Have you ever considered what your home would be like without . . . medicine cabinets? Think about it a moment. What do you have in your medicine cabinet? Floss? Aspirin? Tweezers? The Muppets rinse cup you've had since you were five? Now where would put it if you had no medicine cabinet? And don't presume you would put it in the bathroom cabinets and/or drawers, because most likely, you have none. Maybe you have a small space under the sink about the size of a Triscuit box.
When you see the first apartment, and you think, ok, modern design. We've pared down space in the US as well. Naturally, in Europe where the apartments and homes have always been a bit smaller, they would pare down more. However, then you see the apartment built in '95, the one with the fraying couch above the owners' upholstery shop, and then the 1985 apartment that has a bedroom the size of a twin bed, literally, the size of a twin bed. You know they've never replaced that mattress because a wall would come down before the mattress came out of the room. Then you see William Butler Yeats's apartment, 96 St. Stephen's Green, a conglomeration of Victorian chandeliers and 1960s James Bond glam, and it has a bar fridge. Yeats did not have a refrigerator or maybe even an icebox, but I bet he would have agreed that renovation is a glorious idea and that mold, or damp as the estate agent said, is not.
The biggest apartment I saw had a fair amount of storage, one of the biggest kitchens I've ever seen in any private residence (full fridge with freezer, a bar fridge, a bar freezer, and cupboard and floor spaces bigger than the kitchens in full-sized houses), and royal purple glass lamps on lace doilies. The owner seems to have started collecting furniture in the fifties and satisfied the compulsion in the early eighties.
Our new apartment, renovated 2007, has medicine cabinets, two of them, an American fridge, freezer on one side, fridge on the other with water and ice dispensers, separate washer and dryer (a dryer, mind you, that uses conventional American dry heat rather than Irish steam heat), green insulation, and a master shower that comes with an instruction manual. Something about a radio and rain shower feature and steam feature and side jets and a foot massage. And a fan. In the shower itself. The bathroom has a separate fan. Two bedrooms, two baths, heated floors, and it's pretty. The owners, Michelle and William, have moved to the States with their three young children for at least the next year. They offered, as the five and half and two and a half year olds chased each other from room to room over a cookie, to throw in a child as a bonus. We regretfully and gleefully declined.
But, yeah, we're settled with one set of sheets, one set of towels, three flat screen TVs, and two orchids. We'll see how long they last. We're a fifteen minute walk to Scott's work, five to ten to the Irish classes we'll start in a few weeks, and we're having our vegetables delivered. And they drink tea here, lots and lots of lovely tea. As I drink my tea, lovely, lovely tea, I'm across from International Books, Trinity College, down the street from Modern Languages Books, and a skip from The Pen Corner. According to those who know, it is the only pen shop in Dublin, and we live near it. Scott is SO pleased.
This blog is even more exciting than a previously unpublished short story by Kurt Vonnegut that Playboy recently published and that I found out about courtesy of my father's subscription. Seriously.
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