Every Kitchen

Every kitchen has a drawer that doesn't fully close. Not the good drawers — the cutlery drawer, the tea towel drawer. The other one. The one at the end of the counter that collects batteries, elastic bands, takeaway menus from restaurants that have closed, a screwdriver that fits nothing, birthday candles from two years ago, and a key to something nobody remembers. I have strong feelings about this drawer. I've lived in seven kitchens. Student flat in Leeds, shared house in Manchester, the place in Brixton where the oven had two settings (off and inferno), the Edinburgh flat where the ceiling leaked every time it rained and it rained every time, the house in Fife we bought and shouldn't have and sold at a loss that I've stopped calculating, the rental in Glasgow, and now this one, in a village in Perthshire where the broadband is theoretical and the silence is actual and I can hear a cow from my desk, which I'd never experienced before moving here and have come to regard as normal. Every one of those kitchens had the drawer. The drawer is not a failure of organization. I know organized people. My sister labels things with a label maker and has a system for her systems. Her kitchen doesn't have the drawer. Her kitchen has designated storage solutions. She is happy. I think. She is certainly organized. I am not organized. I am a person who knows where things are, which is different. The screwdriver is in the drawer. The batteries are in the drawer. The key is in the drawer and I will remember what it opens eventually or I won't and the key will remain in the drawer as a monument to a lock that got along without it. Kitchens tell you things about people. Not the expensive ones — those tell you about money, which is boring. The lived-in ones. A burnt patch on the countertop means someone left a pan too long and didn't replace the counter because the counter was otherwise fine and replacing a counter because of a burn mark is a decision that belongs to a different income bracket. A hook on the wall with no corresponding item means something used to hang there and fell or broke or was stolen by a housemate who moved to Australia. A stain on the ceiling means something boiled over with enthusiasm. A calendar on the wall three months behind means someone is either optimistic about the year or has given up on tracking it. I cook in my kitchen every day. Not well, by any standard that a person who cooks well would recognize. Competently. The food is hot. The food is recognizable. My children eat it without complaint, which is the Michelin star of family cooking. The drawer is full. It has always been full. I add things to it and take nothing away and it is a record of every practical problem I have half-solved and every object I have almost thrown away and every certainty I have nearly reached about what things are for. The key is still there. I'll figure it out.