Many clients that a live-in carer is placed at are old and infirm, and while we are more than qualified to work with our clients, what we may not be familiar with is the sometimes-ancient kitchen equipment we find!

Oh, to be in a placement where the kitchen and everything in it is modern and new! Joy and bliss for sure. Doesn’t happen this way very often.

You may arrive at your new placement to be faced with an array of kitchen gadgets dating back to who knows when and which you have no idea what they are used for. A veritable nightmare for most live-in carers.

How on earth will we survive?

The first thing to do is to take your time, take a deep breath, have a good look around the kitchen and make a mental note of what you can use.

There are some basic items which you will need during your placement and if these are in place, you can ignore the others.

Knives

At least one good sharp knife to peel and chop. Even a blunt knife can be sharpened by scraping it on the base of a ceramic cup. While this will not be a permanent fix, it will give you a sharp knife right away.

Potato peeler

Not essential as you can always use your sharp knife for this, but it does help to have a potato peeler that you can hold and peel.

Wooden spoons

You will need at least one to stir soups and sauces, and generally mix things up. Although you can use a metal spoon, they will not help to remove lumps from custard.

Whisk of some sort

You may find an old hand held egg beater in a drawer. This is indeed a rare find as they are excellent gadgets and seem to last for years and years. They also work extremely well so if you find one then count yourself lucky as they are fast becoming extinct!

Potato masher

You may be lucky finding one of these and normally you will find it in the back of the ‘gadget drawer.’ 

It will be the item which prevents you from opening the drawer as it normally gets stuck upright among other clutter. Once you have given the drawer a shuffle around you may find the masher emerges. Voila!

Final thoughts

Once you have assembled your collection of usable gadgets, place them apart from the others, where you can have them handy when you need to use them.

For the rest of the weird and wonderful items you may find there, best to leave them where they are!

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