I have been reading about kitchen planning (we are building a house with a
kitchen).  In the twenties the experts decided you needed a food storage
center (refrigerator and cabinets), next to the preparation center (sink
and table) which also doubled as cleanup center (sink again), and then the
cooking and serving areas.  In theory, the food would be taken out of the
refrigerator, washed at the sink, chopped or mixed at the table, and
cooked on the stove.  Does anyone actually use their kitchen that way now?
What is a typical sequence of steps when preparing a meal?  Is your
kitchen set up for its current use, and if not, how would you modify it?

85 responses total.

My kitchen was not designed to contain an eating table, so that the only place
we can put one is such that one of the three chairs around it blocks the
passage to what was once a dining room and it now the bedroom.  It was also
apparently not designed with a refrigerator (there was a store attached to
the house with lots of storage space).  Where we have the refrigerator, it
opens the wrong way so I take the food out and put it not on the counter but
on the floor near the sink (since the drainboard is occupied by the compost
bucket and things headed out the back door, between sink and refrigerator).
Then I wash a few dishes so I can get at the sink to wash the vegetables,
which I then carry to the table to chop.  I go back to the sink for a glass
bowl for microwaving them (the microwave is perched on the refrigerator), or
to get a pot for them, but we at least have added a cabinet between the sink
and the stove for extra work space.  I have never run across our particular
kitchen plan in a book - the L plus galley?  
   SINK     door
cabinet          microwave on
                  refrigerator
stove

   chair          built-in cabinet
table    chair   x
   chair          x
door
         door

Ah, but is your kitchen an original design, or just whatever could be fit into
the space when it was built (possibly as a retrofit)?

(this item now linked to the Dwellings conference)

        Since I am now a fan of side by side fridge/freezer, it is more
convient to have the items I reach for most often in either compartment
within an outstreched arms length.  Now if both doors opened on the
right...it would be right.
        Have the check the refridgerator to see if the door can be 
reversed?  You will usually findplastic fillers oposite where the
hinge and handle are.
        Too me, one element of good design would be to have a place
and power for any occasional appliance (wok, meat slicer would come
to mind).  If you use the mixer/blender often, it should have it's 
own place (and power).
        Also, even if there was a dishwasher machine, I would also
want a space for drainer and drying rack.
        A luxury that would be worth it:  have a storage space for
a step stool built in, so it would be convient totake it out and
use it.
        Today's kitchen also has a need for a recyling staging area.

Thanks for the refrigerator idea but mine is circa 1950 and you cannot
switch the door swing.  It would be nice to have a place for lots of things
that were not foreseen when the kitchen was built.  I don't have a meat slicer
(as a vegetarian) or a mixer/blender, but it would be nice to have some
place other than the refrigerator top for the microwave, and a separate shelf
for the tape player and tapes, and the step stool is a very good idea, ours
is along the only free wall space and always gets piled high with
outdoor clothing (a coat rack would also be nice near an entrance).  Recycling
fits under the sink in most kitchens, but not mine - I use the back yard since
it is covered.  Actually there should be a better place for the compost
bucket than the sink drainboard.
        One of the biggest problems is that the kitchen table is the only
free space so gets covered with books, and repair projects, and mail, and the
telephone.  We are about to put in a wall telephone, but a bookshelf would
be nice, and a separate table for the repair projects and the reading.
What do other people use their kitchen tables for besides food?  Today
I realized I had one square foot in which to prepare supper - the rest was
books and telephones and a soldering gun and a pot that I had to take off the
stove so I could cook something.  (A place for storing pots woudl be nice).
What sorts of non-kitchen storage have people found useful in their kitchen?
Our largest storage area in the kitchen is the floor - I keep having to push
boxes and bags aside to reach the cabinets or the sink.  A kitchen larger than
9x10' would help some, but what sorts of storage in it?  Cabinets, large
drawers, open shelving?

we have a ridiculously large kitchen, but the best part is the island in the
middle with the stove, it's got cabinets under it where we keep cutting boards
and oils and baking supplies, pots are in a 'sweater drawer' (double cabinet
with two roll-out shelves) and spatulas are to your right hand by the stove
and wooden spoons are behind you as tyou face the stove. it works quite well,
you can cut at the stove and clean in a speperate place..

