Ring ring ring! It’s the Department of Invisible Labor, calling with a quick survey: have you organized your kitchen today?
::removes fake mustache::
Okay, you caught us: it’s the trusty Prism team, calling with this week’s essay — and some much juicer questions about kitchens. Like: which messes do we show others, and which do we hide? How do we decide what kinds of labor are “worth” paying for? And why is it always so impossible to locate the right tupperware lid?!?!
Writer Jenni Avins intends to find out — even if she has to call in professional reinforcements.
Messily yours,
The Prism Team
Jenni Avins is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, and many more publications. She is largely concerned with trying to have a good day. You can subscribe to her Substack, Have a Good Day.
One thing that makes Jenni feel well: “Surfing in the sun, i.e.: a humbling dose of nature’s Neti Pot and Vitamin D.”
Our shelves, our selves.
Let me tell you about my kitchen. It’s roughly 85 square feet, with yellowing linoleum floors and wonky cabinets in a rented house I share with my husband Corey and our two young kids. Until a few months ago, it was messy. Like, really messy. (Once, my friend Lavinia gently ribbed me: “What’s with the tampons on top of the microwave?”) I am a low-grade slob who’s fairly unbothered by a small pile of clothes or unruly stack of newspapers. But the kitchen was making me miserable.
I was often prepping food with a toddler on my hip, and couldn’t find the things I needed. When I could, I wasn’t able to easily extract them one-handed. We were wasting money on ingredients we already had, because we couldn’t see them. I hated unloading the dishwasher because so few items fit easily in their places. When Corey did it, he’d hold up items and ask, “Where does this go?” And I’d react with rage because how the fuck should I know? What am I, a trad wife?
The kitchen, it turned out, wasn’t just cluttered with tupperware lids and bags of Cheddar Bunnies. It was overflowing with inherited gender roles and layered with resentment and shame.
Let’s back up.