Ten Tips for Designing a More Practical Kitchen

Functionality:

1) Make sure that your storage cabinets, microwave oven, cutlery, etc.… are all within arm’s reach. What use is your storage space if you cannot reach it easily? It would only serve to increase the time it takes to cook and prepare food, while being really annoying at the same time. A design where anything and everything is easily accessible is at the heart of practically designed kitchen.

2) One should also consider eliminating wasted steps that are spent running around looking for cooking utensils. Perhaps once you get to the knives and forks they are easily enough obtained, but a layout where all the cooking can be done with the least amount of steps is a way to prevent mishaps before they happen. For example, let us say you are frying up an onion, but your stove top and countertop are on the opposite sides of the kitchen. If you get too caught up preparing food to be cooked on one side, you may forget that the onions are busy frying and then have to run back and forth when the stove and countertop could have just been placed side by side.

3) The paths and walkways of your kitchen should be accommodating of traffic with enough width to allow people to pass through but without having to interrupt any cooking. The standard should be 36 inches at least for walkways, 42 inches (one cook kitchen) or 48 inches (two cook kitchen) for cooking paths.

4) Plan your kitchen in such a way that all the cabinet doors open easily with nothing in the way to block their swing path.

5) Having an island is often a great addition to a kitchen, but what kind depends on the layout of your kitchen. If you plan to put the oven and or stove in the island make sure you have sufficient space to still keep practicality in your kitchen.  If you plan to eat on the counter top, make sure there is enough space between the cooking area and the dining area.

Practicality:

6) Knives can be stored, on the wall above the cooking space, on a magnetic strip. This area is known as the backsplash. This makes it easier to spot the right knife for the task at hand as well as being out of reach of small children.

7) Make your kitchen recycle friendly by having enough space for recycling bins, such as plastic, glass, tin and even a spare cupboard for paper.

8) Having an extended hose attached to the sink water facet, makes it easy and convenient to fill large pots with water quickly. Because the hose is movable and manageable, it also makes it convenient to quickly rinse or fill whatever is at hand.

9) Place power outlets all along the backsplash of the cooking area and on the island so that there is never a struggle with finding electricity when you need it, where you need it.

10) A very nice addition to any kitchen is a message centre. It can simply be a place for a telephone, important notes, numbers, dates, shopping list, etc…