Ours was a wooden bowl as well!
I was born in 1950 and we did not have much clutter in those days, even the people with money. There were not so many plastic doo dads and bric bac - -I remember some little shelves we had - very thin and they held all we wanted to display - LOL Now we have to have 12 inch wide shelves to the ceiling to get it all on display.

I grew up with a junk drawer, but I still have a junk jar in my basement for bits and bobs and misc. screws and nuts.

My entire house is one big clutter bowl!! :mrgreen:

I gave a demo on the bowls made with clothesline rope and didn't know what to do with the4 little bowl I made, so it's by the side of my sewing machine and has a lot of little necessities, ie: seam ripper, small scissors, various feet that I haven't put in their right space, a bobbin or two, a spool of thread, and a lot of little goodies. Keeps them handy so I don'thave to go looking for them. I have the basket with twisties and rubber bands on one counter, a basket with pens (every so often I clean it out and throw a hand full away that no longer write) emery boards, markers, kitchen scissors, etc., and a basket with pop tabs that I save for charity, paper clips, box tops for education, Campbell Soup Labels, etc. I have several in all parts of the house, and of course one in the basement by the washer to collect spare change at the bottom of the washer, and anything else that falls out of pockets. Brought back a lot of memories of my childhood. Of course, I still have one section of my cabinet drawers for junk.

I had a dish to put my bus money change. The silver always disappeared and left me with the pennies. Nothing like dumping a handful of pennies in the box.

Have we moved up or down? From a junk bowl to a room or garage! I remembe our junk bowl. If any three of us ( my parents and myself) lost something in the house it usually could be found in that junk bowl. Love those memories!!!

I have a sm. drawer in the kitchen that catches everything. A few yrs. ago when my 22 yr old g-son was about 11, he pulled up a stool, opened that drawer & spent hrs. going through it & pulling out the neatest stuff. That child was always such a treasure & really loved it here at G-ma's house.

I also have a catch-all drawer in the laundry rm. that I always kept supplied with fishing tackle when our youngest son was still at home. Hooks, bobbers, line, eggs, oyster knives, etc. Now his 7 yr. son & 4 yr old dtr. use the stuff from that drawer. I need to restock it now. Does my heart so much good to see another generation of little ones do this.

We also had a junk drawer, not a bowl - same thing really.
I remember playing with Mom's buttons, kept in an old cigar box. We would entertain ourselves for hours on a rainy day sorting, stacking counting Mom's buttons. Seems when we lost a button, Mom always had just the right one to replace it - probably because she had made the clothes in the fist place & saved the extra buttons.
Simple things amused us back then - old 45 kid's records, paper dolls, jump rope, jacks, hula hoops, softball, roller skates with a key, Old Maid, Authors, Crazy Eights, swinging, teather ball, fox n'geese, bicycles,sleds, home-made go-carts, Monopoly, dominoes, and reading, reading, reading (Bookmobile came to our community weekly in the summer)
Trip down memory lane - I'm getting OLD! Oh yes, where was I? Junk bowls! LOL

My house will not fit in a bowl!!!! kidding of course - but I do have lots of stuff - mainly my sewing area - it is as neat as it can be under the circumstances, my room also contains my computer desk with printer, 3 book cases, a bed, and a stack of boxes with some of my fabric... and the rest is out in a trailer -for lack of room in the house. So, junk bowl? I don't think so!!!!!!!!!!!!! rofl

It is now called the JUNK DRAWER! LOL