Regular readers of this column know that, throughout last fall, I was pining for my family. Now that they are settling into our new home in Atlanta, well, this gal didn’t realize at the time that she was really on a four-month singlehood honeymoon.
Sharing space with a domestic partner equals making compromises. There is give-and-take regarding furniture arrangement, who sleeps on which side of the bed and where the toaster oven should sit on the counter.
For months, I didn’t have to share anything or consult anyone to live in peace. I sprawled over the bed because I could. I kept the bathroom sink free of hair as one should. I bought only food that I liked, and decided which cabinet was the best for storing casserole dishes.
No longer. The honeymoon has ended.
My husband is an engineer. He creates systems for everything. I’m Type A and organized, thus in agreement that systems are good.
But I am left-handed — and, admittedly, like to be in control of the kitchen. Placement of everything in that room is important to me because I want to be as efficient as possible when cooking. We lefties don’t operate in the same way as right-handers, I have argued with my husband on innumerable occasions. He laughs that off, sometimes just rolls his eyes, pokes fun at left-handed gadgetry, and thinks my defense is really just a battle for control of the kitchen.
It took us about seven years to fully renovate our St. Louis kitchen. We did it in three stages and, in the end, the room was super functional for this lefty. Dishwasher to the left of a deep farmhouse sink, baking supplies in a special drawer just below a gorgeous granite countertop, but to the left of the range (a new, fabulous dual-fuel range with a five-burner stovetop that, woe is me, I barely got to cook on before heading to Atlanta), and fridge to the right.
People, it was the best mission control this home cook could ask for.
In our (see, I can share) Atlanta kitchen, we both agree that the setup of major appliances is not ideal, but that we can improve things if we strategically store cookware, glassware, place settings and the like. That’s what I thought I’d done this fall. Apparently not.
Seemingly every day, I come home from work to find a slight change, such as a Dutch oven moved from a lower cabinet to a shelf so high I have to climb a stool to reach it. If we were going to see a marriage counselor about his grievous misdeed, I’d mention that my husband smirked when I told him that his new system required me to find a stool.
We’ve been married 20 years. We’re used to compromising, although finding accord might also drive him to grab a beer and take it to the backyard, where he’d also grab a pitchfork and turn the compost. Me? I’d pour a glass of wine, grab a chef’s knife and start chopping. We know each other well enough not to cook or garden together.
Our most recent kitchen disagreement actually has to do with composting. My husband is saving coffee grounds, vegetable peels, egg shells and other organic-rich matter in quart-size plastic containers. I wrote about composting as one of my apartment-dwelling conundrums in November. I told him so and calmly explained that there wasn't a place on the property for him to dump his refuse. I even noted that readers had written to me with all sorts of solutions, including Compostwheels, a local company that collects residential and commercial food waste and delivers it to farms — for a price just shy of $30 a month. Pay for someone to take care of our waste? After years of composting in his own backyard? Out of the question.
Here’s where things now stand: Our son and I have voted to allow the food scraps to sit, covered, on the counter for no more than two days. After that, it goes to the patio, which is quickly piling up with quart-sized plastic containers.
If I know my husband, he’s going to be taking a lot of walks in the weeks ahead, pondering his composting tactics, probably keeping an eye out for gardens in need of his special nutrients and certainly thinking about improvements to the kitchen system.
Me, too, which is why in a couple weeks, just in time for Valentine’s Day, I’m writing about an Atlanta couple that works in such harmony in the kitchen that they’ve made a sweet business out of it. Maybe they can teach us love birds a thing or two about how to get along in the kitchen when things heat up.
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