Most of us would be loath to open our cupboards to visitors but Robert O'Byrnefinds one utility room that is a temple of tidyness
Would you dare to follow Kate Fogarty's example and allow a stranger to scrutinise your home's cupboards? Well I might, you'd reply cautiously.
I might, provided I was given a month's notice, had read every de-clutter manual available, rented a large skip and mobilised the entire family for a weekend's overhaul of the house. Then, you'd answer, I would be delighted to throw open my cupboards for the inspection of any passing stranger.
That's how most of us live today: in a place so cluttered with possessions that every shelf, every wardrobe, every cabinet, chest of drawers, locker and dresser is filled with what can only be described as 'stuff'. Not even stuff arranged in any kind of order but jumbled higgledy-piggledy so that every time we want something as basic as a screwdriver it involves an exhaustive but ultimately fruitless search followed by the purchase of another screwdriver to add to the dozen or so we've already bought and mislaid.
Oxfam lately ran an advertising campaign urging each of us all to clear out our cupboards and give their contents to the charity - presumably so Oxfam can sell our discarded belongings to people who haven't, as yet, acquired quite enough to require that they instigate their own clear-out.
Internet sites such as Ebay thrive on the constant circulation of surplus goods that move from one scene of domestic chaos to another. No wonder our cupboards must remain forever unexposed to the gaze of a stranger; we'd wither with shame as one after another, in a succession of barely used screwdrivers, made their appearance.
That's true of all of us - except Kate Fogarty. Kate is a woman who has taken to heart the maxim that there's a place for everything and everything should be its place. So in Kate's house, there is and it is. Kate's house - which incidentally she shares with a husband and three small children, including feisty two and a half-year old twins - is a Keatsian ode to tidiness, a Shakesperean sonnet to order, heck even Gertrude Stein would have penned some free verse lines to the state of Kate's house.
Kate and her family have lived there for three years with white sofas - which are STILL white: can there be greater testimony to a well-ordered life?
Well yes, actually there can and is, namely Kate's utility room. It's also white: a gleaming, shiny, pristine white of the kind not normally encountered outside toothpaste commercials.
The walls are painted white and the banks of cupboards - made from MDF - have been enamelled white. The white goods, including a free-standing freezer, washing machine and tumble dryer, live up to their name.
In fact, almost the only non-white things in the utility room are the work surfaces. They're made from an African hardwood, called panga panga, and Kate is worried because they show evidence of wear and tear. It's necessary to look very hard and close to detect that evidence; perhaps there's a trace of scuffing in one or two places and a small ring where something very hot was once temporarily set down but otherwise the utility room is immaculate.
The floor tiles, by the way, are so clean that for once it probably would be feasible to eat dinner off them.
The real treat, however, lies beyond the doors of all those identical white enamelled cupboard doors. Kate Fogarty isn't all surface and no substance. She doesn't put on a good front and allow anarchy to reign behind. Her utility room cupboards reflect her pursuit of a well-ordered existence.
As a method for keeping items tidy and in the same place, she's a big fan of baskets. She reckons the children's playroom - its walls adorned, incidentally, by a charming mural painted by their mother - must contain at least 20 baskets and the utility room holds a similar number. Each of them carries a tag describing the contents, whether 'party stuff', 'cake decoration', or 'DIY'.
Where baskets aren't suitable, household goods are stacked tidily together; flower vases, for example, are all on the one shelf.
Cleaning materials can be found in one cupboard, extra china and glasses in another, family medication in a third.
There's a place for clothes waiting to be washed, for those that are drying and others that need to be ironed.
Only once does Kate stumble in our guided tour of the utility room and that's when she opens what's known in the Fogarty household as The Communications Cupboard. This reveals a very smart and sophisticated wire-free sound system that controls what's heard throughout the house.
Kate confesses she doesn't actually know how to operate these machines but it hardly matters; as testified by her gleaming and empty double-sink she so clearly has everything else completely regulated.
"Well," says Kate when this point is put to her, "I always think I could be a bit more organised." Clearly she's never been invited to look inside anyone else's cupboards.
The utility room: six essentials
1. Assign somewhere this role - even if it's only an area under the kitchen sink.
2. We all accumulate too many possessions; none of us have enough storage space for it. Give yourself as much shelving and cupboard space as you can. You'll be amazed how quickly it fills up.
3. Follow Kate's example and invest in lots of baskets, or plastic containers or cardboard boxes or some kind of similar receptacle. Then put a label on each of them.
4. Having given everything a place, always put it back where it belongs.
5. Invest in a hanging notice board and keep a note here of jobs waiting to be done and supplies running low.
6. If your utility room isn't tidy, it's unlikely that anywhere else in the house will be.
