Nine out of ten of us would buy another white kitchen island tomorrow if we could. None of us hesitate, we’d throw it straight on the trolley. One of us thinks white islands are the collective act of a mad family and has mentioned this weekly/monthly/yearly, usually while pointing vehemently at a patch near the sink edge that we have scrubbed with sugar soap, harassed with the magic sponge and attacked with the specific cleaner one of us bought specifically for that mark who now REFUSES to accept that it was a waste of £11.
Look, let’s talk about turmeric. Because nobody tells you that turmeric doesn’t care how white your worktops are once you start using them. Instagram turmeric is polite! Curries near your photos-perfect island will splash and roar and stodge themselves into your edges without asking.
Two of us have matching yellow smudges down the edge of our worktops from two DIFFERENT curries cooked two DIFFERENT YEARS apart and it was only by comparing circumstances over lunch that we realised the ironic similarities.
It happens.
A lot.
Despite that, every single one of us who doesn’t work in DIY say that yes, yes we’d do it again, because when everything else in your kitchen is telling you a story about who lives there – The baby gallery wall that migrated from the hallway when we ran out of wall; the wolves in our fridge; the oak approaching #######ism on the sidesplash–your white island is having none of it. Your white island is simply sitting there saying ‘This is a kitchen.’ It doesn’t matter if the floors are brown tiles and the cupboards are seven different shades of grey. Nobody cares about what your splashback is made of when your work surface looks like it belongs in Pottery Barn. Your white island says to everything else ‘feel free to do your thing but I will neuter you with serenity.’
True story – one of us got the wrong one first. Thought they were similar but cheaper worktop, thinner edge. By year 1 we had developed a vague grey shadow just where our hands naturally rest every single time we reach for the fruit bowl. Got the white glove one to replace it. Wouldn’t change a thing. Talks about it proudly at every opportunity.
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But…the reason we’re all still sat here really,is for the use of it. How it actually gets lived with more than any of the above points. At breakfast it’s cereal bowls and milky rings. It’s homework at one end and onion chopping at the other at the same time every evening. It’s dumping ground for post shoved as soon as anyone opens the door despite having five perfectly good bells and catches to put it on. It’s four stools that, incredibly, are only ever used by one person at a time EVEN THOUGH IT SAID ENTERTAINING ON THE BOX.
White island dissenter has said, often, that white kitchen islands show EVERY. SINGLE. MARK.
And mid grey does a similar job but doesn’t fill you with self-loathing when mango juice gets spat onto it.
Says we’ve been brainwashed into thinking white = clean instead of what it actually means, which is white=work.
She makes a valid point, calm down. She’s not going spare either.
But she will never convince the other eight of us. Ask the kettle. Ask the forks. White factored heavily into why we chose our kitchen ISLANDS to look like THIS and the kitchen disagrees with and overrules her every time. Want to know the secret behind happy white islands? They’re not about staying white. They’re about having at least one surface in your home that looks like it giving a damn about how you treat it, on the days you definitely aren’t.
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