Flow in the Kitchen

As my previous post was related to one of my favorite blogs, so this one is.  Auntie Leila mentioned thinking about how your kitchen flows when you are working in, so I started thinking. I realized I had a pretty good system that only needed a bit of tweaking.

So... here goes. I hope I can express well my thoughts and that you, oh, reader, will understand.

When I started working on the kitchen -- (in the midst of making bread and dishes not done... just being honest!)

The right side holds the sink, the dishwasher and cabinets. Plates and bowls are in the cabinet above the dishwasher. Drinking glasses and mugs are in the cabinet just to the right of the sink and all tupper-style containers in the cabinets to the lower right of the sink. (Hubby created a wonderful organization system for the lids.) When I was still drinking coffee, pre-pregnancy, the coffee maker sat under the paper towel roll.

This counter space stays busy. Dirty dishes go on the right and clean dishes to the left; that makes it easy to put still wet tupper-style containers in the dish drainer.

One the left side of the kitchen is the fridge, the stove, microwave and plenty of cabinets. Pots and pans are in the drawer on the bottom of the stove, my container of cooking utensils, such as spatulas and spoons, is to the right of the stove, and the knives to the left. All the things I use for cooking are on this side: spices are in the cabinet to the upper left of the stove, measuring cups in the cabinet to the upper left of the stove and in the drawer just to the left. Mixer, rice maker, griddle, tortilla press, food processor (and several more small electrical appliances) live in the cabinets to the lower left of the stove.

The kitchen is just the right width for me. Someone can work on each side and still move freely, in fact, over Thanksgiving I think we had 5 women maneuvering around each other (it got crowed, for sure). The pantry is at the far end of the left side (open door), and the laundry room is at the far end on the right side (see the laundry waiting?). The kitchen triangle is pretty good; this is the lines between the stove, fridge and sink. They should flow easily and not be blocked by anything (ideally, I think). There is plenty of counter space and cabinet storage. Should I get the chance to design a kitchen there are things I'd do differently, but this isn't too bad, at all.

I gave it all some thought. I realized I do most of my chopping, mixing, etc on the counter to the left of the stove, but its crowded there with the microwave and toaster there. The knife holder should be there, with all the veggy chopping to do there. Often, I end up doing some on the counter next to the sink, b/c my preferred counter is too crowed for work. My cookbook, if I have one, will often block the microwave, thus shuffling is required to warm water for bread or some such. I've given up coffee for the pregnancy, so that cabinet had some more room. After making sure Hubby was okay with the changes, I moved the microwave to under the paper towel roll, along with the toaster next to it. I did some more clearing off and picking up and now have this:

I now I have a nice, wide open space to do all the chopping, mixing and kneading my cooking requires of me. The ride side counter is a tad crowded, but I think it better to have one crowded, one open counter, than to have 2 semi-crowded counters. I'll see how this works, and might make more changes, but I don't want to make too many at once. There will be habits to change as locations change.

So, reader, what do you think? Let me know what you think of my lay out and my ideas, and I pass the challenge on to you to consider the flow in your kitchen and how can you make it better.

Shortly-after update: I decided to put a towel on the drawer handle that is just to the right of the sink as a dedicated hand towel. The towels on the stove, I think, should be dedicated to cooking and hand wiping while cooking -- then they can get dirty all I need without worry about drying my hands on them (or drying clean dishes).