JAN MOIR: How posh is your kitchen?
Oh dear. It was laundry balls at dawn yesterday when television presenter Kirstie Allsopp suggested that it was unhygienic and frankly appalling, darlings, to have your washing machine in your kitchen.
Where are we supposed to put the darned thing? Unlike her, not everyone has two spacious homes â€" a handsome house in London’s Notting Hill and a five-bed holiday cottage in a lush fold of the Devon countryside.
Kirstie has enough space to ensure the laundry needs of her family â€" partner Ben Andersen, a property developer, and their two young sons â€" can be met in a place much removed from the madding crowd of her kitchen. But what about the rest of us?
Few have the option of planting the household washing machine deep in the laundry suite on the west wing of Toffe e Nose Towers. No, no, no, fumed Miss Allsopp. You are all missing the (Hot)point.
Television presenter Kirstie Allsopp said it was unhygienic to have a washing machines in the kitchen and it led to a furious nationwide debate, which JAN MOIR says is because it is a class issue
The Location, Location star was responding to a puzzled American Twitter user who found the location, location of laundry appliances in British homes confusing â€" and she agreed.
‘It is disgusting, my life’s work is in part dedicated to getting washing machines out of the kitchen,’ said Miss Allsopp. The 45-year-old argues that it is unhygienic to do the laundry in an area where food is prepared or eaten, and perhaps that tells us all we need to know about Ben’s socks.
Yet she has a point. Washing machines are forbidden in professional kitchens and her suggestion for those poor saps who don’t have a utility room was to think about moving the wa shing machine elsewhere, such as a back porch, a bathroom, a cupboard or similar, as is commonplace in America.
Personally, I long for a well-appointed laundry room, with shelves and rails and packets of French soap flakes and lavender linen sprays â€" instead of my sturdy Bosch tucked away in a corner of the kitchen. Kirstie only speaks the truth, but because she is a baronet’s daughter, wears tea dresses and talks nicely, everyone gets hysterical, raging away on social media and accusing her of rampant snobbery and worse.Â
Do you know why? That is because every argument in British life is never about what it purports to be about, it is always really about class. All of a sudden, the piercing new perception is that keeping a washing machine in the kitchen is as common as keeping the coal in the bath. It has lobbed a cannonball through the ramparts of our castles in the sky.
The soc ially insecure have a new issue to fret over. For Allsopp’s words only underline the truth that everything from the positioning of your appliances to the rug that you lay on your (non-laminate) wooden floor, the pictures you hang on your silk-covered walls and the crockery you buy says everything about you and your social standing.
So how posh is your kitchen? Already I am fretting that my Sophie Conran breadbin, Smeg toaster and gleaming surfaces have been exposed as excruciatingly aspirational by my upstart washing machine, lurking in the corner of the room like a tramp at a white-tie ball.
Of course, a really posh kitchen would be a genteel wreck, complete with worn flagstone floors, brown water trickling out of a 1955 spigot, a cracked Aga and a smelly dog basket in the corner â€" and who wants that? The notion of what is posh and what is not has become hopelessly conflated with what is fleetingly fashionable an d what is not. But there are some kitchen rules that even a baronet’s daughter or the most cavalier social climber cannot â€" and must not â€" ignore.
BAR STOOLS (for plebs)
Posh people do not sit on bar stools. Unless they are on the deck of one’s yacht.
TELLY â€" A SWITCH-OFF
Just no. A small radio is permissible, one which you can tune into The Archers and Gardeners’ Question Time on Radio 4. But that’s all.
CAN ONE EAT THERE?
An eat-in kitchen once sounded declassee, but if your kitchen is big enough to contain a dining table, then you are doing more th an OK. Kitchen suppers are all the rage, especially for poshies tired of the exhaustion of endless formality.
COPPER-BOTTOMED
Women who can’t make toast without burning the house down still insist on expensive sets of super posh copper pans. Uh oh. These are now deemed rather extravagant and ostentatious and proper poshies prefer Mauviel stainless steel saucepans all the way from Paris.
RIGHT SORT OF FLOWERS
A minefield. Potted orchids have been in and out so many times that everyone is now confused as to their status. As they are now readily available in supermarkets, we must beware.
Peonies are lovely, but in danger of becoming Instagrammed to death, and therefore commonplace. Cactuses â€" o r rather cacti â€" can do no wrong but baskets of paper-white narcissi never fail to impress.
PLUG FOR BUTLER’S SINK
Very posh, but only if you have a butler to turn on the taps. Please note that posh people always have two full-sized sinks, not one sink plus a weedy straining sink as an afterthought.
UTENSILS, UNSEEN
Wooden if possible, but whatever they’re made of, they must be kept in a drawer, never on display. Not even in darling porcelain jugs or on a wall magnet. A batterie de cuisine for saucepans is excellent, as only rich people have the requisite ceiling heights to hang them.
DESIGNER SALT
Sadly, no longer a straightforward choice between Saxa and Maldon. Posh people have to explain nicely to their cooks that Pink Himalayan, Black Lava and Persian Blue are not illegal drugs, but fashionable condiments and could they please add them to the weekly shop.
Salt can be in a salt cellar on the table, but must be stored in a salt pig in the kitchen. Salt blocks have replaced wooden chopping blocks as the carving board of choice for posh gourmands.
CHILDREN IN KITCHENS
You’ve got to have them, so that you can Instagram the little horrors in their vintage gingham smocks baking unicorn cupcakes, or standing on a stool by the Aga, learning how to make quince paste. At all other times they must be banished to the nursery.
FLY OFF THE HANDLES
A free-standing kitchen island, or a run of pebble coloured artisan cupboards? Both are acceptable but they must be painted in heritage colours that remind you of the family bog on an inherited moor somewhere.
Also, you must insist on soft-close drawers and cupboards with no visible handles â€" no not even those made of bone or antler horn from the last stag shoot. Bins must be hidden out of sight and Brabantia remains, as always, the posh bin of choice.
HIDE THOSE GADGETS
Coffee makers and frothers, liquidisers, KitchenAid mixers â€" have as many gadgets as you like, but they must be stored out of sight and never left on the kitchen counters.
ALL WHITE?
All crockery and candles must be white. No embellishments are allowed except for the family crest for special occasions. Plates must never, ever be square and kitchen candles must never, ever be scented.
WICKER FAD
Currently having a moment, so use it as much as you can.
NO AMUSING THINGS
Being posh is no laughing matter, so all funny fridge magnets and tea towels, wacky gadgets such as rubber egg poachers, novelty ice cube makers, mugs with slogans on them â€" mugs full stop! â€" are totally banned.
So too are designer ranges from telly upstarts such as Nigella, Rick Stein or â€" peg on nose! â€" Jamie Oliver. Cute plates with the imprint of baby feet or baby hands must be locke d away, along with any other weakness for nostalgia or vintage knick-knacks. Unless, of course, they have been in the family for 100 years or more.
WINE FRIDGE? GOD, NO!
Many of us crave a temperature-controlled, backlit wine fridge â€" please desist. This is almost as much of a giveaway as your plebtastic kitchen washing machine. Posh people keep their wine in cellars, and have retainers to fetch their favourite bottle for dinner each evening.
COOKER â€" WHO CARES?
The cook cooks at the cooker. That is all posh people know about cooking and cookers.
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