I loved my husband it’s not that I didn’t. But I had a secret dream life-which might have been worse. All I could do was settle into the carpet. I sometimes felt that they were a metaphor, that as I got older I was being ground down under the heel of my own life. And I wanted to be like that-to make the home, instead of the home making me.īut the crumbs got me down. She wrote about a friend of hers who “runs her house with admirable laxity … In the kitchen, you frequently feel a distinct crunching sensation from the debris underfoot.” The children’s rooms are “so neglected they have acquired a kind of wilderness beauty, like untouched landscapes.” This mother feels no shame about the mess she’s free. There’s an essay I love called “ Making House,” by Rachel Cusk.
Then another Cheerio would fall to the floor. After, for about seven minutes, the house could have belonged to anyone-a flight attendant, a bachelor, a Russian oligarch. I disliked the work of vacuuming-the tripping cord, the dumb bump-bumping around sofa legs-but I liked the sound of the sucked-up crumbs, that little clatter. I would vacuum whenever there were so many crumbs that I had to brush them from my bare feet before getting into bed. Three percent blue Play-Doh 10 percent toast 87 percent Honey Nut Cheerios dust: This was who I was. If our kitchen became a murder scene, a forensic investigator could have told the story of my days with those crumbs. I knew I was lucky to have all these crumbs and the house to keep them in. I could never keep the children and their mess corralled. Then: apocalypse.Įven with Luba’s help, the house was chaos. Humanity had a few more years, she thought, probably seven. She was worried about microchips in COVID-19 vaccines.
CHEERIO CABINET FULL
She was likewise full of conspiracy theories and evangelical religion. She was full of sensible advice, like how I should really stop washing the cleaning rags along with the children’s clothes, because the chemicals could irritate their skin. I hired a woman named Luba to clean once a week. No matter how many times we replaced the bulb, it flickered and went out.īut the upkeep: oh my God, the upkeep. There was no counter space, and the light above the sink suffered from some kind of electrical issue. Even that kitchen-which had the ambiance of an alley and filled with smoke every time I cooked-bothered me more in theory than in practice. It had a big fireplace for Christmas stockings and more than enough room for our three kids to grow up in. It was a mushroomy white with peeling gray shutters, which sounds unappealing but looked just right in the green Pennsylvania clearing where it sat. I wanted to get divorced.į or a while I had thought-I was quite certain-that I loved our home.
Slowly, I realized, I didn’t want this life. Slowly, I realized, I didn’t want this kitchen. I started fantasizing about replacing the counters with two-by-fours on sawhorses and hanging the pots from nails on the wall. I nixed the island and found a stainless-steel worktable at a restaurant-supply store online for $299. And I kept paring the plans down, down, making them cheaper, making them simpler. My husband talked to the architect my husband talked to the builder. I wished there was a room behind that room, the cabinets getting flimsier and flimsier until a door opened and let me back into my own shitty American kitchen, just as it was. I wished there was a budget British Standard.
Plain English cost a fortune, but around a corner in the back of its New York showroom you could check out the budget version, called British Standard. I followed a cabinetry company called Plain English on Instagram and screenshotted its pantries, which came in paint colors like Kipper and Boiled Egg. I had wanted an island and a breakfast nook and two narrow, vertical cabinets on either side of the stove one could be for cutting boards and one could be for baking sheets. I had wanted, I thought, soapstone counters and a farmhouse sink.
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