I can hear the wrenching crack from across the kitchen. “What the …?” says the middle one, turning around with a cupboard door in his hand. “You’ve pulled the bin door off,” I say. “I knew this day would come.” The kitchen came with a bin caddy that slides out of a recess next to the sink. But it never slid smoothly, and when it got stuck, people – not me – pulled too hard. After five years the plastic components began to bend and split under their impatience. At some point during lockdown I tried to reinforce the whole thing with globs of glue and a dozen tiny screws. In truth, my improvised solution lasted longer than I thought it would. “Now what?” my wife says, staring down at the broken door, the shredded brackets and the derailed bin carriage. “No idea,” I say. “I don’t even know who would fix this.” “A kitchen fitter?” she says. “A kitchen fitter fits your kitchen,” I say. “He wouldn’t get out of bed to put your bins back together.” Later that night we sit in front of the television, while I stare at my laptop. “Are you even watching this?” my wife says. “Because it was you who insisted on watching it.” “Sorry,” I say. “I’m just looking at Binopolis.” “What?” “A giant bin website,” I say. “Literally, a city of bins.” “Let me know if you learn anything,” my wife says. I learn many things. I learn that my bin problem and its corresponding bin solution are of the in-cupboard, pull-out door, 400mm variety. There is a page of technical advice that I do not think is meant for me. It refers to the end-user of the bin as “your client”. But there aren’t any checks to prevent an unqualified idiot from buying a bin and installing it. Next day my bin solution arrives in two boxes. It’s even more complicated than I feared. “Is that the price?” my wife says, looking at the invoice. “That doesn’t include my fee,” I say. “Also, it doesn’t come with screws, but I have lots of screws.” None of my screws fits the bill: short enough not to poke through the cupboard sides, but with heads big enough not to slip through holes in the fittings. It seems to be a size of screw professional kitchen fitters keep to themselves. I finally find what I need at B&Q: stubby screws with massive heads. I spend the evening dismantling the wreckage of the old bin, and cleaning out the years of rubbish behind it, until I have a clean box 400mm wide. In the morning, the real work soon proves impossible. I can’t get both arms and my head in the 400mm box at the same time. My glasses fall off. Screws drop out of my hand and land somewhere behind me. “How’s it going?” my wife says. “Terrible,” I say, from inside. “Professional fitters must have orphans to do this sort of thing.” By mid-afternoon, bruised and aching, I have installed two rails along opposite walls of the cupboard. They both retract smoothly, with a soft-close mechanism. I think: I am a genius. By suppertime, with careful and repeated reference to the eight pages of instructions, I have assembled the component that carries the bins. Everyone is in the kitchen loading plates with food as I introduce the carriage to the rails for the first time. “This slots here,” I say, “and then we simply …” I push. Nothing happens. “Wait, what?” I say. I push harder, and hear a terrible creak of buckling metal. “What’s the problem?” my wife says. “I don’t know!” I shout. Then I realise: the fat-headed screws I bought are too big for the carriage to slide past. “This is nothing less than total failure,” I say. Everyone else creeps from the room. When they’re gone I sink to the floor, forehead on knees, for a little cry. I stay like that for 15 minutes. Then I walk to the corner shop to buy beer. “So it actually works?” my wife says the next morning, letting the bins slide out, then in. “Yeah,” I say. “The corner shop had these cheap hinges that came with flat-headed screws, so I bought them and threw the hinges away.” “Great,” she says. “Are you ever going to put the door back on?” “Eventually,” I say, meaning not for at least a week. I want everyone to see how complicated that thing inside is.