Always leads so ineluctably to the junk drawer. Growing up, we had several, each packed beyond capacity with thankless ephemera–twine, half a suit of clubs, sporks, legal pads perfectly good but for some reason maligned, twin-less batteries, everything. When my kindergarten teacher wanted us to come to class with a time capsule, I should have merely lifted one of those babies off its hinges. Here, finally, is a series of photos by Richard Jenkins, paying tribute to still life with life’s shabby chorus of accessories:

The genesis of the Junk Drawers project was a sudden pang of nostalgia for that place in the corner of my childhood kitchen where the detritus of our lives ended up — objects often of marginal consequence, but sometimes great importance, somehow too special to throw away, seldom animal or vegetable, and always, by necessity, smaller than a breadbox.

And if you were slogging through junk during January–the National Association of Professional Organizer’s Get Organized Month–you might be heartened to hear that, according to NAPO’s 2007 survey:

• The bedroom is the most disorganized room in the house overall with 26% of the respondents citing it. This decreases with age as 48% of those from 18–24 cite the bedroom as the most disorganized room with only 14% of those 55+ citing the bedroom as the most disorganized room. The home office/den is mentioned second most often by 16% of the respondents.
• Whether a younger person is married or not, they will say that the bedroom is the most disorganized (both around 50%).
• Married people tend to have more disorganized garages and home offices/dens and unmarried people tend to have more disorganized bedrooms.