I can’t help but think family life would be so much easier if only magic existed. I mean, sure, some parents would be blighted by Voldemort chasing down our newborn babies, but the rest of us could just enjoy the time-saving luxuries of knowing magic tricks. No more minutes wasted searching for lost car keys, no more having to wait for buses or make polite conversation with people you’d rather not see. Obviously, this is something I have spent a great time thinking about (what else am I to do during night feeds?), and I have compiled a list of magical kitchen products I think all families need (disclaimer: none of these products exist because magic isn’t real):
1. Self-cleaning kitchen cupboards
Wouldn’t family life be better if self-cleaning kitchen cupboards were a thing? No more grubby pasta hand prints, no more muddy footprints (why even are there muddy child-sized footprints on the doors?) no more crayon marks souring your otherwise beautiful kitchen. When we bought our kitchen three years ago, we chose some white gloss kitchen cupboards. I wanted the kitchen to look clean and white with the occasional colour pop thrown in for good measure. I hadn’t bargained on just how easily white gloss would quickly become pasta-splattered and strawberry smudged. Self-cleaning kitchen cupboards would make my kitchen look much, much nicer.
2. Highchair tray with gravitational pull
I spend a lot of time making food for my baby, then I spend even longer picking that food up off the floor after she has taken one baby-led bite and hurled the rest over the edge of the highchair tray. What I need, for my sanity as much as my kitchen floor, is a magic spell that could change the gravitational pull. I need food items to gravitate towards the highchair tray, not the floor, so that each abandoned morsel would end up exactly where I wanted it too instead of landing splat on the floor. Can you imagine the food we would save as a country if we eliminated food mess from the floors of houses across the nation?
3. An invisibility spell for contraband foods
Biscuit spread, chocolate biscuits and crisps are just some of the foods I’m not overly keen on Ebony eating. Unfortunately, they’re also some of my favourite foods. To keep everybody healthy and happy and food-related-meltdown-free, I just avoid buying these products. But you know what would be better than that? A magical enchanted cupboard that looked like it contained only lentils and nuts but that was really piled high with vegan junk food that only I could see (and eat).
4. A craving detector
There is nothing worse than spending ages in the kitchen cooking the exact dish your child requested only to find out they don’t actually want it. Watching your hard work go cold on a plate in front of a miserable-looking child who, despite being ‘actually about to starve to death’ moments earlier is now completely unable to eat another mouthful. I don’t care what my kids eat. I figure most of the food we have in the house is healthy so as long as they eat a mixture, I’m ok with it. What I would love is a machine that told me exactly what they want to eat, so I can cook it and send them to bed with full tummies.
5. A kitchen clean counter
Keeping score in a relationship is never a good idea. It builds resentment and anger and always ends up in argument. Laurie’s personal take on this is that if we’re both feeling hard done to, then it’s probably about even so everything is fine. I don’t want to keep tally of how many times we each clean the kitchen. It’s petty. But what I would like, is a kitchen that keeps track for me, ideally with some kind of light up scoreboard just so that we can see whether it is ‘about even’ after all (it totally isn’t).
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