We have a junk drawer. It's in the kitchen, right above the trash can, exactly where every junk drawer in America lives. And it's completely empty. Not because I've reached some higher plane of organizing, but because everything that would normally land in there has a much fancier home - a vintage library card catalog sitting in our living room. Actually, I have two of them. When I shared them on Instagram, over 206,000 of you watched, and almost every comment asked the same thing: okay, but what's IN all those drawers? So today I'm opening every single one. But first, the story, because how I got them is half the fun.
The thrift store that held my card catalog for four months
White card catalog with drawers to house our everyday items.
I grew up in a small town in Indiana, surrounded by farms and old farmhouses, and I have always been drawn to furniture from another time. I love a piece that has clearly lived a whole life before it got to me. After a stretch in California, we moved back to Indiana and started house hunting, and with a house on the horizon I leaned all the way back into collecting old things.
Then something better happened. My mom, my aunt and I fell headfirst into barn sales. We loved the thrill of the hunt, but mostly we loved doing it together, and it turned into our little passion project. Thrift shops, junk shops, barn sales in every small town near where I grew up - we hit so many that I honestly couldn't tell you which one this story happened in. Along the way I found out I loved refinishing furniture, looking at something tired and seeing what else it could be. Some of my favorite things in my house today came from those weekends.
The year before my daughter was born, we walked into one of those thrift stores and there it was - a huge card catalog in two pieces. The bottom had 24 drawers that were a little bit larger, and the top had 63 slightly smaller drawers, and stacked together they looked like one solid piece. The store told me it came from a local college library. If you're my age, you remember these: every drawer packed with little cards using the Dewey Decimal System to tell you exactly where to find your book. Then computers took over, the cards went digital, and these beautiful pieces of furniture were suddenly out of a job.
Small problem. I didn't have a house yet. So I did what any reasonable person would do - I paid $300 for both pieces and asked them to please hold onto it until I bought a house. And they did. We found our dream house, a 4,000-square-foot house after living in an 800-square-foot apartment (so yes, I had a lot of empty floor to fill), and four months later we went back and picked up my card catalogs. Best $300 I've ever spent, and I've spent $300 on a lot of things.
Two pieces, two jobs
Me standing beside the “brain” of the house.
I knew right away I wanted to split them up so each one could do its own job. I added legs to the 24-drawer piece to lift it off the floor and put it in our dining room, where it held all our dining accessories - napkins, napkin rings, pillar candles, taper candles, candle holders, matches, the fancy silverware, little serving pieces, holiday decor and birthday candles.
The 63-drawer piece went into an upstairs hallway, and it has been our art supply house from day one. When the kids were little it was full of exploratory art: tiny sponges for sponge painting, stickers, construction paper squares and more crayons than any family needs.
When I bought them they had a wood stain, and I painted them both white. Partly because my whole house was mismatched thrifted furniture and white at least made everything look like it belonged together. Partly because the stain wasn't a color I was collecting at the time, and the paint made them feel new. And partly, let's be honest, because I was deep in my shabby chic era. Would I love to see them back in their natural wood someday? I would, and I hope I take the time to refinish them one day. But our house now is very cottagey, lots of white, shiplap, natural wood and green plants, so the white actually works perfectly. For now, they feel at home.
Then we moved back to California
Ten years ago we moved back to California and downsized from 4,000 square feet to 2,400. A lot of things didn't make the cut. These two came without question. The 63-drawer piece kept its job as our craft cabinet, but the 24-drawer piece got a brand new one, and it has turned into the most hardworking piece of furniture we own.
The 24-drawer catalog: the brain of our house
When Lilah was younger she would use the stool to access the card catalog.
The 24-drawer catalog lives in our living room, and I call it the brain of our house. It's really a glorified junk drawer - it holds everything you're constantly looking for but never have a good place to put. The difference is that every little thing gets its own drawer and its own label, so nothing is buried under a dead battery and a takeout menu. Here's what's inside:
Around the house: candles, matches, lightbulbs, hooks, remotes, tea lights
Tech: chargers, cords (two drawers), plugs
Desk and office: pens and pencils, markers, scissors, tape, glue, glue gun, clips, rubber bands, labels, office supplies, checks
The fun drawers: cards (two drawers), cookie cutters
If it doesn't have an obvious home and we use it often enough to go looking for it, it gets a drawer. And nobody in this house has asked me where the tape is in years. Pure peace.
