Your Mother Should Know

[mme_hardy]

When my husband and I moved into our first house, my mother helped me unpack the kitchen. She insisted that we line the drawers and cabinet shelves with wax paper. I went along with this, because what did I know about housekeeping? The stated purpose was that when the cabinets became dirty, you could whisk out the wax paper and put in a new set, thus avoiding having to scrub the shelves. (Clean out the cabinets. Ahahahahaha.) Eventually the wax paper became tattered and we ripped it out, then put the glasses and dishes flat on the shelves like the sluttish housekeepers we are. That was the end of that. Three moves later, the dishes shamelessly flaunt their unsafe intimacy with the vinyl.

That’s the point. If your shelves are covered in vinyl, two things will never happen: the dishes won’t sink into the paint, and you won’t ever have to scrub painted (or otherwise) wood. Because of this, you won’t find shelf paper at -- I nearly said your five and dime -- Bed, Board, and Basket. (There are scented drawer liners, but they’re a feminine frippery rather than a necessity.)
I just bought an early 20th century music cabinet with slide-out shelves. I’m going to be using it to store fabric, so I decided to look up drawer liners on Ebay. While I was refining my search phrases,I stumbled into a world of wonderment: shelf edging.

Back when most kitchens had rows of open shelves, the shelf edges were a long blank space, and therefore an ideal canvas for decoration. At first ladies embroidered edgings (the first is German, the second French.)

The ingenious makers of paper lace saw a market and filled it (German again).

At some point, the American Royledge company stepped in. Their innovation was shelf paper with an integrated edging. You put the paper in, then folded the edge down, killing two frills with one stone. ClickAmerica has more reproductions of Royledge ads. My suspicion is that shelf edgings were killed off by the ubiquity (at least in the U.S.) of kitchen cabinets.

 

I expect several of you to tell me that of course you line your shelves. However, how many of you clothe their edges?

In case, as usually happens, I have utterly messed up embedding, an imgur album (with bonus pictures!) follows. Edit: Ironically, Dreamwidth is breaking the imgur embed.

Comments

[movingfinger]

I have vinyl nonskid/nonstick shelf and drawer liners! Because we have old wooden, painted shelves. Also, it saves chipping (hah).

Comes from the hardware store, in my experience. If you want to get fancy, use by-the-yard vinyl tablecloth and staple it down.

Edgings would drive me bats. No matter what they were made of.

[mme_hardy]

I was going to mention Con-Tact paper, but I couldn't think where to put it in. Dish chipping or shelf chipping?

[movingfinger]

Glass/dish chipping is theoretically prevented. Also, it's nonskiddy, so theoretically, some slight traction in a quake.

I even have (as you know) open shelves, so I should have shelf edging, obviously. It seems very much a More Work For Mother kind of item though.

Con-Tact paper is the work of the devil. My mother used it to line some cabinets and it took acetone and a scraper to get that crap out in the end.

In drawers, a liner keeps utensils and pans from being quite so crash-and-bang.

[tigerflower]

You may not be surprised to hear that I line my shelves (with butcher paper). But I do not edge them, because I have cabinets, and not open shelves. I have been known to edge open shelves though not obsessively.

[mme_hardy]

I thought of you as I wrote this! Where do you buy large quantities of butcher paper?

[tigerflower]

You can buy it by the roll -- http://www.uline.com/BL_1956/Butcher-Paper?keywords=food%20safe%20paper

I picked up my last roll at a restaurant supply house, though.

[tigerflower]

Also, I clean my cabinets out yearly. Used to be twice a year, which was what I was raised with, but I'm slacking in my old age.

[perennialanna]

I line clothes drawers, because all those chests of drawers are made of actual recognisable wood (cheap pine, for the most part) and there is a fairish chance of splinters. I use lining paper (what you put up under wallpaper for a smoother finish. Also good for artistic four year olds who want to draw a river the length of the dining room).

The kitchen drawers and cupboards are all plastic-coated chipboard, s don't get lined.

[movingfinger]

At the link, the 1959 Royledge ad shows a pantry shelf. Interesting to see how many of those brands are still current.

As for shelf edging so my linen closet is ready for some critical audience... AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUGGGHHH

[mme_hardy]

If this ever comes to Martha Stewart's* attention...