We have a pretty small kitchen but it works very well.  I added a cabinet
for the microwave as well as for cooking powders, etc. and a tall side
door for brooms and such.  It also houses baking pans and a trash container.
One of its most-used  features is a small cutting board the slides out just
below the counter top.  I also put in a small flip-out door just below the
sink for scrubbers, brushes and such.  Being small makes it easy to get to
the fridge and other food storage areas during the food prep stage.  Bulk
items are in the basement down a flight of stairs right off the kitchen.
It also has an outside door right there so bringing in supplies is pretty
easy.  It does get a bit crowded with more than one person in there.

Your kitchen may not have been designed to have a table in it at all!  You
might consider something like a tall shelving unit, with a fold-out tabletop
for meals.  A rack to hang pots and pans from.

When my parents remodeled the kitchen, they made it very big.  It has a 
table and the dishes cupboard at one end, then along one wall is the 
refrigerator and a mini freezer, covered with the countertop we use for 
the toaster, and the coffee maker.  Above that, the Microwave has it's 
own housing, and we have cabinets along the very top.

In the middle, we have an island with a sink, and cabinets below it.  
The island has power outlets at both ends, as well as a garbage can at 
both ends.  The dishwasher is under it.

The other side has the "dry food" cabinet (which is about 8 feet tall), 
the stove/grill, and counters.  Along one side is a counter with 2 ovens 
under it.

Why we have such a big kitchen with so many features I don't know.  
Maybe my parents wanted to open a restruant.

One word of advice.  Brick floors and glass coffeepots don't mix well

Our kitchen works pretty well -- it's got a slightly separate space for serving
and eating, and the main work space is in the shape of a U, with the stove
top/oven at the base, the sink to the left and the refrigerator to the right.  

Remove foods from the fridge, cross the U to the sink to clean and prepare,
then step left to the microwave or right to the rangetop or oven.  There is a
small countertop just to the right of the fridge that acts as a staging area
while collecting things from the fridge and before carrying them over to the
sink -- which negates that short walk after collection.  The staging area also
acts as a "breakfast corner" where the coffee pot, mugs, cereals, bowls, and
pastries live.  (Flatware is in a drawer just below the counter.)  Since no one
in our house is a morning person, having breakfast the most "convenient to
prepapre" meal is important.

Scott, if the table folded up when it was not used for eating, where would
we store all the books and repair projects?  I think it would help to have
the new kitchen twice as large, with one end for cooking and eating, and the
other used as a library, computer assembly shop, and repair center.  Somehow
everything tends to gravitate to the kitchen.
It is nice to have something to do while waiting for the pressure cooker to
come up to pressure.
        Lots of good ideas about kitchen planning, thanks to all, and keep them
coming.  We still have to decide where to put the stove (the sink and fridge
are the only items definitely planned) and table and storage, in a kitchen
which is roughly 20' long, with one end 10' long and one end 8', and three
doors total.
       window
       sink          refrigerator
door                              door

stove?                  storage?
                                and
                                small
                                table?



door     table?         window

        window          window

The lower left door leads to the front vestibule, and the upper right
door to the side porch/summer kitchen/back yard.  We could switch
stove and storage (in fact we wired it that way to start with).
I was hoping the far end from teh sink could attract the noncooking
activities and storage of projects.  The upper end is the 8' one.
(I will read through everyone's ideas a few more times and maybe
print them out for future reference).  The present kitchen is not worth
investing a lot of time in other than the wall phone, as the landlord
specifically requests 'no holes in the wall' and we cannot enlarge it.  I
think one solution is to give away any pots and dishes I have not used.  Do
I really need three electric frying pans and five pressure cookers?

