What We Discover

"To travel is to discover that everyone 

is wrong about other countries."

~ Aldous Huxley

"Let's go in this store," I said to Mike on the very cold morning after we arrived in Paris.  We were walking around trying to kill time (and stay warm) until we boarded our ship, and we happened by a home improvement store.  I like going through showrooms. Given the choice of shopping home improvement or shoes, I'll go the HI route any day.  My friends — and mother — had a field day with me when Black & Decker had stores in the outlet malls because I insisted it was my favorite store there.  When we first moved to Nashville and were living in an apartment waiting for our house to be finished, I wasted hours in Home Depot  and Lowes.  But, I digress.....

At any rate, we went into that particular store just to look around and found very interesting cabinets that I could seriously use in my own kitchen. As you probably know, European homes are much, much, much smaller than most American homes, and Europeans have learned to use every bit of space.  We could take a lesson from them.

In my kitchen in Las Vegas (and in every kitchen I've ever had, to tell the truth), I have an L-shaped counter that has drawers on both sides and a huge, unused space where the two counters meet.  If you look at all of these photos, you can see that the French have a great option: shelves on wheels (top photo) or shelves that swing out from that normally wasted space.  

The cabinet shown at the top (red doors) is interesting in that two shelves are attached to the door, and two shelves are on rollers that are somehow connected to the door mechanism.  When you open the door, two of the shelves come out with the door, and the other two roll into the place the first two occupied.  You can then pull those two out individually, too.   The other option has two odd-shaped shelves that swing out from their resting place (the white cabinets).  Pretty cool, no?

Since we've been home, I've been fighting with my corner cabinet constantly. I have to stuff kitchen towers into the drawers, which are about five-inches wide. On the other side, the cabinet  is about the same width, and I have to store small items that I rarely use. Of course, because the stupid shelf is so narrow, things fall off of it into the Bermuda-like-Triangle of a corner and are lost forever.

Bottom line, I want one of those cabinets, and I actually found one online.  It wasn't that expensive, considering.  Of course, the question comes down to this:  Do I want the cabinet or a trip back to Europe?

Silly girl.