I really want to remodel my kitchen. If you saw it, you would know why, there are cabinets that are unusable due to position and the dishwasher is so far away from the sink that the floor has to be mopped every time I load the dishwasher.
Almost every night I spend time looking at dream kitchens. Those wonderful, easy to use kitchens that would make feeding your family and entertaining a joy.
We all know about the triangle. Conventional wisdom says that the triangle formed by the sink, stove and refrigerator makes your kitchen workable. This theory was developed in the 1940’s and is still the way our kitchens are designed today, but it is still working for modern families?
As our society has grown and changed, the kitchen triangle has remained the same, even though the traditional household has not. Many families include several generations cooking and eating in one kitchen. If your elderly mother lives with you and still loves to cook but can’t stand for long periods of time it makes sense to have a food preparation area where she can sit while she chops vegetables or uses the mixer. This of course would not be normal counter height as it is too tall when seated.
Also in a house full of small children it may make sense to take the refrigerator out of the triangle to make it easier for the kids to grab a snack without being underfoot in the kitchen.
For many of us the kitchen is a social area, in that case it makes sense to have lots of open space and not have the appliances where you would have your back to the rest of the room. An island with a sink and a stove with some counter space in between makes for a wonderful food prep area that allows you to interact with other people in the room.
One thing I’ve learned by doing all this research is that each families needs are different and based on how much time you spend in the kitchen it should be designed to accommodate what it is important to you, not what worked in the 1940’s.