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‘It’s like sharing a kitchen in a student house!’ one resident exclaimed gleefully.

‘Yeah, a student house with a daily cleaner!’ I muttered irritably under my breath, picking the remains of salad out of the plughole for the third time that day.

For us, the kitchen is one of the biggest challenges of hosting self-catered residencies in our home. We’re constantly trying to keep the place clean and free from ants, mice, or worse! All the while, residents are continuously leaving crumbs or allowing fruit to mould on surfaces.

Would they think to wipe the cooker down after spattering it with tomato sauce in their own home, I wonder?

It’s ok though. We realise that this is part of the job of a residency host. We accept it, with only the *occasional grumble, and know we can’t be too precious about anything in that room.

*Hi. ‘Dad’ here. Please don’t put unwashed yoghurt pots in the recycling bags. I need to handle them at the other end, so it’s not a pleasant experience for me nor the recycling gentlemen. Thanks, your lactose-intolerant friend, Colin

It’s a pretty crap kitchen to be honest. We always introduce it as ‘our retro kitchen’. ‘It was last updated in 1964, so if anything falls off in your hands, please don’t worry about it!’

As you could probably guess from the description, it’s incredibly brown! Brown wooden cupboards, brown hexagonal tiles (much of the grout now worn away, opening a channel for scraps to linger longer), a brown ceramic sink (that will smash the toughest glass with the slightest graze), and brown linoleum on the floor (now showing serious signs of wear and tear). It’s one saving grace: sweet little tiles interspersed between the brown ones on the walls, depicting lovely illustrations of herbs.

Unfortunately, we can’t afford to smash it out (despite a daily yearning), but we have given it a minor update by adding blackboard paint to some of the brown woodwork. We now welcome residents with a cupboard branded with a ‘Bonjour’ and their name, so they know where to keep their stuff.

The big table in the middle of the room has been a game changer as far as workspace is concerned, but it can get tight if multiple people are trying to cook at the same time. We’ve considered adding arrows to the blackboards to indicate that everyone should move in a clockwise direction!

‘It’s the people’s kitchen’ I often explain, if someone is feeling bad about being in my space. The dishes, glasses, pans, none of these are special to us.

Still, I can’t help grimacing when I see someone scrubbing frantically with a scourer on a non-stick pan.

Colin asked a guy four times to use a wooden spatula in the pan, rather than a sharp metal knife (I kid you not!). Four times! He gave up asking after that.

‘He doesn’t adult very well’ he grumbled reluctantly.

Are these people completely ignorant of the dangers of plastic particles I wonder? Don’t they understand that damaging the Teflon will release millions of teeny weeny bits of it directly into their food? Into everyone’s food! Arrrrrgh!!!!

You can tell a surprising amount about someone from how they behave in a shared kitchen.

We ask a lot of questions on our application form, and we’re highly selective, only accepting around one out of three applications, mostly because we’re uncertain about ‘character’. But you can only learn so much about a person by their answers; what professional experience they have, what they’re planning to work on, why they’d like to come. But a person’s character is only truly revealed when they get here.

I mean, pre-heating the electric oven for ten minutes, just to warm up a croissant, during a heatwave, that should be a criminal offence, should it not?

Colin can’t abide the smell of cooked butter (one of his stomach’s main enemies), so when we had a Chinese resident who baked a cake every single afternoon to have with her tea ceremony, he was close to packing his bags and walking out the door.

The smelliest challenge for me though came one morning when a vegan decided to beat the rush and cook a massive lentil stew at six in the morning. I can understand why she thought it was a good idea; she’d have time and space and wouldn’t feel as if she was in anyone’s way. However, the aroma of onions and garlic wafted up to our bedroom, waking me from my slumber. A little hard to stomach first thing, as you can imagine.

Some people love to cook for others, and occasionally groups get into cooking for each other. These groups tend to bond the best, getting into a daily routine of coming together around 6 p.m. to share a glass of wine and a meal. Others prefer to cook and eat alone, with a good book or iPad for company.

Some like to talk in the kitchen; some even like to talk too much and continue to talk to you even after you’ve left the room! Others can be silent, so silent that they don’t even lift their face from the chopping board to acknowledge your presence.

I’m not sure which of these I find more challenging.

Some people like ice and lots of it! I’m not bothered by it personally; it just gets in the way and bounces off your teeth, but we installed an American-style fridge freezer with an ice machine nonetheless, as we never seemed to have enough trays to satisfy our residents. There was only one place this gadget could live, which just so happened to be in the absolute opposite corner to the water source! The plumber did a lovely job of inserting a copper pipe all the way around the two walls to plumb it in. (He even hoovered the top of our cupboards while he was up there! What a star).

Despite our good intentions, some people expect too much ice from this machine. Americans especially seem to love the stuff! One American resident took a pint glass full of ice to his room, then was confused as to why he couldn’t have a further pint an hour later. Colin had to show him inside the freezer door before he understood that the machine had to make the ice in a small unit inside. He seemed genuinely astonished!

I’m wondering if some Americans grow up with limitless ice on demand?

Not only does this high-traffic room need to function for up to five humans at a time, it’s also where two cats eat and, up until four months ago, a Labrador also.

It’s like Piccadilly Circus in there at times.

Most residents see the cats as a bonus. A couple of cute little friends to rub against their ankles as they cook. Mewing and purring as they bend down to give their backs a little scratch. But the occasional person loses patience with them, not realising that a simple end could be put to this unwanted attention by adding a handful of kibbles to its bowl. That’s all it’s after really.

One resident really didn’t like Henri Quat’. I mean, he can be a little high-pitched and persistent, I admit. A good communicator, let’s say? Colin heard a calamity in the kitchen, so he checked the security camera to make sure all was well. She was caught in the act of ‘moving’ the cat out the back door with her foot, then frantically blocking the cat flap with a large bottle of washing-up liquid to ensure no re-entry. Grrrrr!

We’re constantly checking that the gas cooker has been turned off nowadays. Our imagination turning to a horrifying vision of a cat-shaped fire ball burning the house down.

We used to turn a blind eye if someone wanted to smoke a bit of hash whilst in residence. ‘No big deal’, we thought. But one resident changed all that when she put our pets and the house at risk.

She’d managed to get her hands on thirty euros worth of resin and was straight with us about it. ‘That’s fine,’ we said, ‘as long as you smoke in the garden’. Little did we know that she would smoke the entire amount in just four days! She floated around the house, completely spaced.

She stood and washed her hands slowly and meticulously at the kitchen sink one time, then turned around and just stood there, hands in the air, staring blankly.

‘Is it this you’re after?’ Colin asked, handing her a towel.

‘Oh yeah. Thanks. Ummm, I’ve run out of matches, would I be able to quickly light my smoke on the gas hob and go directly outside with it?’

‘Ok’, we answered reluctantly. Off she headed to the garden to smoke weed and watch weeds grow.

We all went out for a day trip on the Sunday, leaving Dougie the dog at home with the cats. A lovely afternoon was had, driving through the green, lush countryside and visiting some of our favourite old villages. We were away for about five hours altogether.

The stoner must have remembered while out. But she never confessed to her niggling concern.

On our return, she dashed through the door, pushing ahead of Colin, and ran into the kitchen. He was quick to follow her to find out what the hurry was. Quick enough to see her run over to the cooker hob and turn off the lit gas.

We don’t allow drug use here anymore.

We can set the rules and ask as many questions as we can think of before they arrive, but we’ve learned through experience that you only really discover what someone’s like when you start sharing a kitchen with them.

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Sharing the Kitchen on a Creative Residency

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