Some majorly important views on cutlery

Don't miss this knife, fork and spoon chat.

I can be heard reading this out loud here. (If you’re a paying subscriber.)

I watched a video on Instagram nearly two months ago which I still think about on a daily basis. It features property expert/TV presenter Sarah Beeny emptying the cutlery basket from her dishwasher into her cutlery drawer. And this is what her cutlery drawer looks like.

From @sarah.beeny on Instagram

I looked on in horror. It was worse than if I’d caught her eating the food debris from that kitchen sinkhole strainer thing.

It makes me think of a sad broken tangled-up robot or a box belonging to a serial killer from medieval times. I’m no Marie Kondo but this does not bring me happiness.

I had no idea that 2024 would see so many of my thoughts occupied by Sarah Beeny’s cutlery drawer. And I’m not the only one that has taken an interest. It was picked up by the national news. (Websites not TV, sadly.) Although the outrage and surprise were focused on how she unloaded the dishwasher by just pouring the cutlery into the drawer. I don’t care about this. It makes perfect sense in this imperfect situation. What I care about is that there’s no order in the first place. There’s no little divider tray thing to keep the knives, forks and spoons apart.

It’s not even the first time I’ve seen this. I once stayed for a few weeks with my friend Beccy and she also had no cutlery tray. It was all thrown in together, like some cutlery orgy.

But I can’t cope with this kind of chaos. It’s just too much. Although I can cope with this kind of chaos when it comes to Tupperware and clothes and pretty much everything else chaotically mixed up in my house.

I did start to worry that I’d been brainwashed by the cutlery drawer insert tray society. And have spent some time considering whether we’ve been sold a lie. Because it would be easier to just throw the cutlery in the drawer. Why do they have to be kept segregated from each other?

But then I think about Sarah Beeny’s drawer and all the times the tines of the forks are intermeshing in a forbidden and DISGUSTING act and have to be pulled apart and realise that cutlery mess is the one mess that I can’t do.

I don’t have rules about many things (although anyone who has ever lived with me would strongly disagree) but I do have some about cutlery.

Here are some more.

Let’s start with the smallest spoon in the cutlery set, called a teaspoon, little spoon or baby spoon. But only one of these is right. Little spoon. Teaspoon just limits it to tea which is bad in this ever-evolving world. It was a mistake made by John the Baptist. He was only going to get baptism work and that is massively in decline. You’ve got to keep up with the future of work or you’re going to get left behind. I didn’t expect to be giving career advice to a teaspoon but there you go.

Little spoon gives it way more options. And there are many. If you woke up this morning thinking, “I wonder what Annabel eats with a little spoon?” today is a great day for you. Here is everything I use it for:

Porridge

Any kind of cold cereal

Ice cream

Yoghurt

Actually any kind of dessert. You name it – jelly, rice pudding, cake, tart - I’m little spooning it.

A whole avocado.

Maybe a kiwi fruit.

A boiled egg (obviously).

Basically anything you can name that’s not a main course and needs cutlery.

Some might call this babyish. Or accuse me of having a particularly small mouth. They’d be wrong about both of these things. I just like that dainty little spoon for my dainty little eating.

Let’s move on to the bigger spoon now. If you call the little one the baby spoon, I hope you call the bigger one the mummy spoon. Or daddy spoon. Technically, it’s a dessert spoon. However, I call it the big spoon. Are you waiting for the list? Here it is. Everything I eat with the big spoon:

Soup

That’s it. I don’t use a soup spoon. I don’t own one of those as I’m not part of the aristocracy.

Here’s what Tom, my boyfriend, eats with a big spoon:

Everything. Desserts, cereal, pasta, curry, chilli, everything. Which I find babyish. So I still also give him a fork when it’s my turn to cook. Which sits there unused. But I will never give up.

Do you know what order your cutlery drawer goes in? Mine used to go knives, big spoons, forks and then little spoons at the bottom horizontally. But my friend Eloise told me in no uncertain terms that I had it wrong and it should be big spoon, knife and fork. So I did what I was told.

A year after her intervention, I went to my cutlery drawer and realised the knives had somehow moved back to the end. It was not my doing. It was not Tom’s doing. I can only conclude that they did it themselves. There is no other answer.

So it turns out cutlery is sentient and I feel awful about how much I neglect the big spoon and how they must much prefer Tom to me. But mostly I just have deep concerns that Sarah’s Beeny’s will stage an uprising after being forced to live in such disarray and cut, perforate and scoop her until she buys a dividing tray.

Enough about me, what about you?

You will not believe how much I want to hear your views on all aspects of cutlery. Especially if they are very strong. I look forward to reading your comments below.