To the casual observer it might merely look like a dumb waiter. A wooden box that hauls between the floors of the house by counterweight pulley, but to me it represents a fine freedom and every home should have one. The most wonderful technology since buckets got handles. I mean imagine, before that you could only carry what you could scoop up in your hands.
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Certainly I have down days, who doesn’t? There is the maintenance work I have to attend to. Keeping the winch strings untangled, unfrayed, oiling the moving metal parts is a monthly must but mostly my time is my own.
And before all you feminist types get carried away let me tell you it was me came up with the idea. No more maniacal beetle-like heaving up and down those high step stairs. No more fallen arches, throbbing calves, creaking knees, as I haul up and down. Doing what all women do, sorting clean from dirty. Now I can hoist away even the largest of sacks without even a broken fingernail.
When I first climbed in everything seemed right, the edge of the ledge was perfect for me to sit on as I slid myself around. I had to curl myself, had to bend my head quite a bit but eventually I got all in. It made me giggle to be crammed inside a toy lift but as I jiggled around onto my back I found a way of getting comfy, then when my husband gave me these cushions, well- snug as a bug in a rug.
At first of course it felt strange, the click as the bottom door came automatically up to meet the top, the way the walls appeared to move and I did get a nasty graze once when my elbow wasn’t far enough inside but now it’s pretty much plain sailing.
Obviously I know that other women don’t live in theirs, but once I put up pretty pink curtains and that sticky plastic view of Marbella it was truly my space. I can sit for hours imagining myself inside that blue sea it’s no different to a telly. Sit, deeply contented in my private place my, elevator.
My name is Maj and i live in a women's commune in Wales writing on a solar powered lap top