Cupboard Calamity

On Monday, my first official day as an Okinawan housewife, I decided to clean and organize our new kitchen. We had just purchased a large amount of groceries during our ventures out on Sunday and all of our dishes and kitchenware were still sitting on the counters where the movers unpacked them. It seemed like a simple, but involved task – however, like all things Shannon that have polished end results, the process included at least one completely goofy incident the that belied the eventual flawless appearance of my attempted domesticity. I even have a nice round bruise on my forearm as evidence.

The kitchen in our apartment is gigantic and includes a large floor-to-ceiling cupboard next to the tiny leaf green refrigerator. I fell in love with this cupboard instantly for its size and honey colored wood and out of necessity because the metal cabinets above the sink and stove are far above my reach. The shelves are wide and evenly spaced so they can easily accomodate pretty much anything that you might want to store on them.

After lining the shelves with contact film, I began organizing our pantry groceries, dishes, pots and pans and my beloved Oreck vacuum cleaner inside the cupboard. Everything was looking worthy of Real Simple magazine when disaster befell my picture perfect display. Just after placing a bag of white rice on the top shelf with the pasta and other raw baking ingredients, the shelf tipped sending some of its goods cascading onto the shelf below and others out onto the kitchen floor. I put my arms out to catch some of the food, because at this point everything seemed in slow motion, but the avalanche that came next was full speed. Each consecutive shelf collapsed onto the next until all six shelves and their cans, bags, boxes, plates, bowls, glasses and pots came flying out of the cupboard at me and all over the kitchen. I had to run backwards a few steps to avoid getting knocked in the head with all of the stuff and still managed to take a hit to the arm from a jar of salsa.

The clatter this whole catastrophe made was impressive, but miraculously, when everything stopped falling, bouncing, crashing and rolling, there was not a single item broken or severely damaged. However, I did have to fix the faulty shelf before replacing the other shelves and putting everything back in the cupboard just so. I attribute my sense of humor and a good dose of Beck playing on iTunes for my general amusement of the situation and the half hour it took to get everything back together again. And the entire time, I could imagine how much Matt would laugh when I told him about the debacle when he got home. He’s no stranger to my capers since the day he walked into the kitchen after the better part of a box of cornstarch exploded covering me head-to-toe in white powder.

When he heard the story, Matt said I should have taken a picture of the mess and I agree, but the polished result will have to suffice and let the calamitous process go in to the annals of goofy Shannon history.