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Cupboard Love

Gwyneth Box

When we rented our current flat, I was delighted at the thought of having fitted cupboards in both bedroom and lounge.

For ten years I had led a cupboardless existence, making storage a major problem. I do own one large dressing-table which suffices for the household linens, but my clothes have had to fend for themselves.

Over the years they have been bundled into bags and boxes, packed in suitcases and trunks, hung on coat-stands and draped over clothes-horses. The bags and boxes made me feel like a squatter, while with the suitcases it was like constantly being on holiday (without the sun, sea and sand). Things stored in the trunks always made their way to the bottom, meaning a major rummage was needed to find anything, whereas the coat-stand made it easy to find things, but when found they tended to be covered in dust.

It didn’t help that one of my cats thought the coat-stand was a tree, and used to climb up and sit surveying her territory: even if the clothes were clean enough to wear, they all too often had little holes where she’d clawed her way to the top. The clothes-horse had similar drawbacks and, anyway, it got so overworked that it fell and broke its leg: sadly, it had to be destroyed.

All this meant that the idea of having cupboards was not only a novelty, but almost a fantasy for me. The two complete walls of ceiling-high fitted wardrobes, with various combinations of shelves, drawers and hanging-space, was a deciding factor in favour of the new flat. But, like so many fantasies, the reality isn’t quite so wonderful.

To begin with, most of the hanging space only serves for short things. There is hardly anywhere to hang a full-length coat, and nowhere for an evening dress. (Mine are actually more caftans than formal evening gowns, but they’re just as long.) So I’m back to the cat-stand - sorry, coat-stand - and its associated problems.

And drawer-space? Well, just about enough for that - to store my drawers - but not much more. No space for socks, petticoats, vests, T-shirts, leggings, jumpers, and the rest.

Which leaves the shelves. Which are enormous. Each section is about eighteen inches high, with a surface area of something over two foot square. Of course I can put my T-shirts etc. on shelves instead of in drawers, but you could fit six piles of twenty T-shirts in each single section. I don’t own anything like that many. And I have pretty much the same problem as I had when everything was in a trunk, except that things work to the back and everything ends up on the floor when I rummage through.

Nor am I the only one who tips the clothes on the floor. My dear cats have decided that they should be allowed to ‘nest’ in the wardrobes. I’ve tried pointing out that this isn’t really what they were intended for, but how can I argue, since they obviously weren’t designed for storing clothes either?

So, I carefully shut the doors of all the cupboards, and the cats carefully open them: the designer decided that sliding doors would be a good idea, and they’re so delicately balanced that the slightest dab with the paw produces the desired result and gives access to all those shelves of T-shirts etc. ready to be scrabbled onto the floor by a nesting feline.

One cat is particularly clever, and has worked out that after sleeping all night quite comfortably on the bed she can get me up just by opening my wardrobe. She doesn’t really want to get inside, but I’m so paranoid about her coughing fur-balls into my leather boots that I only have to hear the door slide open and I’m out of bed like a shot with a tin-opener in one hand and a tin of cat food in the other!

So much for my dream of a place for everything, and everything in its place; next time we move, I’m going to design the storage facilities.