holding something she doesn’t recognise.
And she’ll put it back.
Just in case.
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