Aesthetics are important to any home to make them feel homey and tailored to the people living inside.
But aesthetics need to come second to function, especially in spaces like the kitchen and bathroom, pointed out the members of the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITAH) subReddit.
Redditor 1WARMBEER loved to cook and only cared about having space in his kitchen to create when he and his wife got a new home.
But when his wife insisted on decorating the kitchen along with the rest of the house, and made the space highly unusable, the Original Poster (OP) decided not to cook anymore.
He asked the sub:
“AITAH for refusing to cook in our kitchen because my wife decorated it?”
The OP and his wife bought a house together and began to make it a home.
“My wife (35 Female) and I (37 Male) bought a house together two years ago.”
“She had a laundry list of things she absolutely had to have in the home, but I only cared about one thing: I wanted a good kitchen with plenty of room to work.”
“I’ve been cooking my whole life and I cook all the meals. I wouldn’t call myself an amazing cook, I’m sure I’m average as h**l, but I do love it and have made cooking in the house my responsibility.”
“We found a beautiful house that we both love, and everything was fine. She added her flair to most of the rooms. I let her choose the paint and furniture and wall art. We both paid our share on everything and the house is gorgeous.”
“I love it. She has great taste.”
But when his wife started “upgrading” the kitchen, the OP wasn’t happy about it.
“However, a few months ago she started talking about wanting to do the kitchen. I was open to it. It was now the only room in the house that hadn’t gotten personalized and it made it stick out.”
“The problem was that she wanted to put random nick-nacks all over the place. Every day she was coming from the store with some new item. Baskets with fake fruit. Big ceramic pots for flour (we don’t bake).”
“Bringing home the pots set off the first alarm in my mind, because while I do use flour for coating and thickening stuff, I don’t need a whole containers worth on hand at all times (one bag lasts me months and I was always told it’s best to leave it in the bag it came in so it sits in the dark pantry). Maybe I’m ignorant but I can only imagine a baker needs 12 cups of flour ready to go.”
“But then she added book-sized wooden blocks with ‘sweet’ sayings on them. A wine rack and espresso machine (we don’t drink either!). Vinegrette decanters with glittery liquid in them. Decorative plates that sit on the cabinet shelves (in front of the real dishes).”
When the decorative items completely overtook the kitchen’s functionality, the OP lost it.
“It all came to a head when I found that she had put the toaster oven in the under cabinet and moved my big ol chopping block to above the fridge so she can put a full serving tray with four cups, saucers and a kettle set up in the middle of the counter (like we’re hosting afternoon tea, but we never do that).”
“I told her I was not on board. The kitchen is the perfect size to get cooking done. I use the toaster oven three times a day.”
“As far as the toaster oven….I use it to toast rolls, bolillos, and extra crispy tortillas. The regular oven takes too long to preheat for just a stack of tortillas/rolls. I eat em daily. It makes sense for it to take up some counter space instead of having to take it out and put it away several times every day.”
“Also, my butcher’s block lives in a set spot on the counter. It lives there cause I use it all the time.”
“I asked her where there was even space left for me to put down my 20×28 butcher’s block?”
“She started showing what could be moved over to accommodate the block and I said that I wasn’t moving stuff around every single time I want to cut a melon.”
It was clear to the OP that his wife was set on making the design decisions in the kitchen, too.
“She kept saying it wasn’t a big deal and I’d get used to it but I stood firm on wanting all this random stuff out of where I essentially work.”
“She started crying and saying stuff like, ‘You don’t get to just decide what’s what.'”
“We tried talking about it again a few times and it always ends with her crying. I don’t yell or anything. She just refuses to accept that I don’t want a cute kitchen more than I want a useful one.”
The OP refused to cook in a kitchen that did not work for him.
“I haven’t cooked a full meal in our kitchen in two months. I make a few days’ worth at a time (of rice or potatoes and a tray full of proteins, bags of salad, frozen soup.). I pack it up in the fridge to eat as needed. She’s invited to eat any of it but she doesn’t like leftovers.”
“She recently realizes she’s gaining weight, wasting tons of time in drive-thru lines and paying lots of money for food she doesn’t even enjoy.”
“Last night, we tried once again to talk about the kitchen and it ended with me saying if it’s so important, then just let me have the kitchen how it needs to be to cook right.”
The OP’s wife accused him of using her health to get back at her.
“She started crying again and accused me of blackmailing her health to win an argument.”
“I gave up after that and we both had to leave for work before we could talk it over.”
“I work from home, and sometimes I have to pick up paperwork before the day starts from a close-by job site, which was what I had to do that day. When I got back home, I tried to work but kept going back to this argument.”
“I feel dead set that as the person actually using the kitchen, cooking tools should not have to compete for space with useless shit and I refuse to cook in such a cumbersome way.”
“What do y’all think?”
