Should You Really Be Keeping All Your Household Appliance Manuals?

Picture this: You're in a rush, scouring through your junk drawer for that one remote, paper clip, scissors, or other item you've tucked away, but you have to first sift through a sea of appliance manuals. Yes, appliance manuals. No one knows what exactly to do with them, but you shouldn't toss them — right?

Wrong. At the very least, appliance manuals have no place in your kitchen or junk drawers. Odds are, you know how to operate your microwave, toaster, or computer without the need to constantly reference the manual it came with. And, if a situation arises that needs troubleshooting, most of these products today have online guides, as Michelle Urban of The Organized House noted to Homes & Gardens.

Urban isn't the only professional organizer to hold this opinion either. Marie Kondo's KonMari method of organization emphasizes discarding any old or useless papers, including appliance manuals and guides. There may be a few appliance manuals you do have to keep, though. In this case, however, don't just haphazardly shove them into a random drawer — file them away instead.

There will likely be an odd appliance guide here and there that's worth keeping, whether it has warranty information, special troubleshooting guidance, is for an older or rarer appliance, the manual isn't available online, or other special circumstace. Even still, you shouldn't just shove the papers into the first random drawer you find.

One simple option is to store them in a dedicated binder, labeling them as needed. If you have open shelving, you can decorate or label the spine for a pleasing and cohesive look. Or, you can neatly store the binder in a designated desk drawer — much less messy than loose appliance guides. You could also add wall-mounted file organizers, like this one from Superbpag on Amazon. Or, tuck your appliance manuals into a thin folder, and then into a filing cabinet, or stylish desktop paper storage, like this gold one on Amazon from Jolitac.