I bet you swear a bit when you have to do the dishes. They pile up in the sink until the point when it’s impossible for you to fill a glass with water without serious planning, and then, trying to ignore the smell that spreads rapidly, you start to dig out the dishes in order to make space to clean them. Well, not me. Not anymore. From now on I’ll sing while doing the dishes, a wide smile covering my face. Have I gone nuts, you ask? No, I’ve had a kitchen renovation going on in my kitchen for the last two months –a renovation that seemed not only to be endless, but moving in slow motion. Not that the workers were slow, I’ve no clue how to judge that–but that they did the renovations parallel in ten apartments, on two floors at the same time.  

Don't get me wrong: I'm very happy to have a new kitchen. The old one was fanless, so when we made chicken tandoori the apartment stank until the next time we cooked it. The closet doors liked to glide open with a squeeky noise when we tried to close them. God knows how many families lived, cooked, and ate in that place. They’d tried to paint over the flaws, and, like an old lady’s wrinkle make-up, the trick only worked from 50 paces. 

So I won’t complain. But I did have some interesting experiences along the way. Cooking, which my boyfriend and I like, became explosive. We were smart enough to prepare a few meals and freeze them before the renovation started, but when it came to remembering to take the food out of the freezer, our cleverness ended quickly. Of the ten proper meals we made, two are still in there.  

The rest of the time we gave up and went the microwave route.  Growing up without a microwave’s fantastic inventiveness, I'm still pretty insecure around one. In a desperate attempt to avoid sitting hippie on the floor with one of these portable stoves that take forever to heat up, we tried everything that could be stuffed in the microwave without danger of catching fire or exploding–from sauces, vegetables, and dinners that probably shouldn’t even be close to a microwave oven, to the numerous packaged meals you can buy in the store, throw in for two minutes, and cover with ketchup. If you don’t question what the pile of mush is supposed to be, it doesn’t taste bad.

We had a good laugh the first two days when one of us would say "well, time for dishes," and then throw our paper plates and cups in the garbage. That joke wore off fast. With no water in the kitchen, the only reasonable choice was a bucket on the bathroom floor, mental preparation, and a pair of rubber boots. I soon got sick of squatting in the bathroom trying to avoid having dirty-dishes-water all over me, with rubber boots on and our cat sniffing everything from dirty frying pans to my buttcrack. Once, I even left the boyfriend a note from King Albie (King Albert of Belgium – for those with less knowledge about the European royal families), telling him that he should be nice to his girlfriend and do the dishes for her. It didn’t work. 

Oh well. It’s over now. We can go back to normal cooking, I’ve learnt to appreciate the luxury a modern kitchen gives, and we have water again. The only problem is that if something happens to the new kitchen–say, permanent stains on the walls or a crack or in the kitchen furniture–we can’t blame the previous tenants.
 

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