SUNDAY WITH PHILOSOPHY JANE | We Have a Drawer Full of Things Nobody Can Identify

By Philosophy Jane | MINNEAPOLIS, MN (October 25, 2026)

There is a drawer in my kitchen that contains at least seventeen objects whose original purposes have been forgotten, nine things that belong to appliances I no longer own, and a small metal bracket that I have been afraid to throw away since approximately 2016.

I opened it last Tuesday because I needed a rubber band, but I did not find a rubber band. What I found was a collection of household objects that suggested somebody had dismantled a small electronics store, mixed the inventory with the contents of a hardware shop, and then abandoned the entire operation halfway through.

There were keys without locks, batteries without charge, pens without ink, and enough charging cables to suggest that I had once operated a telephone exchange. A plastic wheel had somehow become entangled with a Christmas ornament hook. There was a single furniture screw wrapped in a grocery receipt, a packet of expired coupons, and a small white object with two holes that might have belonged to a curtain rod, a refrigerator shelf, or something important enough to cause an insurance claim.

I recognized none of it, so naturally, I kept all of it.

The drawer had been accumulating these objects for years, although I could not remember making a conscious decision to store most of them. Things simply arrived there after being declared too potentially useful to discard and too unimportant to deserve a proper home. I had always considered this a sensible arrangement: if something had no obvious place in the house, the drawer provided one. Unfortunately, after years of this system, the drawer itself had become the place where household responsibility went to disappear.

The immediate problem was that it would no longer close properly. I had been managing this inconvenience by lifting the front of the drawer slightly, pushing it inward, and giving it a firm shove with my hip. This worked most of the time. On other occasions, something inside would catch against the cabinet frame, forcing me to open the drawer again and rearrange its contents until the obstruction moved somewhere less troublesome.

I had never considered this a serious problem because I could usually get the drawer closed in fewer than three attempts. Brenda disagreed.

An Inspection Nobody Requested

Brenda arrived that afternoon to return a casserole dish I had lent her. She found me standing in front of the open drawer, holding a small plastic attachment and trying to remember whether it belonged to a blender.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Looking for a rubber band."

"Why are you holding that?"

"I don't know."

"Then why haven't you put it down?"

"Because I don't know what it is."

Brenda came closer and looked into the drawer, remaining silent for several seconds. "Jane, what happened in here?"

"Nothing happened. It's my miscellaneous drawer."

"Miscellaneous?"

"Yes. Everybody has one."

Brenda leaned forward, moved a tangled charging cable aside, and picked up a small brass key. "What does this open?"

"I don't remember."

"Do you still have whatever it opens?"

"Possibly."

"Where is it?"

"If I knew that, I'd probably remember what the key opens."

She put the key down and picked up another one. "And this?"

"Different lock, presumably."

"Jane."

"Brenda."

She held the two keys beside each other and studied me with the concern usually reserved for people who have begun keeping livestock in their living rooms. "How many unidentified keys do you have?"

"I haven't counted."

"Why not?"

"Because until you arrived, I was having a perfectly nice Tuesday."

Brenda began removing things from the drawer and placing them on the counter. I objected immediately because she was disturbing an arrangement that, while admittedly difficult to understand, had been functioning for years.

"Don't mix everything up," I warned.

"Jane, everything is already mixed up."

"Not necessarily. I know roughly where things are."

"You couldn't find a rubber band."

"That doesn't mean I couldn't find something else."

"What else?"

I looked into the drawer. "A battery."

She picked up a battery. "Does it work?"

"I don't know."

She put it on the counter. "Wonderful."

The Museum of Possible Emergencies

Once Brenda started emptying the drawer, I discovered that its contents were considerably more extensive than I had realized.

There were four different types of charging cable, including one with a connector neither of us recognized. I insisted that it might belong to an old camera. Brenda asked whether I still had the camera, and I said I wasn't sure, which she considered a compelling reason to throw the cable away. I considered it a compelling reason to keep it.

The camera might still be somewhere in the house. If I found it and discovered that I had thrown away its only charging cable, I would have to purchase a replacement. Worse, the replacement might no longer be manufactured, leaving me with a perfectly good camera that I could not use. Brenda pointed out that I had not used the camera in at least eight years.

"That doesn't mean I won't need it."

"For what?"

"Taking pictures."

"With what, Jane? The camera you can't find?"

I told her that this was exactly why I needed to keep the cable. She stared at me for a moment and then returned to the drawer.

Next came a little plastic bag containing six screws, two washers, and a metal bracket. The bag had no label. I vaguely remembered removing the bracket from a piece of furniture during a move, but I could not remember which piece of furniture or why I had removed it.

"Throw it away," Brenda said.

"Absolutely not."

"Why?"

"Because it belongs to something."

"Everything belongs to something."

"Exactly."

"That is not an argument for keeping everything."

I held up the bracket. "What if this is the piece holding something together?"

"Then whatever it's supposed to be holding together has been doing a remarkable job without it."

