Unlike New York, Los Angeles kitchens don’t come with appliances so, when I moved into my apartment, I needed a stove and fridge. I bought the stove from the previous tenant; I inherited the frige from Garbo when she moved to New York.
It fit in to the space between the cabinets with room to spare but it opened the wrong way. Which meant that if I was at the stove and needed something, I had to go around the door to get to it. But, you live someplace for a long time, you get used to stuff. I’m used to turning on the hot water in the bathroom sink before I take a shower, the funny smell the heat makes when I first turn it on, the way the bathroom door doesn’t stay closed on account of all the shifting of the building from earthquakes. And I’m used to going around the fridge door to get inside of it. A fridge that opened the other way around, one that I could open with my left hand, would have to be special order. This was a gift, albeit a gift from a right handed person. One day, I figured, I’d get a new fridge and I’d order one with the handles put on the other way.
But I was wrong.
Of course I knew that some fridges had handles that could switch but mine didn’t have holes where the handles would go. Turns out, my fridge handles are held on with self-tapping screws; they make their own threads as they’re drilled in.
So this morning the switch was made and the fridge door flip flopped. It’s a small thing but it makes a big difference. Isn’t it always a small thing?