A manifesto against the tyranny of luxury kitchens.

Before the internet, you only had to keep up with the Joneses– they were real people who lived nextdoor and probably drove a Corvette.

And even if you might have liked their car for yourself, you knew for a fact that they wore too much cologne, misused the word Machiavellian, and were just generally unlikable people who let their dog poop in everyone’s yard.

You used to have to subscribe to Town & Country or Architectural Digest if you wanted to feel bad about your house… But then the internet came along—eradicating every shred of reality and replacing it with Christopher Peacock.

Now you can discover for FREE, any time of day or night, that your kitchen, your bathroom, your entire house… actually, your whole life is so subpar that it’s amazing you haven’t flat out died.

The internet has given the entire home-luxury-design-industry access to the inside of our minds at all times. This is extra convenient for them because they can constantly remind us that anything less than a kitchen filled with glamour and elegance and a wine refrigerator is just sad… so, so, so sad.

And the sadder your life looks, the fancier the faucet you will buy – advertising 101.

(Incase you are wondering where on the sadness-scale my life falls, apparently it is here.  I am pretty sure that faucet would make me a better person.)

 
greenfieldcabinetry

But eventually I will have to replace that faucet… Because it will go out of style. Because all of this is a trend.
A TREND.

The most expensive trend ever—white, white, white, white, splash of soapstone for contrast, white, white, white.

But someday Christopher Peacock will be the equivalent of the ubiquitous oak cabinetry from the 80’s.  Remember country kitchens?  

DON’T YOU REMEMBER?  

Soon there will be a whole new trend.  (Once they figure out how to make something more expensive.)

I personally think it should be THE-KITCHEN-I-HAVE-IS-FINE trend.  We should all STOP redoing our kitchens.  It is MADNESS people.  Do you have a stove?  A refrigerator?  A place to rinse stuff and chop it?  Then you HAVE A KITCHEN.  

This is my message for the day—acceptance. Accept the kitchen you have. A new one will not bring you health or happiness. (Except, maybe the one below.)

Let us band together and KEEP the kitchen we have. Let us embrace oak cabinetry from 1980.

Let us rise up against the tyranny of stainless steel.
There is nothing wrong with your taupe electric range.

And Formica!
Let us bring Formica back!

I mean, I personally am not planning to do that. I write a blog about restoring our house… therefore I am legally obligated to bring new meaning to whimsy and creativity and a mindbogglingly giant range hood.

Infact, I will probably be required to travel to a small town in Italy to mine the marble slabs myself.

When I get home, I will do a peppy post about DIY-mining your own marble. And I will include tips about where to find delicious artisanal (gluten free!) pastries made by villagers who have been growing specialty grains for over 900 years.

I will be sure to annotate the pictures for Pinterest with captions that are overlaid with squiggles and dots and three different fonts. (So that it will appeal to both four year olds, and women who are shopping for kitchen counters.)

see the kitchen we have

all my kitchen posts