Exactly! You don't even see the mess.

It's funny you mention the cabinets. My wife and I can tell whenever my siblings have been over: they're all incorrigible cabinet goblins.

I still leave cabinets open, but it's typically because I'm using it as a reminder to return whatever I had taken from the cabinet. Of course, my Cabinet Sight still has a ways to go, so the thing doesn't get returned until I actually notice the open cabinet the next day.

Open cabinet doors drive me crazy because they look like a concussion waiting to happen.

Can confirm. Have bonked my head on cabinets multiple times. The danger is primarily in bending-over-then-standing motions.

Life hack: if you keep all your bottom cabinets open, you don't have to bend over to see what's inside :^)

At that point, why not just take the doors off?

Open shelving is a thing. No one said your cabinets need to have doors.

There is a spectrum everyone is on, where at one end is emotional distress at cabinets being ajar, and the other end is ignoring a smoke alarm chirping every 43 seconds for six months. Somewhere on that spectrum is, "I don't care for the doors but I don't want to be bothered to remove them."

This is so funny. That same friend of mine came over a few months prior and was like "HOLY SHIT how do you live with that noise its driving me crazy"

I'd been living here for like 5 months at that point and had completely blocked out the noise of a dead fire alarm in my basement.

I think there's a metaphor for putting up with crappy code in there somewhere.

We had some tall cabinet doors that we were particularly prone to hitting our heads on, so we replaced them with curtains. Did the same for some closets with sliding doors when I got annoyed with only being able to access half the closet at once. The curtains hide the clutter, and IMO look nicer than the doors did.

that takes even more planning snd effort than just closing them

Then you have to dust more stuff!

Worse than dust, kitchens are regularly filled with clouds (however thin) of cooking oil. I had an apartment once where the landlord was apparently too cheap for cupboard doors or a proper exhaust fan, and infrequently-used dishes got nasty.

Ughh yeah, you'd end up with a gross semi-polymerized sticky film on stuff.

if you have pets you sure do!

Yah, they do have utility though, they guard the contents from a higher degree of exposure to dust and kitchen exhaust grime and any splatter that should occur in the space that goes in all directions. Easier to wipe a more or less flat planar surface than the intricate surfaces possibly pervious surfaces of the contents.

Oh, I agree. My cabinets have doors, and I keep them closed. But if you’re already leaving all your cabinets open at all times, you might as well just get the doors out of your way.

If opened all my bottom cabinet doors in the kitchen, I still couldn’t see everything. I’m too tall and the room isn’t that big, so the viewing angle is all wrong.

Same way the top shelf of the fridge disappears. Bad angle.

Both require bending over then standing.

Edit: There’s just enough room to back up and see it all in the cabinet. I’m sorry I lied.

This is a minor point of annoyance between me and my husband, I think because of our height difference. He likes to open ALL the cabinets when putting away dishes, and sometimes leaves them open. I, with eye level much closer to the bottom edge of the doors, walk in and see all these corners waiting for me to run into them. When I put away dishes, I open a cabinet, put away everything that belongs there, close it and move along to the next one.

But I also think it's a difference in how we were raised, because he does not push his chair in after leaving a table either..........

I had a roommate who did this every time they went to the kitchen, like a cupboard- and cabinet-opening spectre.

I do this. Unless the organization system is super well-mapped in my brain, I don't trust that I know where things are. Opening all the cupboards makes me feel like I can actually approach the problem of finding the toolkit I need to perform a task. Hyper-organized kitchens have the toolkits pre-assembled in bins placed in cupboards. That's hard to do.

(Perhaps related: a `util` class is basically a junk drawer in a kitchen. Some kitchens are basically just giant junk drawers. Good luck finding anything, but hey putting things away is super easy - just put it wherever it fits!)

I used to take the cabinet doors off all my rentals -- less for me keeping track of what was where and more for guests so they didn't need to ask where anything was.

Yeah, this feels like the best solution if you prefer open cabinets for whatever reason. Leaving the doors on and open is just laying booby traps for the next person that wanders in.

Sharpie + labels.

Don't you ever bash your head into the corner of an open cabinet?

on a similar note. about a decade ago, I was sharing apartment with a good friend. It was 2 bed/1.5 bath apartment. He had a bad habit of leaving the shower-tub knob on 'shower' after he's done. I was a late person so usually ended up showering last. My bad habit was that I didn't pay attention to the knob before starting the shower. For first week every single day I got a blast of freezing water on my face, until one day I confronted him! obviously that didn't work. So one day I woke up early and did the same thing to him. From that day our habits changed. I always check the shower knob before turning it on.