“AITAH?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in:
- NTA: Not the A**hole
- YTA: You’re the A**hole
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
Some side-eyed the OP’s wife for crying about the one room the OP didn’t want her to decorate.
“What’s the crying about? She decorated every other room and you supported her, and even complimented her design skill. I don’t understand why she’s crying over the kitchen.”
“I want to clarify the meals you cook in advance are not “leftovers”, they’re pre-packaged meals. When you cook them and immediately store them, that’s not “leftover”. Normally homecooked meals are healthier than convenience food/fast food.”
“You’re doing the cooking, if she wants all that crap in your workspace she should cook. This would drive me insane.” – Maeyhem
“Feels like she’s manipulating you with her tears. Worse she’s not able to control her emotions and focus on the objective facts, here.” – Constant_Growth5751
“The kitchen is my kingdom. No Knick knacks, no bulls**t, stuff has a place because it’s convenient for me to use it.”
“It’s clean, it’s neat.”
“And luckily the wife doesn’t put these bullshit things like ‘live love laugh’ posters around because I’d replace it with “coke anal bdsm” right away.” – Ataru074
“The person who uses the kitchen, in this scenario, you should have a say in how and where things are placed in the environment of work.”
“Putting a toaster oven, that is used for almost every meal, at a place where you need to move it every time you want to cook is stupid, inefficient, and a pain.”
“A kitchen is made to cook, not to show case a bunch of junk. I get having a few decorations, put it needs to be functional first.”
“NTA.” – Ambroisie_Cy
“If she doesn’t cook, she doesn’t understand everything is set up a certain way for a reason. Cooking is all about timing. When you have your equipment in the right place, the meal comes together and nothing is overcooked or undercooked.”
“I also think that having to move the toaster oven 6 times a day asking for an injury. I know OP isn’t old, but it happens.”
“The big injuries are always caused by something minor. I slipped a disc in my back when picking up clothes from the bathroom floor when I was 26.” – h_witko
Others pointed out that wanting aesthetics over functionality had consequences.
“Choosing aesthetics over functionality as well as being completely dismissive of her husband’s feelings and dismissive of the wants and needs of the only one who cooks.”
“Then she starts using tears in an effort to manipulate him into giving her her way, knowing that if she truly cared about the kitchen, it wouldn’t be the last room to be decorated.”
“She sounds insufferable.” – Gladtobealive2020
“I’m cringing while reading this. I love to cook, too. And I have to guess, it’s all from Ross, isn’t it it? It’s a Ross Dress For Less Kitchen, isn’t it?”
“It’s a spice rack shaped like a chicken and it only holds spices that start with a C! Celery salt. Celery seeds. Cinnamon. Cardimom. Charnushka seeds. What’s that? I don’t care! It starts with a C! It’s cool! And these new chicken towels! Be careful, they are flammable but suuuuper cute, you know?”” – TeachOfTheYear
“Listen, I’m not going to ding a guy for saying his wife has great taste when to me her taste seems dated and tacky. But yeah, I don’t know that she does have great taste, but you do you, except when it comes to removing the functionality of a room, especially a room like the kitchen.” – haleorshine
“Yeah, I like watching those videos but mostly to marvel at the lengths people will go to to make things “pretty”. My house is nice and I have art on the walls and cute things that mean something to me on display.”
“But mostly my house is functional. Things live where they get used (sometimes disguised, often not) and anyone who thinks things need to constantly be ‘put away’ can go home and do it there.” – MusketeersPlus2
“You don’t want a bunch of useless dust-catchers in the place where you prepare your food. Who is dusting and sanitizing all of that crap?”
“Your wife sounds like an immature Pinterest addict, OP. She needs to grow up and stop crying and manipulating when she doesn’t get her way. Kitchens are for preparing food, not for decorating with useless props to make people think you live a certain lifestyle.” – Viola-Swamp
“As someone who cooks, and has for 40 years, the mere idea of ‘fridgescaping’ is enough to make me scream. If you cook, you want space to cook in. It should be clean, at the very least when you start and when you finish. But it should also be functional for its use.”
“Your fridge should be somewhat organized, but too much organization will take away space to actually store stuff. It too should be cleaned regularly. Those little soda can storage racks? Yuck!”
“Looks okay, until you realize it takes up twice the space as your soda cans, and you can’t reclaim the space by putting something on top of them. The stacks of food containers, half filled with ingredients? Same thing… Wasted space that can’t be reclaimed for other uses.” – Firespryte01
While the subReddit could understand wanting the whole house to be pretty and matching, there was a big difference between basic decorating and completely taking over the space with items that don’t serve a purpose in the space.
If the wife wanted her husband to cook healthy meals for her, she needed to give him space to do that, which meant space to work and space to keep necessarily items, especially ones that were being used so frequently.