The Junk Drawer

I was walking down the street this morning with Ozzie when my next door neighbor drove by. We haven't seen each other in a long time so we had a wide ranging conversation in the middle of the street. This isn't always possible on our narrow lane with no place to pull over, but it worked today. We agreed that we were both feeling uneasy with the all too familiar smoky air and high temperatures, and I confessed that I should be taking pictures of all our worldly possessions, but that I just didn't want to. 

My neighbor, who is ex military and lost a house to hurricane Andrew in 1992 described what she has been doing to prepare for an emergency
Make three lists: 
1) What to grab if you have ten minutes to get out of the house
2) What to grab if you have half an hour to leave
3) What to take if you have plenty of time.
Get three big plastic storage bins:
One for each person and one for the house. Tape the lists to the tops and fill. The most important things she wished she had put in were boots, leather gloves and jeans.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake we had one plastic bin with emergency supplies in it...a crank radio a space blanket, some pills and most of our camping equipment.  We added a few things to it after the East Bay Firestorm in 1991...in case we had to survive in a doorway or on the street. We brought it here with us but I don't suppose anything in it would be of much use anymore...

I came home all fired up to take pictures, make lists and fill bins,  but decided to make myself a cup of coffee first. I dropped the aeroccino  on the newly made cup of coffee, coating the kitchen in steamed milk, coffee, sugar and broken pieces of the sugar bowl and the cup.

I always thought it took years and years for a 'junk drawer' to evolve, but looking in ours for some glue to fix the sugar bowl, I couldn't help wondering where all this stuff came from, followed by the thought that most of it belonged in the trash can in the cupboard next to it. I had to throw some stuff away before I could even find what I was looking for, but decided  to take a picture and then finish the job since I'd started it. I put a picture of the 'clean' junk drawer in extras.  

It's amazing how much we have accumulated in a relatively short time.
Do I really have to take a picture of all this stuff?
Do I have to clean out all the drawers before I take pictures of what's in them?
We need a truck to get rid of all the stuff that is in our garage (besides our cars).

It's all too daunting. No wonder I didn't feel like doing it.