I get a sense of yawning and stretching once we hit January and the daylight begins to slowly creep back into our lives. I always want to freshen something up around the house. This year I set my sights on making more counter space in my kitchen. I had several ceramic crocks with kitchen tools in them sitting across the back of the counter. Some people, who shall remain nameless, suggested I get rid of a few and all my problems would be solved. Can a woman ever have too many kitchen utensils? The tools weren’t the problem, it was that the containers were sitting on the longest space next to the range. I got frustrated constantly juggling things around when I was cooking.
IKEA is always the place I go when I need to reorganize a space in my home. I love that store and the new remodel. However, I feel like IKEA is an exercise of too much of a good thing. My daughters and I were out one day having lunch and I asked them if they wanted to go with me. I had looked online, but there are some things I have to see and touch in person in order to figure out if they’ll work.
I had only been in there a couple times since the opening of the new building. Both times we were looking for furniture, which, I’ve now discovered, was far more cut and dry than looking for smaller items. We headed to the show rooms upstairs. My oldest had been there looking for a comforter a couple months before and thought the smaller items would be downstairs. We went downstairs. Then I found a sign which made me think what I was looking for would be upstairs. So back upstairs we went until a directional sign indicated we needed to be downstairs. Once downstairs we asked someone who directed us upstairs.
Finally, we located the kitchen organizational section and there were several options. My kids helped me narrow them down, we grabbed the pieces, and headed out. Another challenge presented itself, because good luck finding an easy exit. We had wended our way through the maze that is IKEA, deep into the depths of Hell, or Heaven, however you view that sort of experience. By the way, it was absolutely packed and there were times I wanted to curl up in one of the display bedrooms and cry. I gave up and just followed the lighted arrows on the path like an inebriated Dorothy. They had to go somewhere.
We made it home, and though I was exhausted, I wanted my husband to install my new kitchen organization system because it had been a lot of work to find it, not to mention the emotional stress to get out of the store. I figured it would be pretty simple as it was just one metal bar. All he had to do was find studs 31 inches apart. Ahahahahahaha! If you know anything about construction, you know that studs are 32 inches apart. I knew that, but chose to believe that there was some method they had factored in to adjust the length. Like maybe the brackets would make up the difference.
No matter how many times he measured, with and without the brackets, that bar was not going to grow. We ended up at Home Depot and bought a curtain rod that had the perfect dimensions and color. It’s beautiful. I have a clear kitchen counter now. But this story could have had a very different end as I could still be lost in IKEA writing this column. At least I would have been comfortable.
Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh,” or twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.