What I meant was that the folding table surface would only be folded down for
eating.  Being attached to a shelving unit would give you a lot of space to
store things on.  Probably your biggest problem with your current kitchen
table is that you *do* use it for storage, which is a very inefficient use
of space.

Hmmm, maybe I could build some deep shelves over one end of the existing
table to use for removing the contents of the table to when I needed some
place to cook or eat?  And pull the table out a foot if we wanted to use
more of it to eat on?  Perhaps we can build something like this for the new
house.  I don't want to spend too much time on this one.  The best solution
to the storage problem is to bring everything we are not using to Kiwanis (and
repair it there and leave it there).  
        I clear off the table onto one of the chairs - there is not much I can
do to prevent the stuff from getting onto the table.  SOmetimes I keep a box
and clear stuff into that and when it is full I move it to another room.
But the space above the table is certainly being underused.

Why are you using the kitchen for storage, and for paperwork?  I find that
the proximity of food and paper often leads to undesirable spots, stains, and
even destruction of the paper objects.  

It sounds like you need a storage space and a library/office space close to
the kitchen.  You are mixing a lot of incongruent activities in/on one space.
You might find it easier to bring ONE project at a time to the table, and put
it away before you bring the next.  

We read while eating, which explains the books in the kitchen.  (Too busy to
read the rest of the time).  I do have an office nearby - it is called the
living room but I work there and keep papers there.  I also set up a desk
there for repair projects but Jim soon had it piled two feet high with books
and papers and things, which I finally put into a box.  There are boxes of
stuff underfoot everywhere, he is loath to part with anything, but tomorrow
we will take a frying pan and a portable oven to Kiwanis, a small start.  It
is a challenge to live with someone for whom things only exist if they are
in plain sight, and for whom every surface is a place to put things.   One
tactic is to cover every surface with something easily moved so I can get at
it when I want.  I am planning a lot of deep open shelving in the new house
in every room, and hope not to move a lot of things when I move.
The other problem with the kitchen is that it is the entry where things sit
when they come in or before they go out (including laundry to or from the
line and outdoor clothing).
        What do other people use their kitchens for beside food?

Our kitchen is the master scheduling center, the official calendar is there
and memoranda about upcoming events are nearby.

So is ours. It is central to the first floor and all other rooms lead off
it (including the basement stairs). The gerbil lives there too. We hardly
ever sit in the sitting room. Our kitchen could use a vastly larger pantry
space, and much more counter space. Orginally it had a central work counter
but that had been removed before we moved in in order to have space for
a kitchen table. We are thinking of adding an extension to the house with
a real kitchen.

Rane, have you considered adding the sitting room to the kitchen instead? 
Why do people want several non-bed-rooms instead of one big one?
(Jim just took a carful of computer stuff to Kiwanis, he deserves
congratulations, you can almost walk through his room now.)

>Why do people want several non-bed-rooms instead of one big one?

Because if more than one or two people live in the house, it's very useful if
there is space set aside for specific kinds of activities. 

By having specific activites in specific, separate areas, the house is easier
to keep clean and tidy.

For instance, although it has a dining table in it, our kitchen is used
primarily for cooking.  We tend to eat in the living room in winter and in the
sun room or outdoors in summer. Larry and I each have an office where we keep
our personal projects so that the shared parts of the house stay tidy and
projects aren't ruined by spilled food or cat-entropy. Most of our socializing
happens either in the sun room or the living room depending on the number of
people around and the type of weather.  (The sun room is a little less
comfortable, but accomodates more people.)

When we lived in a small apartment, we had to clear everying off the stove
before we could prepare food, clear everything off the table or couch before we
could eat, and move "stuff" around so we could do anything.  It meant a lot of
things went missing when someone moved them without noting what was in that
stack.  It meant that projects were often broken or separated when parts got
moved at different times.  And it meant that a lot ended up on the floor where
it got walked on because it slid off the heap it was on.