She had a point, but I did not appreciate her making it. I placed the bracket in a separate pile that I called Things Requiring Further Investigation. Brenda called it the pile of things I was refusing to throw away. We agreed to disagree, although I was the only one who appeared interested in the agreement.

The Trouble With Mystery Keys

The keys presented a more difficult problem. There were nine of them, not including the tiny one attached to a broken luggage lock. Three looked like ordinary house keys, two appeared to belong to padlocks, one was unusually long and thin, and another had a black plastic head with a faded number printed on it.

I recognized the smallest key immediately. "That belongs to my old filing cabinet."

"Do you still have the cabinet?" Brenda asked.

"No."

"Then throw it away."

I put it in the discard pile. It was a significant moment: I had identified an object, established that it no longer served a purpose, and agreed to dispose of it. Brenda looked pleased, and I felt briefly capable of making sensible decisions.

Then I picked up a larger key. "This might be for the front door."

Brenda looked toward the front door. "Does it look like your current key?"

"No."

"Then it's not for your current front door."

"It could be from my old house."

"Do you still own your old house?"

"No."

"Then why do you need the key?"

I hesitated. "What if somebody asks for it?"

"Who?"

"The new owner."

"Jane, when did you sell that house?"

"Years ago."

"And you think the new owner is going to call you and ask whether you happen to have a spare key?"

I considered the possibility. "It would be nice to be prepared."

Brenda set the key down. "If somebody calls you after all these years asking for a key to a house you no longer own, I would be more concerned about how they got your number."

I had to admit that this was reasonable. Nevertheless, I kept the key because I wasn't completely certain it belonged to the old house. By the time we finished examining the others, I had identified two keys with confidence, rejected one, and created a new category for the remaining six.

I labeled an envelope "Keys, Purpose Unknown." Brenda read it and sighed.

"Jane, that is not organizing. That's giving the confusion a mailing address."

A Drawer With Its Own History

As we worked, I began remembering how some of the objects had arrived. The tiny screwdriver came from a pair of eyeglasses I had repaired years earlier. The measuring tape had belonged to a sewing kit. The little wooden knob was from a cabinet door that had since been replaced, although I could not remember whether the knob was from the old cabinet or the new one.

There was a restaurant loyalty card from a place that had closed, a button in a paper envelope, and an instruction booklet for a digital alarm clock I had given away.

Brenda held up the booklet. "Do you know where the clock is?"

"I donated it."

"Then why do you still have the instructions?"

"Apparently, I forgot to include them."

"Do you think the person who received the clock is waiting for you to bring the instructions?"

"Probably not."

"Good. We're making progress."

She dropped the booklet into the recycling pile. I watched it go with an uncomfortable sense that we were discarding evidence of a period of my life.

The alarm clock had sat beside my bed for years. I remembered how its display had been too bright at night and how I had eventually covered part of it with a folded piece of paper. I remembered waking up early on winter mornings, reaching across the bedside table to silence it, and deciding that I would replace it with something better. I eventually did, yet seeing the instruction booklet brought back the room, the mornings, and the particular annoyance of a clock that believed 5:30 a.m. required enough illumination to guide aircraft.

I told Brenda about it. She listened, then looked at the booklet. "Do you want to keep it because you miss the clock?"

"No."

"Do you want the clock back?"

"Certainly not."

"Then you can remember the clock without keeping its instructions."

I disliked how easily she said this. There are people who can throw away an object after deciding they no longer need it. I have always admired them, although I suspect they have never experienced the peculiar satisfaction of discovering that a mysterious screw saved ten years earlier is exactly the screw required to repair a wobbly kitchen chair. I had never experienced that satisfaction either, but I remained hopeful.

The One Thing I Actually Needed

About an hour into the investigation, Brenda found a small black rubber ring. "What is this?"

I looked at it and immediately recognized it. "That's the seal from my travel mug!"

"Your travel mug?"

"The blue one. It started leaking, and I couldn't figure out why."

"Where is the mug?"

"In the cupboard."

"Why didn't you put the seal back?"

"I didn't know where it was."

Brenda held the ring between two fingers. "So you put it in the drawer?"

"Apparently."

"Then forgot it was there?"

"Yes."

"And continued using the mug?"

"No. It leaked."

"What did you do?"

"I bought another mug."

Brenda closed her eyes, and I could tell she was trying to remain calm. "Jane, you bought a new travel mug because you couldn't find a rubber ring that you had put in a drawer full of rubber rings, screws, keys, and electrical cables?"

"There aren't any other rubber rings."

"That is not the important part of this story."

I took the seal from her and went to the cupboard. The blue mug was still there, pushed behind a stack of plastic containers. I fitted the ring into the lid, filled the mug with water, and turned it upside down over the sink. It did not leak, and I was delighted.

"See?" I said. "This is why I keep things."

Brenda folded her arms. "Jane, this is why you should know where you keep things."

I had been prepared to celebrate my foresight. Instead, I was forced to acknowledge that I had spent money replacing an item because I had lost the part needed to repair it, even though I had carefully preserved that part for future use. The drawer had done its job so badly that it had almost convinced me it was doing it well.

