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Trying to figure out the best way to organize your sock drawer, dresser drawer, or the junk drawer in your room? Tired of all your socks, stockings, hair accessories, and other small odds and ends getting mixed together? If so, you need some kind of divider system for your drawer. This allows you to split your drawer into smaller compartments. That way you can keep every item in its place.

Normally I would just recommend a plastic drawer organizer. In fact, all you really need is a shallow plastic bin with dividers. But there are a lot of drawer organizing products out there, and you may be considering alternate solutions as well, like a soft drawer organizer. Which is better—a plastic drawer organizer or a soft-sided junk drawer organizer?

This is a case where your choice is going to boil down to your subjective preference, but there are some distinct pros and cons to soft drawer organizers as well as plastic bins with dividers.

Soft drawer organizers:

• Are flexible. Because the sides of each compartment are flexible, you can stuff more or less into certain compartments as needed, and the compartments will expand or contract as needed.

• Are collapsible. If you do not need to use the organizer for the moment, you can collapse it into a flat, compact shape which is easy to store.

• Sometimes collapse. The biggest drawback with soft organizers is that they are sometimes too flexible. The sides like to cave in while you are trying to stuff objects into the compartments (particularly common with larger compartments for some reason). The result? A total mess. Note that if you try to pull the entire system out of the drawer, you can—but the sides will also sometimes distort, which may make it a pain to fit it back inside the drawer later.

Plastic containers for drawers:

• Are fixed in size. This means that you need to correctly gauge the sizes of compartments you need in advance; you can only stuff so much into each.

• Cannot be collapsed for easy storage. Because these drawers are rigid, they can only be stored in their existing configuration.

• Are a lot sturdier. The upshot of rigid design is that it is also stable design. With plastic dividers in drawers, you are not going to have to deal with cave-ins while you are trying to put your stuff inside each compartment. The result is that a drawer organized with a plastic container is typically going to have a much “neater” look than one which is organized with soft compartments.

So should you purchase a plastic bin with compartments for your drawer, or should you buy a cloth drawer divider system? It all depends on which set of pros you feel would outweigh the cons. If you value flexibility most, a cloth system might work best for you. But if you prefer neatness and sturdiness, you will do much better with a plastic divider system.