The 63-drawer catalog: our craft cabinet
Bailey looks like she's guarding the card catalog.
The 63-drawer catalog sits on our stair landing, halfway between the first floor and the second, and it's still all art supplies. The supplies have just grown up with my kids. The sponge painting drawer is long gone, and now we have drawers for hole punches, wood burning, resin and sewing.
For years the drawers were organized by category, and I'd find myself standing back, reading every single label, trying to remember where I'd put the pipe cleaners. It just took too long. So during the last overhaul I alphabetized everything, and it has been a true game changer. Now you just go to the letter. The labels are absolutely necessary though - there are way too many drawers to guess. Here's the whole thing, A to Z:
A-C: bags (2), beads (2), bells, buttons, chalk, colored pencils, cotton balls (2), crayons
F-G: fabric, fabric markers, feathers, floral wire, foam brushes, glass beads, glitter, glow sticks, glue, googly eyes
H-P: hole punches (3), ink pads, labels, magnets, markers (3), miscellaneous, oil pastels, one-hole punch, paint (3), paint brushes, party, pipe cleaners, pom-poms (3)
R-S: resin, rope, ruler, sand, sewing, shells, stamps, stamp markers, straws, string
T-Y: thread, tinsel, tissue squares, Twistables, Velcro, wood burning, wooden stumps (2), wooden sticks, yarn (2)
Three drawers of pom-poms might look excessive. It is not. It is exactly enough.
The best part: you take the whole drawer with you
Loving how these card catalog drawers come out to make for easy crafting.
Here's what I didn't fully appreciate until we lived with them. The drawers on both catalogs are completely wooden, with no metal parts inside, and they're long and narrow. That means they hold a lot, but they're still light enough for a kid to carry.
So when Lilah and Clay had to color a map for homework or when friends were over, they didn't dig through a bin or ask me where the crayons were. They pulled out the whole crayon drawer, carried it down to the kitchen island with every crayon right there in front of them, and then slid the drawer right back in. Same with paint and paintbrushes for a project. Pull it, carry it, use it, put it back.
If you look closely, the crayon and marker drawers are heavily marked up on the sides from little hands that couldn't help themselves. I'm honestly not mad about it. Those marks are memories of a whole season of homework and crafts at that island, and I wouldn't sand them off for anything. It's a lived story, and I love it.
How I keep it working
63 different drawers full of craft supplies.
These catalogs aren't set-it-and-forget-it forever. Every so often I look at which drawers are getting used and which aren't, and I've done about four total overhauls where I replaced every label and really assessed what we need.
What usually kicks one off is cleaning out the hangout - the room where my kids spend their time, with our children's books, games, puzzles, our printer and a couple of shelves of bigger art supplies like paper, air dry clay, large paint bottles and paint palettes. When I'm organizing that room and end up with leftover small supplies, they go to the card catalog. Same thing after a big project with extras, or when I notice a few empty drawers. That's my cue to reshuffle.
As for labels, I used to print them on plain paper and slide them into the little brass label holders. These days I use a label maker, which is cleaner, easier to read and much faster to redo when things change. Small upgrade, big relief.
Want the look without a vintage card catalog?
The household card catalog is not only functional it acts as a beautiful piece of furniture.
I'll be honest, old card catalogs are hard to find now. I see one pop up on Facebook Marketplace here and there, but there are a lot more people looking than selling. If you do find one, check the inside of the drawers. I once owned another catalog, similar to my 63-drawer one but on legs, and it was beautiful, but it still had all of the metal inner workings, which made it harder to actually store things in. I ended up selling it (for a nice profit, thank you very much).
If a vintage one isn't in the cards (sorry, had to), the idea still works with an apothecary cabinet, a multi-drawer storage unit or a shelf of labeled bins. The magic isn't really the antique. It's that every little thing has one home, each home has a label, and you only pull out what you need. That part is free.
Old furniture, new job
What I love most about these two pieces is that they were already beautiful on their own - old, nostalgic and full of story - and now they're also the hardest-working furniture in our house. A college library's leftovers, a $300 thrift store find held for four months, a few coats of white paint, a lot of label maker tape and a decade of kids carrying drawers to the kitchen island. They hold our stuff, but really they hold our story, and that makes me so grateful.
Click here for the resources page with these items listed out for each piece.
~Leslie
Follow along at @the.modern.mom.life for more of the home systems I set up once that keep our family life running a little calmer.