Now when we move things we have a pretty good idea where to put them so we can
find them later.  We have a pretty good idea where to find something we didn't
put away when it goes missing, and all in all this is just a far more
satidfactory arrangement.  (When I lived on my own with my kids, these things
were never an issue, so I think three adults must be some sort of critical
mass.)

Your small apartment sounds like my apartment (which I consider large, at 600
or so square feet).  It is nice to have one room to attempt to confine Jim's
computer asembly projects to.  But all of our socializing is in the kitchen.
Once I had a dinner party in the bedroom because the kitchen cannot seat more
than 6 and still be able to get through it.  Two people sat on the bed.  We
don't have a sofa, we sit at the desk or the kitchen table.  (There are two
armchairs but they are always piled high with stuff - I should try to give
away some of the stuff).  So I am planning on a large (180 square foot)
kitchen that can accomodate reading materials, repair projects, etc.  I cannot
think of anything to do with teh living room since I don't have one now and
we don't watch TV and the kitchen is well lit for reading.  We will also have
a summer kitchen for using in hot weather and for canning and other messy
projects (and bike parking, and an enclosed entry and a place to keep coats
and boots and things that are going in and out - I wonder if 100 square feet
will really be enough for the entry porch).

Our kitchen occupies the central area of our household, and the actual room
it's in serves multiple purposes.  About half of it is dining area.  We
finally repainted it, which means it's more pleasant to look at.

What sort of multiple purposes?

Re #18: our sitting room is already filled with books, art, music, carpets,
the harpsichord and flutes, radios, CDs, LPs (!).....would have not room
for that stuff if any of it was converted to kitchen. 

Eating, traffic, impromptu social discussions, etc etc.

   the kitchen here is a rather drab galley-style thing.  it's not much
good for doing anything but cooking and washing dishes.  it's even
difficult to get more than one person at a time in there.

In the house that we are building, the kitchen will be located in the corner
of a great room, which occupies about 1/2 of the house.  The kitchen will
have no overhead counters and only 2.2 walls will go from floor to ceiling.
It is on the small side so that various food supplies will be close at
hand but large enough so that 2 people can work in it.  It will have a
raised counter along one half wall so that people can sit and watch / chat
without getting in the way and an eating table beyond a second counter.
The entire great room will be visible from the kitchen.  What walls there
are will keep things like the refrigerator and stove hidden from view while
in the great
room.

Some cooking aromas, fumes, etc. rouse Dave's asthma.  I wish our kitchen
were _more_ separable from the rest of the house!  In our first apartment,
Dave used to do his German homework at the kitchen table so that he
could consult me, and the boys sometimes work in the kitchen now for the 
same reason, but as they grow more independent I encourage them to move 
into the next room (still in talking distance) to protect their papers from 
food stains.

Our kitchen cupboards are mostly occuped with dishes, pans, tools, etc.
and a good deal of food is off in the "back porch" -- canned goods, reserve 
supplies of flour & rice & granola ...  If I didn't keep 5 jars of flour
& a bread machine on the counter, the place wouldn't look so crowded, and
if we hadn't taken out a chunk of cabinet to slide in a portable dishwasher,
it wouldn't *be* so crowded.

Our open kitchen floor plan has a great deal to do with the fact that my
wife must hear with her eyes.  She also has fond memories of her grand-
parents house which had a large open working kitchen where family would
often pitch in and help with canning and such.  The isolated kitchen came
about when "rich folk" employed servants to prepare their meals.  Since
the common folk aspired to be more like the well off, the trend soon found
its way into their architecture.  We also have a friend who has a ~32'
sail boat.  Over the years he fell in love with galley kitchens and built
one into the house he and his wife remodeled.

