Catherine was very much of the “we might need this someday” school, where “this” could be gift bags, kebab skewers, random nuts and bolts, or bits of ribbon. As a result, our house has not only one, but several junk drawers, junk shelves, junk buckets, junk nooks, junk boxes. Oliver and I have been using this fallow time to deal with these, using this guidance from The Guardian as our guide:

This is the time to be ruthless. Empty it out, says MacKenzie. Give the inside of the drawer a vacuum and a wipe with a damp cloth. Then “only put back the things you use. If you think: ‘I might need that one day,’ no, you won’t because you haven’t used it in the last year. I used to have a dish full of keys and I never knew what they were for. One day I just threw them away. Did I come to any grief? No.” Rehome items to the places they belong.