Badly designed kitchen

(You should see the quasi-juggling I do when it's time to serve dinner up and I have nowhere to rest plates, especially for the last couple months when my right wrist has been sprained.)

The kitchen is meant for people who don't cook: if I had not added horizontal space myself, simply putting a normal-sized microwave and small drip coffee maker on the counter would not only have used all the available counter space, the microwave would hang over two of the stove elements. It's a college town, and it's all little kids here, so things like that are par for the course; kitchen space is wasted space, for local landlords, but you need one for the sake of appearances.

Steps I've taken, though:

1) I put a bookshelf just around the corner -- cookbooks go on one shelf, large bowls for putting vegetables like potatoes and onions go on another, flour/sugar/oil on another.

2) Cheap rolling cabinet type things from Target. Took the wheels off, put three of them along the wall by the fridge. One is for canned goods and bottles; one is for spices and a paper towel dispenser; the third holds the microwave on top and pots/casseroles on the bottom.

3) I hang three pans from metal hooks over the sink (on the wall, not like ... where my face is when I'm washing dishes). It's actually very rarely that I need a pan other than the three that're there -- an oven-safe non-stick pan, a large cast-iron skillet (large enough to roast a chicken in it, with room left over), and a copper-bottom pan slightly smaller than the cast-iron.

4) My two cast-iron pots go, face down, on top of the cabinets. I can barely reach, and only a couple fingers, so I'm always very very careful not to drop them on my head. But it saves a lot of space without worrying about piling a bunch of stuff in front of them in a cabinet.

5) Whatever I can do ahead of time, I do. At first, my cooking suffered from this kitchen -- it actually depressed me, because it was very much like this sprained wrist: I would "reach" to do something out of instinct and habit, forgetting those "muscles" didn't work. The counter space is the big issue: I can put my cutting board down on the counter, but in order to make use of all of it, my elbow ends up over the sink (imagine an L flipped ninety degrees clockwise; the short leg of the L is the sink, the long leg is the counter and stove). It makes an enormous difference to my sanity if I put the dishes away as soon as they're dry, and don't try to do a lot of things at once. Sometimes I'll chop everything that needs to be chopped in advance, putting it all in little dishes, all the things no one in real life does except on cooking shows -- but if I don't, I'm competing with myself for space.

6) The kitchen table, in the summer, ends up being a produce table. All the things that shouldn't be refrigerated go there: tomatoes, fruit, etc. This is far from an ideal solution, but there you go -- there's simply no other place available.

7) I got a utensils caddy -- just a large cup, really, or vase -- to put next to the stove in the corner furthest from my hands when I'm working, because it meant it was the place I was least likely to need to put something else. This keeps the drawers less cluttered, although the caddy itself is still slightly too small to comfortably fit everything. But it helps: so does the knife block I put under the cabinets, even if it won't fit my cleaver.

Really what it all comes down to is: it took me time, getting used to the space and its limitations, and bit by bit I saw ways I could make up for it here and there.

My friend just bought a house, and the kitchen is ridiculously small and ugly and poorly designed and has old, old appliances. So he's wanting to just tear the whole thing out and redesign it anew. He *cooks*, so this makes a certain amount of sense. Still, it's pricey...

We've also got a cookbook shelf just around the corner of the kitchen - I hadn't thought of using it for storage, what a good idea. I had my enormous stainless bread bowl (also used for steaming pumpkin pudding in a bundt mold) on top of our cabinets until this weekend - moving the pots and pans out from under the deep dark cabinet onto the wire shelving on top of the counter freed up enough room for the huge bowl, a pizza rack and all the bottles (oils, Torani syrup, gin) that were on top of the fridge.

I agree that the key to sanity in any small space is keeping things put away. It's so miserably overwhelming to see what little space there is stacked to the brim with dirty dishes and pans.

The pans hang above a small round dining table that I bought to use as a cutting/counter area. It overlaps with a small rectangular folding table which is Kingdom of the Applicances which Must Be Plugged In (microwave, coffeemaker/grinder, blender, food proc. etc).

