A recent article in these pages unleashed a wave of envy and aspiration in our house which has yet to subside. It was about streamlined living in efficient, uncluttered spaces. There were pictures of hidden basement hatches, pocket doors disappearing into cabinets and other clever design features which made my wife’s eyes glint in way I remember from the early days of our relationship.
Our small cottage is over a century old and was built at a time when you had a press in the kitchen, a wardrobe in the bedroom and a cupboard full of plastic containers under the stairs. But domestic living and its terminology have changed. There are now “storage solutions” and we need some.
Since August the vegetable patch and then the orchard have been pouring forth their bounty. We eat much of it but preserve most. The jars of chutneys, pickles, jams and jellies have nowhere to go – apart from the hearth of the unused kitchen fireplace, where they are stacked in pleasing but precarious pyramids. Beans from the kitchen garden and wild mushrooms from the field have been profuse. We have stewed cauldrons of the former in tomatoes and garlic and fried kilos of the latter in olive oil and thyme – both in batches for the freezer.
This process induces a feeling of content laced with anxiety: freezing something evokes fear of and fury at the cupboard full of plastic containers. We have far too much of this but I am not allowed to throw any away. In fact we seem to regularly acquire more but in annoyingly irregular sizes. I can never find a matching tub and lid and the infuriating things don’t stack uniformly. They cascade onto the floor when I open the door.
My wife recently pulled a muscle retrieving a tray of tinned tomatoes from beneath the dried goods shelf and I often put my back out wrestling the ironing board back into place behind the Hoover
I rummage interminably for what I need then fling the stuff haphazardly back in and close the door smartly. . . until the next time . . . when they cataract out again. It’s a vicious, circular, plastic maelstrom from which I see no escape.
Gymnastic contortions
The cupboard under the stairs is more hazardous. Full of inaccessible old junk when we moved in, I cleared it and built shelves which – I imagined – cunningly maximised storage efficiency. But it requires gymnastic contortions to reach anything not just inside the door. My wife recently pulled a muscle retrieving a tray of tinned tomatoes from beneath the dried goods shelf and I often put my back out wrestling the ironing board back into place behind the Hoover. We are both frightened to delve further and now we avoid the darker reaches. Who knows what neglected treasures, or newer junk, lurk there?
The steep pitch of our roof and the consequently low eaves upstairs made it hard to furnish the bedrooms. My limited shelf building skills were clearly inadequate so we got in a carpenter to knock up some made-t0-measure cupboards and closets built into the low corners and cramped nooks. For a while we thought we had done well but the passing years have brought increasing piles of accumulated stuff and a decreasing desire to stoop. Now we have to admit that our fabulous fitted furniture is handier for hobbits.
Bespoke kitchen
We inherited a bespoke kitchen when we bought the house. Installed 20 years ago in what was then the current notion of “traditional” there was a forest of plain pine in ranks of louvred cupboard doors along one wall. We painted the wood to mute it and gradually adapted: my wife stretching to reach less frequently used dishes: me crouching over the sink; both of us bending deeply to reach for ordinary provisions and kneeling to search out rarer items hidden at the back.
This issue of things obscurely stored and often overlooked is a vexation encountered elsewhere. The old oak chest, which we managed to fit in our bedroom, has very deep drawers and we naturally tend to use whatever first comes to hand. I often regret my lack of interesting socks – forgetting that I have many elegant pairs hidden at the bottom. And my wife recently discovered a lavender bag in her knicker drawer. Decorated in a garish floral pattern it was clearly a knick-knack dating from the last century – appropriately enough, I suppose, after all it has lain undisturbed for years in a piece of furniture designed for earlier times and bigger houses.
A hundred years ago, people with more land and money than those who built our cottage required drawing rooms, sculleries, pantries and corridors leading to chambers reserved for flower arranging and present wrapping. A capaciously pleasant way to live perhaps, unless you kept getting lost and had to darn your socks in the gun room – which would have been very bad feng shui.
As with most things, home design benefits from combining the old with the new. That article - which, I have to say, aroused us both - featured a trap door in a hip kitchen leading down to a capsule wine cellar. I can happily imagine decanting a fine burgundy by candlelight, whilst above my head sleek cupboards on noiseless castors opened and shut with a whisper.
In Sight of Yellow Mountain by Philip Judge is published by Gill Books. He is finishing a tour of Roddy Doyle's Two Pints for the Abbey Theatre.
