Why would we have an upright freezer in the closet of our foyer, you ask? Because that's where it fit. Why don't we have a traditional fridge with freezer, you ask? Because in our very compact new kitchen, we were trying to scrape together every inch of usable space, and with my refurbished 40" wide HOT POINT stove having already stolen a good 6" (there's a joke in there somewhere),
I required a fridge that was only 24" wide, was counter-depth, didn't cost us thousands of dollars, and actually held more than 8 cubic feet of food, which is what most of the smaller fridge/freezer units end up giving you. Plus, if I'd gotten a wider fridge, there wouldn't be room for our old island, which I refused to part with. The domino effect of our appliance planning was far-reaching.
All this to say that the ergonomics of our kitchen are a bit... off. It mightn't be so bad, but we actually need to go to the freezer. FREQUENTLY. After decades of badly managing hypoglycemia - I've finally bitten the bullet and I'm avoiding gluten. So I spend twice what a normal person would pay, for half the bread and I have to store the bread in the freezer so that it doesn't get all moldy if you leave it out for more than 5 minutes. The toaster... is by the kitchen sink. The kitchen sink is 21 feet away from the freezer.
This is my morning:
Tromp, tromp, tromp down the stairs. Yawn and stretch at the bottom. Turn right and walk to the freezer. Grab bread from freezer and tromp over to the toaster. Remove two slices of bread from the bag, pop them in the toaster and then tromp back over to the freezer and deposit the loaf back in the freezer. Yes, I could take the slices of bread out at the freezer and save myself one trip, but that never seems to occur to me until I've already walked over to the toaster. Plus I'm a slow waker-upper and I can guarantee that in my somnambulant state I'd have the freezer door open for longer than is prudent while I was trying to reseal the bag. We were thinking of throwing the toaster on the old kitchen island to get it closer to the freezer, but then the fridge is hinged the wrong way so you'd have to become a contortionist to get to the butter and condiments. We can move the toaster to under the microwave - beside the fridge on the other side and save 7 feet. David has a drill at the ready to bore its way through the microwave shelf.
Making a martini is challenging. The booze and cocktail shaker are in the butler's pantry, right next to the freezer. The ice is in the freezer. We're good so far. The cut-crystal glasses that I prefer to drink my martinis in? Are in the cupboard next to the sink. Why aren't they, too, in the butler's pantry? Because up until last weekend, we weren't loading any more glassware into the butler's pantry on account of fact that the floors in the new house are too bouncy and the shelves of the pantry aren't thick enough to really support the weight that's already on them, which means that even walking by the pantry created the potential for glasses doing their own rendition of Buffalo Jump. Now that the pantry is securely shimmed and attached to the wall - I can move some of those swanky glasses over and save myself the travel time.
So that just leaves us with making juice with water from the sink, defrosting frozen meat in a sink full of cold water, cooking with frozen vegetables using... you've got it... sink water... Each activity still requires traversing the 21 foot span from sink to freezer. There are no problems foks, only solutions. I am determined that this will be a pro - not a con! I will do deep lunges every time I make the trip. My ass and thighs will be spectacularly toned in this poorly organized house.
Is there ever a BAD 6"?
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