Cabinets,closets and the junk drawer

Places in the home. Cabinets,closets and the junk drawer. Every home has them. Cabinets are in the kitchen, except for the medicine cabinet and in some homes the china cabinet.The china cabinet would be found in the dining room.The spot reserved for the medicine cabinet is above the bathroom sink. Or at least it was traditionally. My daughter in law recently had a new home built and it does not contain medicine cabinets in either bath. My Grandmother called hers a medicine chest.
 Closets abound in homes nowadays. This wasn't always so. There was a time when there were no closets included in the floor plan. People used a big cabinet they called a Wardrobe. The name was an obvious choice. They had a very limited wardrobe back in those days and it worked well. As our wardrobes got larger we added closet space. I'm thinking it was more because it would have been less expensive to build the closet than buy a wardrobe. That is just speculation on my part. At first the closets were rather small. Usually just wide enough to permit the hanging of clothes on a metal rod. Now closets have become the size of small rooms. Maybe we have just a little bit more stuff than we actually need. My home had a broom closet too. The ironing board was stored in there with the cleaning supplies. Wonder how many homes still have ironing boards.
Then we come to the junk drawer. Every home has one,usually found in the kitchen. Any number of items may be found in there. Scotch tape,scissors,small hand tools,batteries,pieces to kitchen appliances,tacks,pins and any number of items that have no other logical place to be stored. This drawer is seldom cleaned out and usually requires a good shaking back and forth motion to get it to close. Every once in a great while we attempt to organize it.
Dividers are added but it never lasts. Just open that sucka and throw whatever in there. A few quick shakes and close it up.
In the home I grew up in my favorite closet was under the stairs. You see,my father added the upstairs to an existing home. The stairs went up one end of the house and there was a bedroom to the right of those stairs.
In this bedroom was a closet and the back of the closet extended under those steps. It was like a secret place. Once you made it past the hanging clothes and the stuff on the floor in front of the closet you entered the very rear. It was a fun place to hide for reasons only a child can understand.
At my Grandmothers house she had a small room she called Homers Closet. I wrote an entire blog about this mysterious place. In reality it was a small room for storing kerosene and household chemicals.
I've always thought it would be great to have a wardrobe. Some were quite elegant. Takes a large room though. Wealthy people had matching ones in the master bedroom. I think it would be much better than a closet. Stuff always seems to get jammed into the closet. Your favorite clothes wind up on the floor somehow mixed in with your shoes. My closets are always dark. When I was a kid closets were not friendly places at night. You just never knew who or what might be in there.Best to keep the door tightly closed. Things in the night can't turn doorknobs ! That's because they don't have thumbs. Or so I was told anyway.
Must be true the door never opened and there was definitely noise in there.
Cabinets and closets are fun places to explore. You never know what you might find. Of course they pale in comparison to the best place of all; The Attic. That is another realm altogether.