Everyday Canvas

My Kitchen

Prompt: How do you keep your kitchen organized?

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Organized? Forget it! I’m barely managing to survive in an odd-shaped kitchen in which the top cupboards are so high that I have to get on a stepstool to pluck anything because the original builder must have had an amazon woman as his mate. I am 5’ 3”, which should be low average height, and moreover, despite the large bedrooms, huge living area, and four big bathrooms in our house, the kitchen is a long corridor with only a walkway for one person in between its two flanks. I bet the builder’s Amazon woman never cooked because that long walkway in between the two sides is much narrower than an alley at which bowlers throw their bowling balls.

On the other hand, the bright side is, when I am cooking, I shoo others away since there’s only room for one person to move up and down. Also, I made it so that the things I mostly use are in the middle of the kitchen’s long galley way, which reminds me of a very long bedroom closet, and not a walk-in one, and it has counters, oven, stove, fridge, drawers, and cupboards on its two sides; therefore, while I am cooking, I can reach to what I want if I pivot on my heels only.

Another thing I do while I cook is, I clean as I go along, which also involves washing the dishes and pots and pans that I have just used. I never leave dishes in the sink or dirty anything or food outside, the simple reason being that we live in Florida, the heaven for all kinds of critters. I won’t go into the kinds of critters we encounter here, but I’ll only say that they’ve managed to heighten my screaming pitch. So, if I mop the kitchen floor every night and then several times during the day, it isn’t because I’m clean-crazy; it is because I am critter-weary.