I put the repaired mug on the counter and decided not to mention how much the replacement had cost.

The Things We Might Need Someday

By late afternoon, we had spread the drawer's contents across most of the kitchen counter. Brenda had organized them into piles: things I used, things I could identify but no longer needed, things that were broken, and things whose purposes remained a mystery.

I had created a fifth pile. Brenda noticed it immediately. "What is that?"

"Things I might need someday."

"Jane, that was the entire drawer."

"Not exactly. These are the things I might need soon."

"How soon?"

"I don't know."

She picked up a plastic clip. "What is this?"

"I think it belongs to a window blind."

"Which window?"

"I haven't established that yet."

She walked to the nearest window, examined the blind, and returned. "Doesn't belong to that one."

"We have other windows."

"Of course we do."

She placed the clip back on the counter with unusual care, as though she feared it might multiply if disturbed. I understood her frustration; I was beginning to feel it myself.

For years, I had treated the drawer as a form of preparation. I imagined that every object inside represented a small advantage against future inconvenience. If a screw went missing, I would have a spare. If a cable broke, I might have another. If I needed a key, perhaps one of the nine unidentified keys would turn out to be the right one. But preparation is only useful when you can find what you have prepared.

There was little comfort in owning the correct screw if locating it required emptying a drawer, examining thirty unrelated objects, and listening to Brenda question my judgment. The drawer had become less a collection of useful things than a collection of decisions I had postponed. I had not chosen to keep most of its contents because I knew they mattered; I had kept them because I didn't know whether they mattered, and deciding seemed more troublesome than putting them away.

The trouble was that the decisions had not disappeared. They had simply accumulated until I needed a rubber band and discovered that the drawer could no longer close.

A Small Victory for Common Sense

Eventually, we made progress. We threw away the dead batteries, broken pens, and dried-out glue. We recycled the expired coupons and obsolete instruction booklets. I gathered the loose screws into a small divided container, labeled the charging cables I could identify, and put the unidentified ones into a bag for further examination. Brenda objected to the last arrangement but accepted it after I agreed to reconsider the bag within a month.

I found the rubber bands, incidentally, in a small jar behind the flour canister. I had apparently moved them there several months earlier because I was tired of searching through the drawer. Brenda found this so funny that she had to sit down; I did not.

By the time we finished, the drawer contained a measuring tape, scissors, a working flashlight, a few pens, a packet of rubber bands, and a small container of spare hardware. It looked almost respectable.

I opened and closed it several times just to enjoy the sensation. There was no resistance, no scraping noise, and no need to shove it with my hip.

Brenda watched me. "Imagine that. A drawer that works."

I smiled. "I suppose I let things get a little out of hand."

"A little?"

"There's no need to become unpleasant."

She picked up the empty casserole dish and prepared to leave. Before going, she pointed to the bag of unidentified cables. "One month, Jane."

"I know."

"And the keys."

"I know."

"And don't start another drawer."

I assured her that I had learned my lesson. At the time, I believed it.

The Drawer Has a New Problem

That evening, I stood in the kitchen admiring my work. The counter was clear, the repaired travel mug was back in service, and the miscellaneous drawer opened smoothly. I could see everything inside without moving anything else, which was such a novelty that I opened it twice more before making dinner. I felt unusually competent.

Then I noticed a small silver screw on the floor near the refrigerator.

I picked it up. It was short, with a flat head and a tiny washer attached. I had no idea where it had come from. It might have fallen from the counter during our sorting, or it might have been there for days. I examined the refrigerator handle, the nearby cabinet, and the legs of the kitchen table, but nothing appeared loose.

I considered throwing the screw away. After all, I had just spent several hours learning that an unidentified object did not automatically deserve permanent residence in my home. Brenda would certainly approve if I discarded it.

But what if it belonged to the refrigerator?

I looked at the refrigerator again: the door opened normally, the shelves were secure, and nothing rattled. There was no evidence that any part of the appliance required a screw. Still, I could not be certain.

I opened the newly organized drawer and considered placing the screw in the hardware container. That would have been sensible, as it was precisely why I had bought the container in the first place. Unfortunately, the compartments were labeled according to the types of screws they held, and I couldn't identify this one. I didn't want to spoil the arrangement.

So I placed the screw in a small envelope, wrote "Unidentified Screw, Found Near Refrigerator" on the front, and looked around for somewhere to keep it until I could investigate further. The kitchen drawer was no longer appropriate; I had worked too hard to restore it.

Then I remembered the drawer in the hallway. I had not opened it in months, but I knew there was room inside.

I carried the envelope down the hall, pulled the drawer open, and found three batteries, a broken watch strap, two curtain hooks, an old phone charger, and a little plastic wheel whose purpose I could not remember.

I stood there for a moment, considering the situation. Then I placed the envelope carefully beside the wheel.

I would deal with it later. After all, it was only one screw, and I had an entire drawer.

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