[/caption]I've been working on the whole "being tidy and organised" thing. So far it isn't going all that well. One of the reason is accessibility. I'm 5'3", I know it's not THAT short, but it's not tall either. I can shop in the kids clothes/shoes department, so long as I don't have to reach the top shelf. And around our home, the top shelf is a major issue. Or rather the top three shelves.
Our house used to be owned by a builder, a tall builder. This is not an advantage on a lot of levels. Given the choice I'd never buy a house that has been lived in by a builder ever again. It's like he spent all day building, so didn't want to spend lots of time on his own home, but also didn't want to pay anyone else to do the work. He boarded up the stop cock, because clearly no one needs to switch the water off at the mains. Instead of laying the kitchen floor, then installing the cupboards, he realised it'd take less tiles if he did it the other way around. Which means that the cabinets are concreted to the floor. He also managed to make the space for the washing machine 5mm too narrow for a standard machine, normally that'd mean pushing the cabinets 5mm apart, a job of 10 seconds. Instead we had to hack a whole section of tiles out of the floor. The boiler was 13 years old, but he put a 5 year old casing on it. You don't want to know what he did in the bathroom.
Anyway, he installed all the wall-mounted cabinets at a height appropriate to someone 6'6" tall. All the cabinets have three shelves and I can only see into the lowest of them if I stand on tip-toe. I can't see into the other shelves without a step ladder. I wouldn't be able to use any of our kitchen cabinets at all without one of these folding steps, but I still have to resort to the "fling stuff into the back of the space and hope you never need it again" storage method. This problem also means that we usually end up with multiples of things because I think we've run out because I simply cannot see them.
Since I' also have a wealth of mobility issues, that mean there are many days when I can't bend or kneel, I can't really use much of the space in the base units either. The market is full of products to help organise cupboards but most of them require that you be able to get into the cupboards to begin with. They're almost universally expensive too. Do I really want to spend £10 on a bit of plastic to make an extra shelf, when I could probably make the same thing with old cardboard boxes?
I dream of a kitchen with pull out larder style units, where everything is visible and easy to reach, preferably with some kind of fold out step system so I can get into the high spaces without constantly tripping over the steps. But for now I'm going to have to find a way to make do with what I have, hopefully before I break a rib trying to clean the cooker. Again.
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