Dried-up rubber bands and balls of single shoelaces. Nine-volt batteries and decks of cards without any aces. Brown paper from packages with snippets of strings…

These are a few of my favorite (junk drawer) things.

(If you sang the above lines, I offer my apologies to you, Rodgers, Hammerstein and whoever was sitting next to you when you broke out in song.)

This miscellany of scattered things swirled through my mind after I read a Facebook post from my author friend Heather. She posed the question of what’s that “one item every junk drawer must have to be a real junk drawer?”

It never occurred to me that junk drawers had rules.

Then I saw an ad for a junk drawer starter kit. Really? There are people who need help creating a junk drawer?

Junk just happens. Organically.

It starts with a few bread twist ties (“Oh, I bet I’ll need these some day.”) and a random screw stuck in the carpet (“Huh. I wonder what this goes to? Well, if the table collapses, I’ll know…”) tossed into an empty (but not for long) drawer in the kitchen.

Pretty soon, you barely can slam the drawer shut because of the volume of whatzits and whozits and why-did-I-keep-thises jammed into the thing.

Garages grow into giant junk drawers. One day, you’re parking two cars in your garage, and the next, you can’t even fit a bicycle in there in between all the three-legged chairs, cracked end tables, dusty canoes, cans of dried house paint, snapped screwdrivers and a multitude of I’m-gonna-fix-that-someday projects.

But back to where it all begins — the kitchen junk drawer. What, according to the responses to Heather’s query, this is what makes a proper junk drawer:

“Random keys to unknown locks,” Ginger replied.

“Batteries — every kind but the kind I need when I look there,” Karen said.

Edie wrote that in her mother’s junk drawer, she found “a Ziploc of pencil sharpener shavings, an old film canister full of random prescription pills and a dissection kit.”

Other popular answers (check your own junk drawers to make sure you have these) were:

• Ancient ketchup packets.

• Power cords that go to unknown devices.

• Folded sheets of used aluminum foil.

• Loose push pins (I don’t have to tell you how you find those when rooting around in the junk drawer. Ouch!).

• Broken cabinet hardware.

• A miniature screwdriver set.

• A gob of ink pens, some of which may write.

• Four lighters, one of which works.

• A shriveled glue stick and a bottle of crusty Elmer’s Glue.

• Packets of that stuff you pour into vases to keep flowers fresh.

• Postage stamps.

• Note cards containing phone numbers, but no name to go with them.

• Random receipts dating back to 2017.

• Kindergarten safety scissors.

• And this word of truth from Donald: “Everything I could not find the last time I needed it.”

The list varies from home to home, from sea to shining sea. You can pretty much guarantee that into every house falls a junk drawer. But outside of linked paperclips, birthday candles and a flashlight without batteries, what one finds there varies.

Opening the junk drawer is a miniature version popping into a thrift store. You know the stuff is used and old, and you never know what you’re going to discover.

Respondent Beverly said her junk drawer includes “hemostats from years ago when you worked as a med tech. I mean, you never know when you might need to clamp off a bleeder.”

That’s the whole point of the junk drawer — you never know. You must be prepared in case someone someday needs a pencil with teeth marks. “Yeah, I’ve got that. It’s right there in the junk drawer, next to the dead flip phone.”

Tell Burt what’s in your junk drawer at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.