The junk drawer

Don't we all have that ONE drawer in our house which is waiting patiently for its turn to be spruced up..organised?With two days to go for my deadline of spring cleaning, I was running on schedule.As a rule my home is mostly tidy, but "THAT"' drawer ....Finding a little extra time on my hands I decided to tackle that one spot that bothered me the most!....our junk drawer.I'm convinced that even the neatest people or should I say families have them. You know, those drawers where you put all your old tel. nos., the warranty of the fridge(which you will never find when the fridge finally gives up on you storage skills!),the recipes written behind napkins(that you always mean to copy later!),a hurriedly written (a couple of words missing)hindi no on a small piece of paper!The place that collects all the little things you're going to put up as soon as you find the righr spot!

Our junk drawer is near the phone. I tried to shove a pencil in there once & it popped back out like something alive! I set aside time to tackle The Drawer. Since the school holidays had not yet started,the kids would'nt be aware of the wonderful string or torn paper they'd miss. They always wanted to save every scrap for some future project of enormous magnitude!Reasoning never worked & no mother should have to face a bulging drawer & pitiful kids at the same time!

So armed with a plastic garbage bag , roughly the size of our 1st apartment i decided to get ruthless!If I could'nt remember the name that went with the phone no ,i was'nt going to dial it & play kaun banega crorepati with the person at the other end! If any warranty looked yellow & oldI I would assume that the appliance had fulfilled its mission it would not require a back up! I had every intention of finding the bottom of the drawer!

I worked my way through dozens of 3x5 cards listing cake ingredients, Thank You cards with mismatched envelopes,& a bevy of small springs & bolts from something that had obviously exploded with great force!! I had cleared out a respectable part  when I hit the first snag,,,,,,,,,,a picture of 'Mummy"'drawn by my 7y r old
(she is now 20!!) I read  the date  & looked at the abundance of misspelt words .My mind raced back to the day & I could still see the satisfied look on Sam's face when I said it looked just like me! The picture stayed. Still in the process of tossing crayons  I came across a Mother's Day card made of icecream sticks..& I remembered how both my girls beamed in excitement at  their handiwork!There was sand from Goa in a pouch, pine cones from our trip to Shimla, a piece of Colloseum , shells, stones!! It was all downhill from there.I found notes written by Rakesh, a valentine day card,poems & I spent time with each of them recalling every detail! My garbage bag was no longer growing in size!

My heart now turned towards the reality of growing children.The years go so quickly, its never long until all that we have left of the early days are little misspelt words & the warmth in our heart when we read them! I returned all the keepsakes & decided to label the junk drawer  as "treasures"'......coz it was anything but junk! They were a very real ,if somewhat unorganised reminder of the things in my life that make me truly thankful!!