I have a kitchen cupboard in my life that causes me to have all manner of negative emotions. In all the many lovely houses that I’ve lived in across the UK, there has been one solitary nightmare cupboard, stubbornly messing with my lovely kitchen, which has been the cause of much frustration.

It’s not always the same cupboard, in the same place, it doesn’t even contain the same types of kitchen items, but there has always, always been one.

In my last lovely house, in Seahouses Northumberland, The sinister cupboard was a corner one. With a hinged door that closed in two section and it contained about four thousand Tupperware boxes (other brands are available) and a multitude of different shaped serving dishes.

That particular frustrating cupboard didn’t have the same number of plastic boxes as plastic lids…oh no. I think there may have been an intergalactic worm hole to a parallel universe at the back of said frustrating cupboard in which various lids and various boxes would disappear each week.

That is my only explanation for why I had so many lids NOT matching so many varying sizes of plastic boxes. And I have wondered, if our planet was invaded wit extra-terrestrial beings, would they bring back my missing plastic lids and missing plastic boxes? I digress.

The point is, I hated that cupboard.

Infact, when Kelsey was a wee tot of only five years, she was helping Grandma empty the dishwasher and put things away and she innocently announced, “Mummy hates that bloody cupboard!” much to my mother’s surprise and horror. Out of the mouths of babes, as I must have expressed my cupboard hatred once too often and far too loud in front of little ears. Ooops.

And, alas, in the kitchen of Margaret’s Cottage, I have another corner cupboard, which causes me to hiss and mutter expletives on occasion….quietly though, so my utterings and mutterings are never heard in the guest drawing room.

This particular nightmare press contains a hotchpotch of pots, pans, baking tins of all shapes and sizes, two colanders, three sieves, and anything large and metal that is searching for a kitchen home. Yes, it all started off well, with baking trays stacked neatly in size order. My ex-husband, with his OCD would have approved. Pots arranged in size, large casseroles go here, frying pans neatly go there…actually my pots and frying pans are never untidy…it’s the jumbly mishmash of baking tins.

Now I’d love to have regular shaped, neat, orderly baking tins of a similar size and colour, but no. I have two particular favourite tins for making millionaire shortbread, four different sized favourite tins for making my lemon drizzle cakes, I have mini cake tins that don’t stack, muffin tins that do stack, my trusty and very old Yorkshire pudding tin – the Holy Grail of puddings tins.

I have big flan tins, small flan tins, round cake tins of varying sizes , as well as square cake tins of varying sizes, pizza tins, bunt tins, ring tins, loaf tins, roasting tins, fudge tins, traybake tins…shall I go on? I pretty much have a favourite trusty (Never rusty) dependable tin for all the lovely things I create in the kitchen. And, to be baked perfectly, it simply has to be baked in THAT particular tin.

And, well, that chaotic corner cupboard is a bit like the scene from the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy looks out of her bedroom window, the tornado is blowing wildly and the whole world is spinning and upside down. I mean I try to keep it tidy…I really do. But it defeats me…, it deflates me, it frustrates me. Every couple of weeks I get all the tins out, sort them by size, and neatly put them back in their rightful place…but I think some wretched little pixies creep out, under the cover of darkness, climb into my baking tin cupboard and create all manner of havoc.

So, today, I will grit my teeth and try again to bring some semblance or order to the chaos that is my baking tin and pots and pans cupboard.

Wish me luck! And, if you don’t hear from me again, please send a search party…as I will have climbed in and got stuck!