Throw Your Nasty Trash Can in the Trash

You know that hideous drawer full of random bags of ketchup, receipts, rubber bands, and other assorted nonsense popping out of your pockets or purse at the end of the day? Some people call it a trash bin. Others call it the box for everything, or the box for all sorts of accidents, or simply “this box.” I call it the Trick Box, like Dirty Tricks, the type that Richard Nixon and the Gatherers use. Some people don’t have a drawer, but they do have a Bowl of Tricks, a Shelf of Tricks, or a Corner of a Kitchen Trick Counter.

Wherever you hide the gruesome wreckage of everyday life, I urge you to start the New Year right and throw everything right in the bin. Do not organize it, do not clean it, do not take out nasty oxidized pennies from the swamp. The only way to become a respectable person who doesn’t have the painful feeling in his chest that something is wrong in this world is to take this box and throw its contents in the trash.

This is your life . You make decisions. Today, you can start over with an empty drawer, a drawer you swear to never drop a loose golf shirt, a half-dead battery, or a half-eaten tamsa roll. You can take back the space you are now dedicating to chaos and turn it into a sanctuary of folded tea towels, as I did. Or you can do what some of my colleagues want and live like a complete savage. Let’s take a peek into the gimmick regions cultivated by the performance-obsessed, wisdom-beaming sages behind Lifehacker, shall we?

Takeaway menu with scraps and Pez dispenser

Megan Walbert’s temp parenting editor’s drawer looks intimidating at first – Trick drawer divides rooms with silverware drawer? – but then, when you look closely, you will see that there are very few irrelevant ones, with the exception of some wayward bibs and squares of unknown origin. “When the drawer starts taunting me every time I open it, it’s time to freshen up,” Megan explains. “Unfortunately I got there three weeks ago (but please note that my takeout menus are still stuck together and THIS is a win).”

Jute roll and bag of hamburger rolls

Tricks can be found anywhere in the house. Watch how Lifehacker creative producer Heather Huss turned the top of her refrigerator into a graveyard for her children’s work, a broken candy cane, and a bag of hamburger buns that was turned into one gluten roll from the half-read novel upstairs.

“In Wisconsin, we had a scary closet, which is basically a very large trash bin,” says Heather. “We don’t have boxes or toilets in our New York apartment, and this is the easiest place to drop what kids can’t get to. Sometimes I dump whatever’s going into my bag when it gets really wild and stuff it in a corner so I can hopefully take it apart later.

Lots of credit cards and lots of booze

A shelf of tricks! Senior Technical Editor David Murphy uses all the available space, limiting the contents of his shitty drawer to the front edge of a bookcase. “Instead of putting everything in boxes where it is not visible and out of sight, I prefer to stick different things on my bookshelf. Since I love reading, it constantly reminds me that I really need to move this stuff elsewhere. When a shelf reaches a critical mass, it’s usually my fault. ” Reasonable policy.

Even reusable bags have their places

“This summer we received an IKEA divider that fits exactly into our IKEA drawer. This revolutionized the drawer. I’ll never be rooting for gum again, ”boasts Lifehacker staff writer Nick Douglas. This photo caused the resentment of the rest of the animals in the state. It won’t surprise you that Nick’s idea was for the entire team to share photos of their boxes.

This is a hot dog spiralizer

“Look at all the treasures,” Claire bragged about her giant trash pit pictured above. “Throw away this Instant Pot Guide immediately,” I ordered, to which she replied, “The Instant Pot Guide distracts you from the hot dog spiralizer,” which is obviously that yellow plastic thing.

This Trick Box is the platonic ideal of the Trick Box, the ur-box of which everyone else is just a pale facsimile. We have a birthday candle, one CO2 canister, a Kind bar, and some instructions for use on a bed of sauces. “I think there is a new 7-11 in there – Slurpee straws made from candy!” Claire reminds me. I remind her that if she threw this drawer in the trash, she might have a guest bedroom.

I just feel really good about what I have going on here

This is my box. I confess that before I saw Nick’s drawer, I didn’t have a metal tray. I could sit and stare at this gorgeous box all day and just feel good about my choice and my prospects for a successful 2019. I have two toilets that are so full of shit that sometimes I have to use all my body power to close them, but never mind. I feel like this box represents me, the face I want to show to the world.

I beg you: throw out your ugly box. You don’t need anything there. If you try to clean it, you will have to deal with hair and lint debris living at the bottom of the drawer, and I’m not sure if you will be so scared. Throw it out. Do it now.