If you're like me and my household, you have a fair number of battery-powered gadgets and remotes and such and the cells pile up. We ended up with a drawer full of random batteries of unknown remaining lifespan. And when I say "full", it was full: we had at least five pounds of batteries in there. Not only is this a bit of a fire hazard with the little square nine volt batteries, it's generally untidy and less-than-useful, particularly when a dead battery bursts and leaks corrosive goo all over the good ones.
My tip, if you're prone to clutter: get a battery tester, and keep your batteries in a plastic box designed for the purpose. If you're not the sort to have a voltmeter on hand, these testers are not expensive, and they're much handier than having to guess or try unknown batteries in a remote or appliance to test them. Keep the good ones in the box. Identify a nearby electronics business that will take batteries for recycling, and keep a ziplock bag handy for the dead ones. Carry out your dead to the recycling place on the regular. Voila! Our drawer is no longer cluttered, at least not with leaky batteries.
This weekend, I sat in the living room testing each of our large pile of batteries to weed out the dead ones for recycling. Many fewer were dead than I expected. I found that I started talking to them as if they are dogs: "Who's a good battery? You are! Yes you are!"
My husband seemed revolted.