Write for You: Just the Junk

by Nancy Casey

Do you have a junk drawer? A drawer full of a random collection of things that you don’t want to throw away, but which aren’t quite valuable enough to have their own place to live in your home? Things like padlocks with misplaced keys or keys with misplaced padlocks. Things like lone band-aids, twist ties, or a couple of the neighbor kid’s legos.

Maybe your junk drawer isn’t a drawer. It could be the back of your closet, the floor of your car, or the bottom of your backpack. Maybe it’s the kitchen counter, the refrigerator, your coat pockets, or that spot by the door.

Today, write about what’s in your junk drawer. If you are like me and you have junk “drawers” all over the place, pick just one to write about. Don’t move on to a second one unless you have said everything you can about the first one.

Write about anything and everything that’s in your junk drawer, all the way down to the dust bunnies. You can dump it out on the table in front of you if you like. (But don’t pressure yourself to do anything more organized than dumping it all back in when you are finished.)

Write down what each item is. Then pick one and say something about it. You can say a little or a lot.

These are some ideas for what you could say: Tell how the thing got into your life and why it is still there. Tell why it belongs in the junk drawer, and not under your bed or in the oven or next to your your socks. What it would say if it could talk to you? Did you find any things that you forgot about and were delighted to see again? Is there anything in there that you don’t think you’ve ever seen before?

It isn’t really “junk” is it?

What if you don’t have a junk drawer to write about? No disorderly or random piles of whatnot anywhere in your living space? What do you do with your ticket stubs, receipts, odd mittens and old keys? Do you have certain habits that prevent accumululations of stuff from washing up in the corners of your life? Did you have junk in the past that you don’t have now? If you had a junk drawer, what would be in it?

Whatever you have to say about junk drawers and their junk, be sure to give your work a title and write the date on it.

To see an example of what a person could write, visit: http://planetnancy.net/writing-prompts/just-the-junk/

Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. Her website is PlanetNancy.net. She has taught writing classes at the Recovery Center and will return again in the spring of 2018. If you have a writing project you would like help with, email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.