I know this is primarily a parenting blog, and I would write a post about the kids but I have to be honest, my mind is elsewhere at the moment. All I’m thinking about is sinks and extractor fans and the merits of induction hobs over ceramic.
It’s new kitchen week!
We’re finally ditching the shitchen and Thanet Skip Hire will be taking it all away in less than one week. Hurrah!
If you’re looking for actual tips on surviving without a kitchen, your journey here is not entirely wasted for that information is but a click away (here).
However if what you’re after is a step by step on how not to prepare for your kitchen renovation, look no further than these top tips.
1) Put it off until you can’t possibly ignore it any longer
I would suggest waiting until the Saturday before the old kitchen is due to be ripped out and dumped in a skip, handily forgetting you have children which means everything takes forever.
This means you have two days, minus any time spent supervising children, eating, and that kids’ birthday party you forgot about to empty the entire kitchen of ten years’ worth of crud and find new homes for anything you want to keep.
Oops.
Perhaps spend the night before watching Tidying Up With Marie Kondo in anticipation – Well, the first episode anyway. Hope to get swept up in organisational joy, but in fact realise that it’s possible no one else has a house quite as bad as you do.
2) Empty the cupboards of food
With grim determination, grab a stool and start the process of taking all non-perishable foodstuffs such as tins out of the old kitchen cupboards, checking the best before date on each and then looking at it quizzically, wondering why you boxed it up and brought it with you when you moved in for it to sit for ten years unloved and unused on a shelf.
Umm and aaaah about whether you should be throwing away a perfectly good 12 year old tin of macaroni cheese when Brexit is just around the corner and we could all be eating rats and dandelions for dinner by July.
3) And pots, and utensils…
And that drawer of takeaway menus, cables and batteries.
4) Be ruthless!
Think Will this be useful in my beautiful new kitchen?
Honestly, will I ever make fondue? Has ANYONE made fondue since the 80s?
As Marie Kondo would ask, if she hadn’t already run screaming from the house, Does it spark joy?
The answer is unlikely to be yes. If you can’t remember the last time you used something, or in fact you had totally forgotten than you owned it and aren’t quite sure where it came from or even what it does, then stick it in a bin bag or put it by the front door so it can live in the boot of your car for 1-2 months before you finally get around to donating it to a charity shop.
5) Especially when it comes to Tupperware
Sort through all the mismatched Tupperware and old takeaway lids that you’ve accumulated over many, many years and have been storing Just In Case.
It’s a scenario not dissimilar to the whole missing-sock debacle. I currently have these which were in my son’s sock drawer, and I’m not quite willing to part with them yet, should their counterparts mysteriously turn up one day.
Of course, it is a wrench to throw Potentially Useful plastic boxes and non-fitting lids, but do so you must.
6) Do a tip run
Your heart is wrenched for a second time as you throw your Potentially Useful boxes and lids to their demise.
Your sensitivity to Joy is clearly not sufficiently heightened, as Marie would say.
There is no going back now.
Stop for food on the way back because you can’t actually see the surfaces to cook anything and everyone’s a bit hungry.
7) Return to your house which is in disarray
The dawning realisation that you now have to find homes for all the surviving food and kitchen implements hits, and despite this you really want to sit down with a cup of tea.
Or wine, it’s nearly bedtime after all. Maybe you’ll get the kids to bed, shut the door and start afresh tomorrow.
8) Wake up and crack on
The feeling of annoyance that you get every morning when you walk downstairs to a shithole of a kitchen and wish that you of the evening before had bloody tidied their dishes away? That is nothing on this.
It needs to be all hands on deck to get this done because the skip is being delivered soon and that would be pretty embarrassing.
Stick the kids in front of a suitably age-appropriate Netflix show and pick up where you left off, attempting to squeeze a mid-sized kitchen’s worth of crap into every spare spot in the house.
9) Try to have fun!
Marie Kondo says that couples can deepen their ties through tidying.
Marie Kondo has not been married for as long as we have.
Nothing about this makes anyone happy.
Consider using the recently unearthed kitchen implements as weapons.
10) Enjoy the last days of having a kitchen for a while by cooking a nice meal
…And then realise you have stored away all your kitchen implements and have no idea where anything is. Have what is probably to be the first of many takeaway curries.
It’ll all be worth it in the end.
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We are getting our kitchen done later this year, so we have this all to look forward to!