junkdrawer.works

The only junk drawer where everything works.

No dead batteries, no mystery keys, no pens that won’t write. Just things that work, from quick little tools to whole games. They open in your browser with nothing to sign up for. Many install on your home screen and work offline, and some can save to your own Google Drive.

Tools

Get something done.

Good Day For

When the weather will let you stain the deck, paint the house, mow, seed the lawn or hang out the laundry. Also how much to buy, and when to plant from your frost dates.

Kerf

List the parts for a woodworking project. Kerf finds the cheapest boards and sheets to buy and how to cut them.

Trick Deck

Teach your dog tricks five tries at a time: a clicker in your phone, step-by-step plans for 48 tricks, and a trick show that deals from the ones they know.

Shelfmark

A catalog for the books in your house: where each one is, what you’ve read and who borrowed what. Photograph a shelf, Claude reads the spines, and one link adds them. It syncs through your own Google Drive.

Name Tag

Find a name for a new pet from normal or odd picks, like coat colour, snacks or someone at work. Or check the one you chose: whether it sounds like “sit”, rhymes with the cat, or makes the vet snigger.

On Balance

List your choices and what matters, and see which way a hard decision tips, how sure you can be, and the smallest change that would tip it the other way. Send it to someone else to see where you differ.

While You Were Out

Leave the dog sitter, house sitter or babysitter everything they need: feeding, meds, the vet, the Wi-Fi and a checklist for each day. Send it as a link or print it for the fridge, and they send notes back.

Breaker Box

Map your breaker panel: flip a breaker off, walk around and tap everything that went dead. It checks what’s on each circuit and prints a directory for the panel door.

Every So Often

The jobs you do every few months and never remember when you last did, like the furnace filter or the dog’s flea pills. See what’s due, log it with one tap, and sync it through your own Google Drive.

Story Stick

Add, take away and divide feet, inches and sixteenths, and read the answer like a tape. It also spaces balusters, lays out stairs, sets miter and crown angles and counts board feet.

Square Up

Keep a tab for a trip, a shared house or a dinner out, split however it was shared, down to who had what on the bill. See the fewest payments that settle it, and send the tab as a link so everyone can add to it.

From Scratch

The family recipe box, for the recipes on stained index cards. Photograph a card and Claude types it up, then scale it, switch cups to grams and cook from it with the screen kept on. It syncs through your own Google Drive.

Brickyard

Every LEGO set you own: where it is, whether it’s built, and which moving box it’s packed in. Send Claude photos of the boxes and it adds them.

Pilot Hole

Pick a screw, bolt or insert and what it’s going into, and get every hole in the bits you own. Lay a stray screw on the screen and it tells you what it is.

This Side Up

Number every box in a move and say what’s in it and where it’s going. Print labels any phone can read, tick the boxes onto the truck and off again, and find the kettle on the first night.

Backwards K

Keep score at a ball game on your phone or tablet. Tap what happened and it moves the runners, counts the pitches and fills in a real scorecard as you go.

Carry On

Your packing list, sorted by the bag each thing goes in. Every trip gets a fresh copy that checks the forecast, the place and your plans: an umbrella when rain is likely, a passport and plug adapter abroad, the work bag on work trips.

Clean Slate

A whiteboard for your tablet and pen. Lines get thicker the harder you press, your palm is ignored, and boards can go to your own Google Drive.

Sweep

Plug an RPLIDAR A1 lidar into your phone or laptop and stand it in a room. A few seconds later you have a floor plan with every wall measured, as an image, a drawing or a CAD file. The sample rooms work without one.

Games

Play something.

El Cantor

Lotería for the family table: a caller that reads the cards aloud, play-along tablas on every phone, and tablas to print.

Terraville

A city builder in the spirit of the 1989 original, with a terrain editor, challenges and disasters.

Legwork

A detective casebook: six grounded crimes in a Great Lakes city, too many leads and not enough hours. Catch the lie, then file your report before the deadline.

Cairn

Stack river stones on a rock in a stream, one tap at a time. After five, the wind starts pulling at the stone in your hand.

Happy Accidents

Flick paint at a canvas and a gentle painter turns each splat into a cloud, a mountain or a happy little tree, in the splat’s own shape. Hit something that’s already there and it changes.

Ghost

The old spelling game on a spirit board: add a letter, don’t be the one who finishes a word, and challenge anyone you think is bluffing. Play against three ghosts or pass the phone around.

Pitch Dark

The power’s out. Search the house room by room with a flashlight and pick up what’s on the list before the battery dies. Spare batteries are hidden in the clutter.

