See How I Organized My “Super Chaotic” Drawer with $2 Trays from Target
Target runs are one of my great joys in life; they’re up there with ordering a little treat with my coffee and sleeping past 8 a.m. on a Saturday. During a recent visit to the store, a few light-green storage trays perched on an endcap instantly caught my eye — and their $2 price tags had me even more interested. I didn’t have a specific use in mind when I tossed four packs of differently sized Brightroom trays into my cart, but I couldn’t pass up the deal.
I have plenty of spaces in my home that could use some organization: closets and drawers packed with all the “I don’t know where this should go” stuff. With these 12 trays in hand (a two-pack, two 3-packs, and a four-pack), I decided the best place to start was the super-chaotic top-left drawer of my bedroom dresser. It was basically a pair of scissors and a pack of birthday candles away from becoming a junk drawer.
I know, I know — junk drawers are reserved for the kitchen, but I don’t have much storage space in my condo. I store things you’d expect to find in a bedroom, like hair ties, bobby pins, and hair clips, but I also use this dresser drawer as my medicine cabinet because I don’t have one in my bathroom. Of course, I toss in papers I’m not sure I can throw out and anything that might clutter the top of my dresser. Whenever I opened that drawer to get a clip or take my daily vitamin, I would close it as soon as possible because the mess would stress me out.
How I Organized My Messy Drawer
As I started clearing out my chaos, it seemed like these little containers were practically designed to fit in this rectangular drawer. Plus, the Brightroom Storage Trays are pretty flexible, so you can make them work even if they don’t measure up precisely to the space you have available.
Step 1: Start from scratch.
The best way I know how to take care of an unmanageable mess is to get it all out so you know what you’re dealing with. I dumped my entire drawer onto my bed, had a split-second of instant regret, and then carried on.
Step 2: Sort items into categories.
Next, I took control of the situation and made three piles: things that would go back into the drawer, belongings I needed to find a new storage place for, and stuff I could throw away.
Step 3: Use the trays to organize items.
Because I had four different tray styles — small, medium, large, and long — I just started placing in items that worked for each size. For example, I tossed bobby pins and hair ties in small trays. Then I put headbands and hair clips in large trays. I tried to organize the items by categories, like putting my daily medicines and bottle of ibuprofen in a medium tray together. I found space in a tray for almost everything, and I played around with where they should go until they all fit — basically like an IRL game of Tetris.
For anything that didn’t go in a tray, like my deodorant, glasses, and a few jewelry storage boxes, I placed them in snug openings amongst the trays so they wouldn’t shift every time I opened and closed the drawer.
In total, the entire process took me about 25 minutes — and it was worth every bit of satisfaction I had looking down at my newly organized drawer.
If you can’t find the trays at your local Target, you can get a similar option on Amazon.