[Sca-cooks] How to compact kitchens and alleviate back stress

Patricia Dunham chimene at ravensgard.org
Fri May 4 14:16:59 PDT 2012


Hi Suey,

We have that shape kitchen too, "galley" style it is often called here. Frig-counter-stove-rolling dishwasher (legacy) on one side, counter-sink/window-counter with cabinets over and under counter on the other side. Dinette nook at one end, door into the garage at the other.

I think my first idea would be to see if you have a small closet, or maybe an under-stairs space that could be fitted as a pots-and-pans "pantry". A LOT of my kitchen space is taken up storing various things that I use maybe once a year (breadmaker, I use it less and less; cheesecake spring-form pan; pie plates; old-fashioned enameled-steel turkey roaster; fancy-shapes bundt pans and so forth).  

Well, actually most of the fancy-shape bundt pans (about 6?) I've collected are out in the garage pantry stack that my DH made me. It is about 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep (maybe 2.5's?). 6 shelves. A critter-proof door that closes off the center 3 shelves and is a tool-organizer pegboard on the outside for him. I keep thing like paper products and dish soap on the open shelves, food storage on the protected shelves. It makes bulk buying for the 3 of us practical: I would surely have no place to put 4 double boxes of Cheerios in the house, for example! Or 7 or 8 12-packs of toilet tissue.

Anyway, next house is definitely going to have a walk-in pantry like my grandmother had! Come to think of it, my brother put a triangular corner cupboard pantry in at my Mom's when they renovated her kitchen; and I have an uncle who built in a great big room divider between the living room and kitchen of their brand new subdivision house, that is a pantry on the kitchen side!

chimene

On May 3, 2012, at 5:15 PM, Suey wrote:

> We are renovating our kitchen which looks like a very narrow, tiny trolley car. We want to make space for a side by side frig. Also Theromix just came to our country so we want to make a pop up cabinet for that. With that acquisition we will be getting rid of several appliances, thus compacting space in the long run. With the frig we will be loosing cabinet space. We will be gaining drawers cause we are increasing the height of the lower cabinets to a yard or 1 meter so like over the dishwasher we will have a draw - hopefully to compensate for storage space.
> We have a carpenter to make all the cabinets fit to measure.
> The increased height is due to my back problems. I cannot stand for very long because of the pain of all the screws in my backbone. Also we are putting in a - I do not know what it is called in English - a 5 cm rubber floor covering imitation wood. My Pilates professor has put it into her gym and it is easier on the back than wood, ceramic or other floor types.
> Any suggestions about how to compact kitchens and/or how to alleviate stress on the back would be much appreciated as we are still working on the drawing boards.
> Suey
> 
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