A junk drawer or junkdrawer is a drawer used for storing small, miscellaneous, occasionally useful objects of little to no (or unclear) monetary value, and possibly significant sentimental value. Junk drawers are often located in residential kitchens, but they may exist anywhere with cabinetry or furniture used for storage, including home offices or workshops, and even commercial workplaces and businesses. The phrase "junk drawer" appears to be an Americanism dating to the early 1900s.
As their name suggests, junk drawers often contain various types of unrelated and unorganized objects, such as small commonly-used tools like screwdrivers, pliers, tape measures, scissors, glue, sandpaper, birthday candles, and pens; small, loose, hard-to-store items like thumbtacks, binder clips, toothpicks, rubber bands, batteries, and safety pins; stationery and crafting materials; "leftover" objects of uncertain or forgotten origin like "orphaned" board game pieces, bottle caps, and old electronics chargers; coins and receipts; medication and bandages; or even objects with sentimental value such as souvenirs and love letters. [1] [2]
The phrase and concept of a junk drawer started to appear in American literature and trade journals in the early 1900s and 1910s. [3] [4]
The concept of a junk drawer seems to slightly predate the phrase. In a short story contained in a 1901 University of Michigan alumni publication, the author writes about a séance where a table lifts in the air and then "land[s] on the floor legs up, with a startling crash, aided greatly by the junk in the drawer." [5] A letter to the editor in the October 9, 1902, edition of the trade journal American Machinist proposes a design for a drafter's desk which includes a "little closet...which provided an excellent place to store up the variety of junk that comes to hand from time to time" in the space behind shallow drawers. [6]
American novelist John R. Powers published a book titled The Junk Drawer, Corner Store, Front Porch Blues in 1992.
A cash register, sometimes called a till or automated money handling system, is a mechanical or electronic device for registering and calculating transactions at a point of sale. It is usually attached to a drawer for storing cash and other valuables. A modern cash register is usually attached to a printer that can print out receipts for record-keeping purposes.
The University of Michigan is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1817 as the Catholepistemiad, or the "School of Universal Knowledge," the university is the oldest in Michigan; it was established 20 years before the territory became a state. The University of Michigan is ranked among the top universities in the world.
In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity.
A closet is an enclosed space, with a door, used for storage, particularly that of clothes. Fitted closets are built into the walls of the house so that they take up no apparent space in the room. Closets are often built under stairs, thereby using awkward space that would otherwise go unused.
A filing cabinet is a piece of office furniture for storing paper documents in file folders. In the most simple context, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored. The two most common forms of filing cabinets are vertical files and lateral files. A vertical file cabinet has drawers that extend from the short side of the cabinet. A lateral file cabinet has drawers that extend from the long side of the cabinet. These are also called side filers in Great Britain. There are also shelf files which go on shelves. In the United States, file cabinets are usually built to accommodate 8.5 × 11 paper, and in other countries, filing cabinets are often designed to hold other sizes of paper, such as A4 paper.
Charles Kendall Adams was an American educator and historian. He served as the second president of Cornell University from 1885 until 1892, and as president of the University of Wisconsin from 1892 until 1901. At Cornell he established a new law school, built a library, and appointed eminent research professors for the Ivy League school. At Wisconsin, he negotiated ever-increasing appropriations from the state legislature, especially for new buildings such as the library. He was the editor-in-chief of Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia (1892–1895), and of the successor Universal Cyclopaedia (1900), sometimes referred to as Appleton's Universal Cyclopaedia.
Samuel Abraham Goudsmit was a Dutch-American physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck in 1925.
A cupboard is a piece of furniture for enclosing dishware or grocery items that are stored in a home. The term gradually evolved from its original meaning: an open-shelved side table for displaying dishware, more specifically plates, cups and saucers.
Francis Whiting Halsey was an American journalist, editor and historian, born in Unadilla, New York. He was the son of Dr. Gaius Leonard Halsey, a Civil War surgeon, and Juliet (Cartington) Halsey. He was the grandson of Dr. Gaius and Mary (Church) Halsey of Kortright, New York, and a descendant of Thomas Halsey, who emigrated from England before 1640 and helped to found the settlement of Southampton, Long Island, one of the earliest English settlements in New York.
Steven E. Levitan is an American television producer, director, and screenwriter. He has created such television series as Just Shoot Me!, Stark Raving Mad, Stacked, Back to You, Modern Family, and Reboot.
A wardrobe or armoire or almirah is a standing closet used for storing clothes. The earliest wardrobe was a chest, and it was not until some degree of luxury was attained in regal palaces and the castles of powerful nobles that separate accommodation was provided for the apparel of the great. The name of wardrobe was then given to a room in which the wall-space was filled with closets and lockers, the drawer being a comparatively modern invention. From these cupboards and lockers the modern wardrobe, with its hanging spaces, sliding shelves and drawers, evolved slowly.
In physics, a quantum is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a physical property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This means that the magnitude of the physical property can take on only discrete values consisting of integer multiples of one quantum.
A Welsh dresser or a china hutch, sometimes known as a kitchen dresser or pewter cupboard, is a piece of wooden furniture consisting of drawers and cupboards in the lower part, with shelves and perhaps a sideboard on top. Traditionally, it is a utilitarian piece of furniture used to store and display crockery, silverware and pewter-ware, but is also used to display general ornaments.
Floodwall, an installation by Jana Napoli, is composed of drawers salvaged in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.
The desk in the Vice President's Ceremonial Office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, colloquially known as the Theodore Roosevelt desk, is a large mahogany pedestal desk in the collection of the White House. It is the first of six desks that have been used by U.S. presidents in the Oval Office, and since 1961 has been the used as the desk of the U.S. Vice President.
The 100 prisoners problem is a mathematical problem in probability theory and combinatorics. In this problem, 100 numbered prisoners must find their own numbers in one of 100 drawers in order to survive. The rules state that each prisoner may open only 50 drawers and cannot communicate with other prisoners. At first glance, the situation appears hopeless, but a clever strategy offers the prisoners a realistic chance of survival.
The cultural property storage typically falls to the responsibility of cultural heritage institutions, or individuals. The proper storage of these objects can help to ensure a longer lifespan for the object with minimal damage or degradation. With so many different types of artifacts, materials, and combinations of materials, keepers of these artifacts often have considerable knowledge of the best practices in storing these objects to preserve their original state.
The Hoover desk, also known colloquially as FDR's Oval Office desk, is a large block front desk, used by Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Oval Office. Created in 1930 as a part of a 17-piece office suite by furniture makers from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Art Deco desk was given to the White House by the Grand Rapids Furniture Manufacturers Association during the Hoover administration. The desk was designed by J. Stuart Clingman, and was built by the Robert W. Irwin Company from American lumber and faced with Michigan-grown maple burl wood veneer. After Roosevelt's sudden death in 1945, Harry S. Truman removed the desk from the Oval Office and gave it to Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. She displayed it at, and later donated it to, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York. The desk has been on display there ever since. The Hoover desk is one of only six desks to be used by a president in the Oval Office.
Infant and toddler safety are those actions and modifications put into place to keep babies and toddlers safe from accidental injury and death. Many accidents, injuries and deaths are preventable.
A crisper drawer is a compartment within a refrigerator designed to prolong the freshness of stored produce. Crisper drawers have a different level of humidity from the rest of the refrigerator, optimizing freshness in fruits and vegetables. Some can be adjusted to either prevent the loss of moisture from produce, or to allow ethylene gas produced by certain fruits to escape in order to prevent them from rotting quickly.