Zatera Ul

When I was about 2, my grandma built herself a smaller house, and we moved into the “ancestral farmhouse.” She designed the kitchen in both houses.

Since then, I’ve lived in 8 apartments, and 3 houses, and have had to deal with some not-so-great kitchens. My former landlords could learn a lot from my grandma.

I will try to outline Grandma’s design parameters, as I understand them.

1. Try to put the kitchen sink at a window. You will be spending a lot of time standing there, cleaning vegetables and washing dishes, and this work goes easier when you have something to look at besides the wall. If you have a dishwasher, you could perhaps get away with breaking this one. In any case, the sink needs good lighting, and should be a double sink.

2. Put in cabinets all the way to the ceiling. The upper ones are good for storing things you rarely use, and the top of the cabinets won’t gather dust. I should add that you should also have sturdy countertops, because your kids will climb onto the counter and stand on it, to get to the higher cupboards. My sister and I always do.

3. The lower (under the counter) cabinets should have drawers, not shelves, so you can easily get at the things in the back. A drawer is better than a pull-out shelf, because the sides hold things in. For the corner cabinets, see number 4. Under the sink is best left drawer-less, and shelf-less, so you can get at the plumbing.

4. Put big lazy susans in the lower corner cabinets. Otherwise you have a lot of space that you can’t really get at. Avoid the three-quarter circle ones that you have to spin back to zero before you can close the cupboard door. Avoid the flimsy plastic ones; get one that will take a full load of canned goods, and that will survive hours of being spun around by your children for entertainment.

5. Make one counter a couple inches lower than the rest. The lower height works better for things like rolling out dough and kneading.

In Part II, I will tell about some of the bad kitchen designs of apartments I’ve lived in.