A Rolling Junk Drawer

When I moved from my last residence, I banned all junk drawers.  I think every household has one.  It's that conveniently available drawer that ends up becoming a catchall for miscellaneous papers and extraneous items.  I've found that many times a junk drawer is typically located in the kitchen, since that is where you usually have an abundance of drawers, but they have been known to crop up in nightstands or even dresser drawers.  My parents had one in every house they lived in and still have one to this day.  Once you start a junk drawer it never seems to go away, and this is why I banned them in my household.  I may have banned the junk drawer from my house, but apparently I didn't do the same in my car.  Last month, at the request of my mechanic, I went in search of all my vehicle service receipts.  The most obvious and best place for me to keep them was in my car's glove compartment.  I assume it was named a glove compartment because vehicle manufacturer's thought it would be a convenient place to store your driving gloves.  Let me tell you, there are no gloves in that compartment of my car.  I found a lot of paper, a lot of old paper, and here's what it looked like:

When I inventoried all that was crammed into my glove compartment here is what I found:

Old vehicle registrations – November 2000 – 2009; Georgia Emissions test results - 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008; vehicle service receipts dating back to 2000; tire purchase receipts - 2002, 2004; (1) owner's manual; (1) insurance bill from 01/2004; (4) insurance cards (from 2 different insurers) the oldest being March 2000; bill pay envelopes to the local electric company; (1)home electric bill from 08/2000, 09/2000; (1) credit card bill from 02/2002; (1) mobile phone bill from 06/2002; napkins; (2) handwritten driving directions; (1) grocery list; (1) fax receipt - 07/2008; (1) coupon for Caltrate that expired 12/31/07; (1) Kroger Plus Shopper's Card; (1) temporary parking pass; (1) mobile phone earpiece instruction guide; (1) graduate school bill statement from 02/2002; GA State personal tax letter; (2) drinking straws; (1) broken floppy disk; (1) computer data cable; (1) purchase contract agreement for my car dated 03/2000; (1) final lease billing statement from AHFC for my previous car a 97 Honda Civic & the FedEx tracking information for the payment; (1) pack of 4mm flat washers; (1) pack of 4-40 x 1 SS Machine Screws; (2) Tire warranty information brochures – Bridgestone, Firestone; (1) empty can of air sanitizer; (1) stick tire pressure gauge; (1) digital tire pressure gauge – broken; (1) ice scraper; countless service receipts dating back to 03/2000.

My mechanic's shop burned to the ground in 2007 and all of his service records for my vehicle were destroyed.  The search for those service receipts will have to continue on another day.  I was looking for service receipts to provide him with the service documentation for that time period, but no such luck today.  I have the 2007 receipts, but they just aren't in that glove compartment.  I guess, by 2007, space in the glove compartment was limited and there was only room for the necessities – the insurance and registration cards.  I have no idea where I filed those receipts, but I can say they were not in that disorganized cluster I call a glove compartment.  If I'd been stopped by a police officer, the there's no telling how long it would have taken me to produce my registration.

 My rolling junk drawer has been cleaned out and now there is only the owner's manual, current 2010 vehicle registration, the receipt for the current tires on my car and the warranty information for them, an ice scraper, and tire gauge.  My glove compartment now has only the necessities, but what about yours?  Send me a picture.  I'd love to see what's going on in your glove compartment.

Maybe now that my glove compartment is clean I can actually store a pair of driving gloves in their rightful place.

SweetSpot