I Keep Kitchen Tongs in My Bedroom All the Time (It’s Brilliant!)

If there’s one thing I pride myself on, it’s that my space is always clean and organized. I know where everything in my space is, and I live by the rule of making my home look like it’s been professionally staged at all times. But every now and then, despite my best efforts, I get busy and a dresser drawer becomes totally unmanageable — seemingly overnight. 

Right now, this is happening with my drawer of workout clothes, which has somehow transformed from an orderly assortment of neatly folded matching sets into a messy spot I can barely open to retrieve an outfit. The culprit? A pair of pink leggings I’d forgotten I even owned, stuck between the drawer and the back of my dresser. That’s when I remembered a TikTok video from creator Christie Nann I’d seen that used a pair of kitchen tongs for exactly this reason.

This ingenious trick calls for using a long pair of kitchen tongs to retrieve lost clothes from behind a dresser drawer. Sure, I could’ve shimmied my arm back behind the drawer, but I figured I’d give the tongs a go first. I’d save my arm from getting pinched or stuck, and could even see if there were any other items lost in the dresser abyss with ease. Could a simple solution really be hiding in my kitchen? I had to find out.

First, I took a few items out of the drawer that were making it hard to reach the rogue leggings. Then, I grabbed my trusty kitchen tongs and slid them into the back of the drawer. I clamped down on my leggings and voila! They were free. I took a moment to refold the items I’d yanked out of the drawer to make sure I’d be able to close it properly, and then I was ready to head to the gym — no drawer removal required. 

I decided that from now on, I’ll be keeping a pair of kitchen tongs in my bedroom because I truly never know when I’ll need them. I also want to do a weekly root-around back there to see if there are any fallen items I might miss. I often have the same problem with the top drawer of my desk, which is so small I can barely fit everything I need into it. Inevitably, a crinkled bill, receipt, or envelope gets stuck back behind the drawer, and now I know exactly how to fix it without having to take the whole drawer out in the future.

The truth is that no matter how hard I try to stay organized, life gets in the way sometimes. This brilliant hack makes it so much easier to get back on track.