Kitchens: What Do They Say About Us

I, unfortunately, have a small kitchen. Though the design is filled with fancy stainless upgrades and sparkling granite slabs, it is STILL small and I can’t seem to manage to prepare more than one thing at a time. However, I must make do.

The height of the kitchen counter is too tall. I don't like this new standard of raising the heights of kitchen and bathroom counter tops -- I'm too short and you can't get a good grip when stirring a mixing bowl when the bowl hits your belly and not your hip. Counter tops, cabinets, work space, accessibility, visibility and storage are primary considerations in the design of cooking spaces and they all must be responsive to human dimension and body size. Fine… although I'm shorter than most, I still need space to work.

Second, it is a narrow galley kitchen. I feel like a pin ball bouncing back and forth in a corridor moving from stove to sink back to stove to counter space to refrigerator to oven and back counter space. Furthermore, I can only exit on either end to, say, hand someone a glass of wine. Better yet, retrieve one for myself. The addition of a husband shuffling around sneaking bites of food in the midst of preparation while a ruthless, determined little white dog begs for bites blinking his wet brown eyes makes the space seem awfully, awfully crowded.

Pic of my cousin’s daughter holding Billy. She tried her mood ring on his paw and it read ‘romantic’. An ex-stud dog (he was forced into sexual slave labor prior to being rescued) and is truly a Romeo with all the lady dogs on the block – he gently nuzzles his nose in their ear yet respects their boundaries.

So I have wondered what other people have done with small kitchens. I mean real kitchens that people have actually used. Kitchen filled with necessary cooking utensils, pots, pans, measuring cups and cutting boards.

Miles Redd, of course, configured a U-shaped plan which is most efficient. His kitchen provides enough space for several simultaneous activities and less claustrophobia.

Although the kitchen is now considered the most important room in a home, it still must be efficient and functional. The kitchen is the domicile center. It is where all social activity takes place despite efforts to shoo guests (and little white dogs) out. Although I have designed my one-day-in-the-very-distant-future ideal kitchen -- an enormous space with a two-story window, a blazing hearth and gleaming utensils -- in reality, the space plan must work.

Dream Kitchen: Steven Gambrel

Dream Kitchen: Nate Berkus

Dream Kitchen: George Terbovich

(I’ve been in this space and I am certain I would cook, feel and look better if I had this kitchen. However, I would need to upgrade my tattered, stained apron in this place.)

Dream Kitchen: Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)

I like to check out homes – especially open houses – and comb over the kitchen with a careful eye. I honestly wonder who configured some of these spaces, including the one I have lived in for the past few years. Clearly not by a kitchen designer and nor a cook.

Catherine Beecher had it right when she first published A Treatise on Domestic Economy in 1841. She discussed in detail the needs of a kitchen user, the relationship with items needed to cook, and the need for greater efficiency and organization of space. She addressed the three main functions in a kitchen: storage, preparation, and cooking. And she was also a proponent of open shelving for easy and quick access.

American Woman’s Home published in 1869 by Beecher and her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe.

I was recently in a situation where I thought (hoped) to move. The kitchen floor plan and configuration was all wrong. But on a very limited budget (thank you recession), I configured a new plan using hearty materials from modest means. Open shelving was one solution. It would provide quick and easy access. And as long as I kept items on the shelves tidy and of the same color, I don’t think it would look chaotic. Many people are opposed to open shelving, especially realtors, but I want a room to bear evidence of its function. A kitchen is a space for work and not toiling around.

Steven Gambrel did it.

During the twentieth century, psychological, hygienic and technological concerns changed the attitude of the kitchen. Adjusting to the peace after WWI, designers with social concerns began to re-evaluate the space. Just because a home was not fitted with servants and domestic help, did not mean that users of the kitchen could not function efficiently.

Original photo of The Frankfurt Kitchen (1926) designed by Bauhaus architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897 – 2000)

"How can household chores be facilitated for women by appropriate house building" was the title of an article written in 1921 but the Bauhaus architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky who is said to have invented the ‘modern’ kitchen. The Frankfurt Kitchen was modeled on a train railway car and regarded as a "housewife's laboratory". It used minimum space but efficiently for the working woman.

Kitchen restored today. Makes me rethink my desire for an all-white kitchen to polo-blue enameled cabinets and non-staining leather pulls. Peach tiles most certainly to be replaced.

After all, despite working several jobs, I’m still the Heimkulter -- a modest (working) housewife who chose and placed the furnishings, lamps and accessorized in every room. I decided upon the color scheme and painted the walls, upgraded lampshades, chose the bedding and the towels. I’ve been accused of taking over, however, I’m the heimkulter – who else scrubs the toilets and gets everyone fed.

History, no doubt, has moved many women forward, but women have always rearranged things within their house. We’ve let the light in. We largely make all the choices on dishes, bed covers and furnishings in all the rooms. We’ve enhanced the dignity of domestic work. But what remains is what a kitchen symbolizes – it is a repository for all sorts of values, attitudes and judgments. The kitchen is particularly revealing about what it says about the homeowner. It is a microcosm of the larger house. And I for one do not like what mine says about me: small, sleek and inefficient.

What does your kitchen say about you?