Cabinephobia

Growing up I was never afraid of cabinetry. I could get any item out from behind any door in the kitchen of our apartment. I have to say I rarely got things out of the cabinets at my dad's N. Silver Lane house. Looking back, those might have scared me. Even in college, I lived in a dorm (no kitchen) and then another apartment. Nothing scary about that. In fact, I don't believe it even crossed my mind that cabinets could be scary until I got married.

We found a cute little place to live in Provo. A free standing unit behind the larger house which had been turned into two units, making us apt "C." We called it The Cottage. It was white, a little dirty, with a purple door under a green heavy-duty plastic awning. There was a living room, with a fireplace hidden behind the huge heater unit, a bedroom and bathroom, an eat-in kitchen and a little laundry room. New teal-green carpet which I wasn't even big on in the early 90's, and cute balloon shades on the windows. All for $400 a month. It was a good deal.

We all know there is a difference between walking through a place and living in it. It didn't take too long for Larry and I to realize we'd moved into a place not originally meant for human habitation. Because of this, our home was also home to many insects and critters who belonged out doors. Practically every time I went to take a shower, there was a huge black spider in the tub. Both Larry and I are afraid of spiders. That was not good planning on our part, but who thinks to ask, "Of which creatures are you too petrified to even kill?" Not us, anyway.

Well, the kitchen was pretty good sized, and had a door to the outside which would have dumped you about 3 yards tops from where you exited the living room. So we put some storage shelves up in front of it to help house all of our newly received appliances. The cabinets right next to that shelf had grass growing up in it. Yes, grass. It was rather sickly looking from lack of light, but it was pretty tall. More than once I pulled a pot out only to find a spider or beetle in the bottom, sending me into a virtual heart attack. So I quickly came to fear getting anything out of those cabinets. It was that way the entire 8 months we lived there.

Next we moved into a nice apartment complex, second floor. Nothing abnormal. But after a year and a half there, we moved to an old duplex, which gained us a garage and a fenced private back yard. Unfortunately that back yard contained an old big grapefruit tree which, while very useful for grapefruit, seemed to house a colony of cockroaches. This tree was feet away from--you guessed it--my kitchen wall lined with CABINETS!!! Talk about gross. We used roach baits, and they worked quite well, but it meant that every morning I'd come out to a kitchen floor and maybe a drawer or two scattered with dead roaches. Better than live ones to be sure, but still yucky.

It's no kind of life, living in fear of your own cabinetry. Never putting items very far back in. Never being able to truly wipe them all the way down. Hardly being able to look inside for a missing pot. It's like you are an intruder in your own home.

Most thankfully, come September I will have lived 9 years without fear of my cabinets. I've had nice, newer kitchens, fully separated from nature by appropriate amounts of insulation and drywall. I can dig around them to my heart's content without a close encounter of the insect or arachnid kind. I am in control of my kitchen.

Well, except for the ants. . .