* Or, more likely, one of her minions's.

[pameladean]

Well, some of our shelves are lined and some not. We do use contact shelf paper; my experience is that, rather than bonding to the shelf and requiring dynamite to remove, it will eventually peel itself off whether you are ready for that to happen or not. Possibly high mid-continental humidity is to blame; I don't know.

I usually, if I happen to have a burst of energy and want to line a shelf, cut the paper a couple of inches too long and fold the extra over the shelf edge and onto the underside of the shelf. Otherwise the edge of the contact paper peels off even sooner, and since it's not yet devoid of sticky stuff, catches on plates and cans and is a nuisance.

P.

Edited to clean up collision of two alternative phrasings.

My Kitchen: Actually Not a Showplace

[executrix]

...except that American Horror Story IS a show.

I saved a couple of the ads, thank you!--I can feel new icons coming on. Because Shelf Nudism is indeed a menace.

Err, I have a glass-doored wooden china cabinet and I have been known from time to time to apply shelf edging, although it tends to fall off.

[nanila]

Alas, how Royledge must despair of these naked modern shelves, thinking they don't need dressing because they're lurking behind cabinet doors.

[lexin]

I don't edge shelves. That way lies madness.

[mme_hardy]

One of the Royledge ads points out how much time you save with their product, because you don't have to take the edgings down, wash them, and put them back up.

[sollers]

Ditto. Why on earth?

(Particularly since all my actual shelves that don't have doors in front of them are bookshelves. And that includes the kitchen)

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I think my grandmother's kitchen had that stuff! Sudden flashback here.

[madrobins]

Oh my God: Nudism for Shelves, a problem I had never imagined.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

And unlike pantalettes for piano legs, it's real!

[howlgirl.livejournal.com]

My parents moved into a condo about 6 years ago. Every shelf in every closet had a decorated edge. Usually some combination of lace eyelet, ribbon and rick rack. I'm not 100% sure mom has ripped them all out, but I know it was her mission for awhile.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Oh, God, were they glued instead of thumbtacked?

[howlgirl.livejournal.com]

Yes, layers of glue to attach the various combinations. Ugly. ugly, ugly!

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I...I do line my shelves. But I have left them nude of edging.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I can tell you where to buy paper lace! Or French embroidery, if you have the $$$.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I cannot tell you how desperately I want to see photos of the inside of the music cabinet.

I have seen music-specific storage exactly once in my life outside an academic context: my college flute teacher (who looked like an Armenian Lauren Bacall) had a music cabinet that I loved.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

When the sellers dropped it off, they said it had been the husband's grandparents' cabinet; I'd guess he was, like me, in his 50s, and he thought it was at least 50 years old. He added that he had no idea why they had it, because they didn't play music.

I'm somewhat skeptical that it's actually a music cabinet, under the circs.

Here's the interior. It's about 22" wide by 39" tall, not including casters.

Re:

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It could be a music cabinet. The 22" width would allow for oversized parts, although certainly in the US most music is printed on letter-sized paper.

Re:

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

It's going to be a Very Useful Object; the shelves are widely spaced. (And thus would hold multi-instrument scores, including piano transcriptions of operas.)

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Those scores are large enough that they're best kept upright in bookcases, though, even if paperbound. Music cabinets are most practical for music that flops around when stored upright.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

This would work very well for that purpose, although it would be a pain flipping through all the sheets on a shelf looking for "Under the Bamboo Tree".

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Haha, yes. (Presume you have heard the wonderful Joan Morris/William Bolcom recording "After the Ball," which includes "Under the Bamboo Tree"?)

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Yes! In fact, I was spacing on the name of the song I wanted, so I started running through titles from that very album. (I eventually remembered: "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now", which I sang and played as a wee thing.)

Re:

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Could it have been to hold old phonograph records?

Or legal files? Hmmm.

Re:

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

The shelves are 18" wide by 12" deep; they comfortably fit two standard sheets of paper side by side.

I wondered about phonograph records, too. The top is at a very comfortable height for a wind-up gramophone. There's no lip at the shelf front and the shelves are exactly 4" apart, so that rules out Edison cylinders, which were 4" high and could have spilled out when you slid the shelf out.