The cupboard that throws things at you

You open the cupboard slowly, because you know. One hand holds the door; the other is ready to catch whatever slides forward. Tonight it is a cake tin. Underneath it are two pan lids and a steamer basket, arranged in a structure which worked perfectly until somebody needed a saucepan.

Supper was supposed to be uncomplicated. There are onions waiting on the board and a pan somewhere beneath the equipment for several meals you have no intention of making. Retrieving it involves crouching on the floor, removing half the contents and discovering a lid with no obvious parent. You put that one back. It has been living here for years; perhaps its saucepan is behind something else.

The kitchen can look very handsome while this is going on. Lovely cupboard fronts are unusually good at concealing a small daily nuisance. From the doorway, everything is calm. From the floor, where you are now holding a roasting tin between your knees, the kitchen has rather more to explain.

There is an appealingly modest fix for the pan pile: let the flat things stand up. Dividers make a visible gap for a lid or baking tray, so taking one out no longer requires lifting everything above it. The expanding Joseph Joseph rack shown here uses movable sections, which is helpful when your cookware has accumulated one piece at a time. The drawer still has to close over the tallest item, so it is worth checking that before ordering.

The deep shelf has a different problem. You can see the jars at the front and vaguely remember buying something behind them. A turntable gives those back jars a route towards the door. We would give it one job, perhaps the things reached for during cooking, and leave a little room around it. A spinning platform wedged between packets is unlikely to improve anyone's evening.

Neither change requires an afternoon decanting everything into matching containers. The original packets have information on them, and the kitchen is allowed to look as though food comes from shops. What matters is being able to retrieve an ingredient before the onions catch.

Later, with supper eaten, the leftovers introduce a separate cupboard dispute. A box appears; its lid does not. Several almost-right lids follow. At this point the five-container Nest Lock set begins to look less like a purchase for an impressively organised person and more like a reasonable way to go to bed. The coloured details help identify the pairs, and the empty boxes nest inside each other.

That still leaves the washing-up. A small caddy beside the sink gathers the brush and sponge where they are used, leaving the window ledge clear of bottles. In the illustration, its grey shell sits against blue tiles without adding another strong colour to the room. There is room for the bottle, brush and sponge within a single footprint.

The cupboard fronts look exactly as they did before. There may still be a baking tray you dislike and a stubborn mark beside the hob. Tomorrow, though, you can open the cupboard, take out the small saucepan and put it on the cooker. The cake tin stays exactly where it is. That leaves you free to wonder what you were planning to cook.