Huh - I never would've thought to turn the knob back to tub. Why were you being blasted in the face by cold water? Do you get in the shower before turning it on?

Perhaps this is a regional thing... living in Michigan I've always let the water warm up first (perhaps drought is a concern where you live?)

Also, most showers I've used automatically switch back to tub mode once the water shuts off. Maybe he's used to that style!

we had a manual switch at that time. I was new to the new england area and I grew up in a tropical country :-) so never had a habit to check before starting the shower.

Ah so this is one of those things where neither of you were really right or wrong. If you'd grown up in New England you'd have known that the "right" behavior was to turn the shower on and warm it up before you got in. Having grown up there myself I have to say it would never occur to me to turn a shower on while standing in it and I'd assume nobody else would either because it's guaranteed to be painful, even in summer and even when it's just water coming out of the tub faucet onto your feet. My family always left ours on shower mode and never had an issue for this exact reason. Always so interesting to learn about the little things people from other places do differently!

I think back then I used to get in the shower, turn on the tub faucet, and when it was warm enough, switch. to be honest I still do that sometimes by mistake :-)

> most showers I've used automatically switch back to tub mode

this is nice indeed, but not universal sadly

> Do you get in the shower before turning it on?

In some large buildings I've lived in, it takes like 1 second for the water to be warm -- it's magnificent. So yeah, if you have a shower-over-tub in that kind of place it is easier to get in, have the 12 ounces of cold water go harmlessly into the tub, then switch to shower.

I know it’s not for everyone.. this is solvable by putting your cabinets on a soft closing track installed at a slight angle to help cabinets easily close on its own. Cabinet doors also have some tweaks that can be done. I get it’s a for a habit but if anyone has a problem with remembering it’s sometimes easier to let the natural motion of the door build some muscle memory.

My better half has very few things that catch my attention in a less than positive way, one is not turning off the lights. It’s like a museum tour to learn what has been visited that day.

They have had the lights turned off for them their whole life despite being super independent otherwise. So I just used it as an excuse to install some Caseta wifi light switches and suddenly the lights were turned off before bed because it was remembered but too much work to do once in bed. But because the Apple Watch had an extension app it was easy enough to do. It doesn’t mean everything should be automated but it was one that kept a small thing into a fun and easy going solve. It made it easier to consider motorized blinds due.

The solution is to not have any doors.

The number of people on this thread who leave cabinets open (and apparently come families of cabinet-door-openers) is astounding to me. Do you all leave toilet seats up too? What about the refrigerator? Car doors? Dresser drawers? Do you not push your chair in when you get up from the table? Do you at least return shopping carts?

I am not an organized person, I see a horizontal surface and I put stuff on it. But leaving doors open? I don’t think I even take my hand off the cabinet door when I open it. One hand for the door, one for the thing I’m getting.

The only door I leave open is the washing machine, so it can dry out. It gets closed the next time I’m in the laundry room though.

Toilet seats don't belong in that list l.

I cringe when watching actors on television make an entrance but don't close the door.

One of those is not like the others. I see no issue leaving a toilet seat up.

It's just as easy for the next person to put it down as it was for me to put it up.

It’s not for the next person. It’s to keep the stuff in the toilet, in the toilet, rather than as an aerosolized spray that gets spread about.[1][2]

I guess it doesn’t really matter if your toilet is in its own room, but at least most houses in the US have the toilet next to the sink (where your toothbrush is).

Put the seat down before you flush, because it’s more sanitary.

[1] https://microbiologysociety.org/news/society-news/does-putti...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4692156/

Do any of these microbes or quantity of such that would be released actually pose a risk to your day-to-day health?

I skimmed that study, and it mentions possible transmission of infectious diseases, but I mean, if you live alone, whats the harm?

You're talking about the lid, not the seat. Also, some of that aerosolised spray stays airborne under the lid and is released when you open it [1].

[1] I think Mary Roach talked about this in this interview by Adam Savage, but don't remember exactly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfZ9RrxQ5NM

And do these people not dust?

The horror!

I definitely do not. If things get grubby I'll eventually scrub every surface with a sponge.

But also, what does dusting have to do with leaving doors open?

I have literally slept overnight with my front door open multiple times this winter.

I am probably in like the 99th percentile of aloof people

Open cabinets are in vogue now. Keep the doors open and you're weird. Remove them altogether and you're stylish.

I hate cabinet doors… only time I think of them one just almost punctured my skull

An illuminating experience for me was a housemate and a fairly sharp one at that who wondered if we would get visited by ghosts at night because cabinet doors were always open in the kitchen in the morning. It didn't occur to her that the extremely more likely scenario was that I would scavenge around after she went to sleep and never shut doors.