I’ve Finally Found the Smartest Way to Use a Junk Drawer

Junk drawers are such a ubiquitous and guilt-inducing receptacle for various bobby pins and hair ties, rubber bands and extra buttons, that the best solution may be to not have one at all. But without another dedicated use, pretty soon that drawer with a vague purpose will become a catch-all for spare keys, pens (that may or may not work), and all the other junk you promised you wouldn’t put in there. In other words: You may not call it a junk drawer, but it is definitely a junk drawer.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! Use your former junk drawer for something so awesome that the junk has nowhere to land and languish and you put it all away where it actually goes. Our best advice for this tricky drawer? Turn it into a hidden charging station.

The genius of this hack is that it solves not one, but two common problems: your junk drawer and the tangle of chargers for watches, phones, etc. You could (and I have personally tried) neaten up the nest of cords by getting a charging station and setting the whole thing on a tray. But there isn’t anything that can make cords trailing stiffly from electronics look pretty.

A hidden charging station in your junk drawer, on the other hand, is a dream come true. Your chargers and cables will stay out of sight and, with your devices tucked away too, you might forget about them for a bit and enjoy something or someone non-electronic.

The best part about the junk drawer charging station? Creating one isn’t that complicated. Here’s how to do it.

The biggest hurdle is making sure you have an outlet you can plug your drawer’s charging station into. If one doesn’t exist, you may need to schedule an electrician to come out and install an outlet — and while they’re there, it’s definitely an option to have them complete the entire process. You can find a number of different plug-and-play options to fit virtually any drawer size.

But, if you’re a little bit handy, you can also create a docking station on your own pretty easily. All you need to do is drill a hole in the back of your drawer and the back of your unit for a cord to go through, attach a power strip to the back wall of your drawer’s interior, and plug the whole thing into the wall.