Lanthorn

A mystery in the spirit of Myst. Look through a brass eyeglass into another world at any hour, open three locks with what you see after dark, and follow the woman who left them.

Post Time

Eight races every Saturday at a made-up track: read the form, bet the tote, and watch each one from the gate to the wire. Back the winner and you’re in the winner’s circle photo.

War Room

An election campaign played like a board game: move your candidate around a made-up country, make the calls when scandals break, and face your rival in two debates. Then watch election night come in.

Twenty-Eighty

Run a made-up ball club as its general manager. Every player carries the scouts’ 20–⁠80 grades: draft, trade and sign them, then watch the seasons play out pitch by pitch.

Blot

A board game where folding the paper is a move. Drop blots of ink, then fold along a crease and your wet ink prints onto the other side. Play the computer or pass the phone.

Patience

Klondike, FreeCell and Spider solitaire with no ads. Every deal can be won, Hint shows a good next move, and it works offline.

Full House

Five dice against a ladder of eight opponents, each sharper than the last, on tables that change the rules: evens for ones, triple sixes, wild ones and more.

Grid Classic

Sixteen light-cycle bots played a 1,023-game tournament. Watch any game with commentary, ride against the bots yourself, or set two of them loose in a new one.

Odd One Out

A choose-your-own-adventure where you’re a striped sock lost in the dryer, trying to get back to your pair. There are 170 pages and 23 endings, and a dust-bunny king under the dryer.

Loose Change

Shove ha’penny, the old pub game, with the coins from the junk drawer. Shove five coins up the board into nine beds and chalk up a mark in every one before the regulars do.

Crosstown

Trace theme words through a grid of letters, and each one you find becomes a coloured line on a transit map. Every letter is a stop on some line, and one word runs clear across town. 36 puzzles.

Terra Incognita

Sketch a world from blank ocean, or roll a random one. Rivers, lakes and realm borders follow the land you draw, and every town has a page for its story.

Contact Light

Land on the Moon the way Armstrong did: click the descent rate a foot per second at a time and tilt past the boulders. Six Apollo landing sites, Houston’s fuel calls, and the blue light that means you’re down.

Out of Wind

Flatten rough boards with hand planes. Scribble pencil across the face, plane until it’s gone, sight down the winding sticks for twist, and stop before the board’s too thin for the tabletop.

Free Play

An arcade on your phone: skee-ball, three pinball tables, a claw machine full of plush, a coin pusher, a stacker, a shooting gallery, whack-a-mole and a basketball machine. Tickets go in one pocket, for one prize counter.

Explore

Find something out.

Starhop

What’s up tonight, what’s worth a look through a telescope, and how to find it by hopping from stars you know.

Not So Long Ago

Put in the year each person in your family was born and see LGBTQ+ history across your lives: what was still a crime, what was still banned, and how old each of you was when it changed.

Bloodlines

The racehorse family tree. Follow any horse back, father to son, to one of three stallions from around 1700, or pick two and see how they’re related.

Boop

Boop a dog on the nose and it tells you something true about dogs: how its nose works, where its breed comes from, which dog facts are myths. Every fact links to its source.

Fold by Fold

Origami where you watch each fold happen on a sheet of paper in 3D. Replay it, stop it halfway, or turn the paper to see it from the side. Sixteen models, from a paper cup to the crane, the lily and the traditional frog.

Arsenal

Every pitch in big-league baseball, from the four-seamer to the eephus: how it’s held, how it spins and how it breaks on the way to the plate. Then pitch to a hitter, calling each pitch and where to throw it.

Rows and Rails

How a breadboard is wired inside. Light an LED one part at a time, then wire a XIAO ESP32 to sensors, a little screen and your phone, and give a houseplant a way to ask for water.

Engage

Take the helm of a starship and warp to real stars. Constellations shift as you travel, and the captain’s log tells you what you’d find there, including where the Sun sits in that sky.

Night After Night

Every song Dave Matthews Band has released from the stage since 1992, and how each one changed: Two Step grew from nine minutes to nineteen. Or have it write a show from the official recordings to fit your drive.

Chalk Talk

A football coach’s board you can run. Call the offense or the defense, snap it, and watch the Xs and Os play out, then see why it worked. Tap any player to learn his position.

Been There

Color in the states and countries you’ve been to and see what you’re missing in the rest: what not to skip, a long weekend, an animal to watch for. It also guesses whether you say soda, pop or coke.