Sue's kitchen is not organised or minimalist. Rather, she prefers to to "outegrate", and leave stuff unhidden, to enjoy and use. Photo / 123RF
THREE KEY FACTS
Sue Quinn writes health and kitchen stories for The Telegraph.
OPINION
Leave fridgescaping to online influencers - I’m happy with glorious chaos.
I narrowly avoided concussion this week when a heavy cake tin balanced on a baking dish teetering atop my slow cooker fell crashing down, as I tried to reach a high shelf – in turn triggering an avalanche of kitchen stuff, including a crepe pan and a pasta maker.
You see, mine is not an organised or minimalist kitchen. I prefer to think of it as glorious chaos, and I don’t just mean my stacked-high open shelves. My worktop is a farrago of electrical appliances, storage boxes, bottles and jars, a utensil canister, a bread bin, an egg basket, pots of herbs (dead and alive), a fruit bowl, a tomato basket (yes, don’t you have one?), a butter dish, a food waste bin and a bottle of hand wash. And that’s when my kitchen is tidy.
Marie Kondo, the oracle of organisation, would have conniptions if she came for tea, because my kitchen drawers and larder are similarly hectic. It’s not that I object to a clean kitchen; mine is hygienic and I hold no truck with a sink full of grotty dishes. But unlike Marie, my aesthetic - if you could call it that - involves things rather than empty spaces. Instead of integrating stuff into my cupboards, I like to “outegrate’, and leave stuff unhidden, to enjoy and use.
This not only means I’m on Marie’s naughty step, but I also fall foul of the latest social media trends - sorry, I mean nonsense - one of which is fridgescaping. Of course, there are lots of LOLs to be had watching TikTokers decorate their fridge interiors like Cezanne still-life masterpieces. Little sculptures. Pretty jugs with deftly arranged parsley and flowers. Cut glass bowls overflowing with perfectly ripe fruit. Rainbow rows of colour-coded containers. Mirrors!
Another social media rabbit hole down which it is very easy and fun to disappear is #CleanTok. This is where “influencers” ruthlessly deep clean their kitchens from top to bottom, using oceans of chemical sprays and creams, to create a nobody-lives-here-and-certainly-doesn’t-cook-here vibe. I didn’t believe there could be that much interest in watching people soap down their kitchen sinks until I checked: at the time of writing, #CleanTok had amassed 47.3 billion views.
I’m equally absorbed and bewildered by the coffee station phenomenon, although the less said about it the better, really, lest you look it up and lose hours of your life you’ll never get back. Suffice to say, on-trend kitchen decor requires, apparently, transforming a section of your worktop into a beverage nook, a hyper-organised designated area for making hot drinks. Covetable coffee cups must be lined up just so, perhaps on a pretty stand, alongside brewing paraphernalia in matching containers. Also, a twee sign in French, declaring the space un cafe, in case you forget where you are.
The thing is, all this silliness is still life, not real life. To state the obvious, it really isn’t practical to go about the daily business of cooking and eating while simultaneously trying to keep the kitchen clean, tidy and organised to within an inch of its life, with everything hidden away in cupboards.
I’d rather open my fridge to abundance and disorder - limp carrots, manky yoghurt pots and all - because it’s a more relaxed and forgiving way to live. My time is better spent cooking delicious meals than creating crisper drawer tableaux. And it’s much easier to hide actual mess if your kitchen doesn’t look like a show home in the first place. (Plus, goodness knows we all have better things to worry about.) But a relaxed approach to tidiness brings benefits above and beyond the practical.
A bit of ramshackle style speaks volumes about who my family and I are; the things we have out for everyone to see are splashes of our personality. Disorder also brings teeny, unexpected dopamine hits. The other day, searching for a ramekin in the depths of a kitchen drawer, I found a long-lost butter dish my daughter made when she was 8. I lifted the lid to find she had painted “I Love My Family” on the base. The real joy came from the surprise of finding it, having forgotten it was there, and it almost made me cry.
My philosophy is to embrace disorder unapologetically. Let your kitchen express who you are, rather than demonstrate clever storage solutions. Plonk flowers in ad-hoc jam jars. Leave out stacks of cookbooks that inspire you when you have a moment to glance through them. Buy a single lovely mug that doesn’t match any of your others and leave it in a random spot to make you feel happy every time you look at it. Don’t fret about whether you could safely eat a meal off your kitchen floor, or whether you store your coffee too far away from the mugs. And ask yourself the question: don’t we all have better things to do than arrange tiny, framed pictures of our pets in the fridge?
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