My sister-in-law has recently been going on about seeing some kitchens in Manchester. I thought she had just been feeling hungry, but it turns Manchester Kitchens out she was talking about visiting some new fitted kitchens on display at various local showrooms. I thought that in order to be helpful I’d tag along, not expecting very much. Boy, was I wrong.
I’ve always been fairly happy with my kitchen. or at least I have managed to fool myself into believing that I was happy with my kitchen whilst simultaneously managing to avoid looking at it with the sort of critical eye anyone would use if coming across it for the first time.
Sadly, having wandering around looking at fitted kitchens in Manchester I have had to come to the realisation that I have been fooling myself for far too long, and that there is no longer any excuse.
I think my kitchen problems really started to escalate when I started running out of space to put things. That was back in 1992, about 3 days after I moved in. Since that time I have simply become more creative in either what I buy, or where I stick things.
I have even caught myself wandering the supermarket aisles choosing food not by its taste, quality, price or make, but by the size and shape of the packaging, and whether it will fit into the space available in the cupboard.
That’s not to suggest that I have a small kitchen. It’s actually quite big. And it’s not as though I don’t have enough cupboard space. The amount of space being occupied by cupboards is quite good. it’s just that I can’t use most of it.
The two cupboard storage problems I have are almost certainly universally shared by anyone who has not already benefitted from modern fitted kitchens. Manchester was a revelation to me, and made me realise the problems I had with storage, or at least face them. The first problem is the corner unit.
You know the one – it’s right in the corner of the room, where two units join. There’s bags of space in the corner itself, and it is possible to reach into that space. I’ve done it once.
I managed to reach the back corner of my kitchen cupboard by lying on the floor bending my head back as far as it would go without my neck snapping, reached in with one arm, blindly paddling around in the darkness until I managed to stick my fingers into the old food blender I’d forgotten about, neatly cutting two fingers in such a way that I couldn’t type for several days. Not good for a writer. So I sort of gave up on that cupboard.