My kitchen is a mess.

The stove, and the wall behind it is splattered with tomato sauce. The floor is littered with bits of onion skin, lost basil leaves, and sesame seeds. The backsplash behind the sink is splattered with dirt.

It’s not that I don’t clean. In fact, I’m a bit obsessed with cleaning. I’ve been accused (rightly, I’m afraid) of preferring to stay home and mop the floors rather than go out on a Friday night.

But I can clean constantly, and still have a messy kitchen, because the kitchen is in near-constant use. It’s a working space, and I’ve learned to accept it as such. Right now there is a vat of pasta sauce boiling down on the stove, and an hour ago, the kitchen was the scene of a massive vegetable preparation operation. There will necessarily be dirt, vegetables and tomato sauce everywhere. Earlier, it was being used for pasteurising the morning’s milk and for making mayonaise. Later, it will be covered in flour as I roll out homemade pasta.

Flipping through a Home and Garden magazine, you could be forgiven for thinking that kitchens are meant to be gleaming, spotless backdrops for perfect flower arangements. Ours, however, is usually a grubby setting for a pile of dirty dishes.

Our kitchen works hard. All five burners on our stove are regularly going at once, and some days, I swear we wash every pot, bowl and spoon twice. A space hosting so much activity can only be truly clean for brief moments—say, between midnight and 2 am on every fouth Tuesday.

But a kitchen like ours is also a scene of laughter, life, and love. It is steeped in delicious odours, and tantalizing flavours. It is where the produce of the garden is transformed into the fuel for our bodies and the treats for our celebrations. It’s not a messy kitchen, it’s an exuberant one.