So the space problem was fixable, BUT horror of horrors my kitchen has an old-fashion un-separated sink. It's one large space instead of being divided in the middle so I have to wash dishes in a plastic tub. This is a major design flaw.

Arch, at least you have magnetic poetry. And a washing machine?

Just think what you could do with the kitchen if you bought a place.....

Just think what you could do with the kitchen if you bought a place.....

Sigh. Oh SIGH!!! It could be completely wonderful. Vicky, do you have enough room to freeze meat in bulk now?

I think I need this. Our house has a lovely family room with no practical place for a t.v. (and we wanted to keep the tv out of the socializing/kidplay area anyway) so the dining room is the tv room. I want an eat-in kitchen but it's too small to have a table in. presto, the above!

We ran over to Seattle this weekend for quick house-hunting and found something. It's brand new construction and now I'm worried I have been sucked in by the shiny of the NEW WELL-DESIGNED KITCHEN w/ GAS STOVE!!!!! OMG, the kitchen is really to die for - close to 18 linear feet of countertop, with electric all along the backsplashes, huge pantry, tons of cabinets, south-facing window over the double sink, big fridge/freezer. Plus the cabinets have enough clearance for my KitchenAid to fit under them.

Also - guest room! Everyone come visit!

The bad news - I will be traveling again for the new job, so less time to cook.

It's so badly laid out too, and we have no gas, so electric cooker, which is worse than the layout. I've got used to the layout, I haven't got used to juggling pans about different rings at different temperatures because you can't just turn the heat down quickly. OK, I know you can get better electric cookers these days than the old monstrosity we have, but it does the job (just) and we can't afford a whole new kitchen *and* put gas in and if I'm going to do a bit of improvement then I'd rather do the whole lot, so we'll just put up with what we've got.

My kitchen is big and everything's in the right place. It's just old and bits keep falling off it. There are at least two pieces of wood that aren't stuck on and you have to be careful about bumping into them because they'll just hit the floor. And one of my floor tiles has come unstuck and rattles when you step on it. But the bits I need to work do work, I guess.

oh, and I got that itty-bitty kitchen book (from jaq's link) from the library and it was pretty good--best for people who are trying to declutter/reclaim space, though. I kind of have everything down to the basics already, and to be fair, my kitchen is merely smallish and not itty-bitty. Worth a read but maybe not a buy. Some good quick recipes too.

I am missing the giant walk-in pantry from the old place. Must work on organizing this mess soon:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2047/1515435892_eb9bad97a8.jpg

Pantry at the old place:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/110/308205678_fef31b08b1.jpghttp://farm1.static.flickr.com/99/308205648_9006f2bd21.jpg

Well, I moved, and my kitchen is much smaller than I thought it was when we saw it at first :-( Mind you, it has encouraged me to be more efficient and tidy up as I go along. I still have an electric hob, but it's one of those ceramic ones that heat up really quickly and it also cools down a lot quicker than the old one did so it works for me a whole lot better (Jaq, I haven't come across any of the problems you encountered with yours). I feel I'm lacking a bit in surface space overall and I'm using every bit of space I can (knife block and utensil canister on windowsill, top of fridge & freezer as temporary work surfaces until we get the current work top extended, for example), but I have managed to cater for up to six people with little hassle so it can't be that bad and I've pretty much got used to it already.

It wouldn't surprise me if our weedy American electricity were part of the ceramic range problem, Ailsa. Also, it was a few years back, so very possibly a first-generation of that type of thing.

Something we don't have in the new place and are feeling the need for - a microwave to reheat our tea. I've got a nice thick cozy and a cork mat that sits under the pot, but it's still nice to be able to nuke a cooled-down cup. Much easier than a double-boiler for melting butter and chocolate (thus essential for brownie baking) too.

No, count me in as a Euro non-fan of the ceramic countertop.

I didn't choose it, I inherited it. Compared to the monstrosity I had before, it's a fucking dream. Still, the gas one isn't so far away now that I live in a house that actually has a gas supply.