I just read that in the twenties, when small kitchens became the fashion,
people would actually reduce the sizes of their kitchens by partitioning off
space into offices, dining areas, etc..  The houses that I have lived in which
were built between around 1850 and 1935 don't seem to have been intended for
eating in, there was always a dining room.  (But when they were split into
apartments the dining room became a bedroom or a bathroom and therefore the
kitchen table is always jammed in and not convenient).  It may just have been
large houses or farmhouses that had large kitchens, I never had one, but I
will some day.  I am also thinking about a peninsula or table projecting into
the room about half way, to try to confine the non cooking activites to one
end of the kitchen and the other clutter to the other end, which seems to have
become a popular plan around the fifties (but since I have never lived in that
new a house I am not sure).

        I have junk room one (computer room) and junk room two (music and
bills).  I really souldn't be doing projects on kitches space or dining
room table.

We have a kitchen we use for food prep and quick meals.  We have a music
room we use for music and reading.  We have a dining room we use for
leisurely meals.  We have a living room, studies, bedrooms, bathrooms, all
used on a regular basis.  All of these spaces are neat and tidy. I can
find anything I own in about a minute, max.  I like it that way. 


I guess I'm both unusual and boring.  ;-)

(My study is a partial exception to that "neat and tidy" bit...  :)

Not boring, Mary.  You're living my ideal!

Mary, I bet you have a lot more space that I do to be neat in.  I have a
kitchen that I use for everything, a living room that I use to support myself
in and do house drawings and store some building materials and repair
projects, and a bedroom also used for storage, and a back yard for the
overflow (under a roof).  If I want to sit and read I have a choice between
the desk (office), the bed, or the kitchen table, or the bathroom.  Since I
am short on time it is usually the kitchen or the bathroom for reading.
Some day I will have fewer unattached building supplies, fewer repair
projects, and more floor space and can be neat and organized.  I might also
help to have more than two closets (one of which is full of repair projects).

Like almost everything else, neatness fits into our priority systems.  I
would be very uncomfortable living with chaos.  It is very important to
you to fix broken things.  I don't think the size of our living space
really makes that much difference as our priorities would be the same.  If
we lived in 4,000 square foot homes you'd fill all available space and I'd
be getting rid of anything that was no longer useful to me. 

There is no right or wrong to this.  Neatness doesn't get you a promotion
in the afterlife.  Fixing broken things though just might. 

I still think I could be neater in 1000 square feet (and not spending all my
'free' time working on building a house) than in 600 square feet.  Having more
time would help as much as having more space.

More space, and better divided space, helps a lot toward tidyness.  In a small
space it's harder to find a place for everything to live and putting it back
often takes more time since it usually lives behind or under several other
things.

I know that since we moved from a 900sqft apartment to a 1500 sqft house,
although we're still shy of my ideal, we're doing a whole lot better at keeping
the house tidy just because it's easier.

I am hoping some day to move from 600 to 900 square feet, but can't imagine
what to do with all of the space since I won't be storing building materials
in it any more.  Planning on a lot of built-in shelving/cabinets, which should
eliminate hte need for most furniture other than tables/desks and chairs. 
Walls lined with deep shelves would be a lot nicer than floors lined with
piles of stuff (under _and_ behind).

Building your own house definitely added to the clutter in our 980 sq ft
house!  In our 1 car garage there is a complete set of kitchen cabinets
for a kitchen twice the size of our current kitchen, lighting fixtures
for half a house, most of the parts for our heating and electrical system,
a metal lathe, 24" brake/shear, wall-mount water cooler, 6 recycle bins
a work bench, kids toys, 2 bikes, a kayak and a canoe, garden tools,
several sheets of plywood and 1X4s and there is still room to walk.
Finding stuff in less than a minute, however, is dicey.  Oh, and the
bathroom cabinets are in there too.  To think that garage is a squeeze
for a compact car when it is empty; what a waste of space ;-)

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