House Rules: Living with gadgets

A recent birthday saw the introduction of a Nutribullet into my life. I’m excited by this and looking forward to feeling as well as the people in the thick wodge of books and leaflets that arrived with it appear to be. The fridge is full of leafy greens and the fruit bowl is bursting with things to be extracted, not juiced, but extracted. Extraction, it seems, is much better for you.

The Nutribullet (from €106 at Harvey Norman) has edged out the old juicer that I’ve had for years but used only in fits and starts because it’s such a pain to clean. But the arrival of the extractor meant that something else had to go. There’s no counter space left, and the gap between the top of the cupboards and ceiling is already home to the pasta-maker – plus a thick layer of dust on top of the box – and the old food processor.

That’s the trouble with gadgets. They’re so exciting in the adverts and it’s easy to get sucked into the lifestyle promises they make but few people have space for the full bread-maker/ yogurt-maker/complete pasta set plus ravioli adaptor/ KitchenAid combo. Even if you do, they start to mock you after a while, the longer you leave them unused.

So how do you live with gadgets, when there’s a new must-have every month? One answer is a strict one in – one out policy. Hence the demise of the old juicer. Another trick is to choose items with a small footprint. Here the Nutribullet wins again, because it doesn’t take up much worktop space – although that advance is negated by the number of extra plastic cups that come with it.

Nespresso scores well here too, if you don’t go for the full-on frothing extras. But having just spotted a rather impressive GreenValu Wheatgrass Juicer (€195 at Avoca), for which I have absolutely no room in my life, yet still vaguely desire, I came up with another idea. What about a shop or website that will rent you the latest thing in kitchen marvels?

They could get cheaper over time as they get less new, desirable and cool, and you could even get a (small) discount if you return them after the rental period never having actually taken them out of the box.