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“Leave The Dishes In The Sink, Ma”

After two visits to the demonstration house, I have strong doubts about the stay-home powers of the kitchen. It seems to me that the housewife would be just as eager to stack the dishes in the sink and get away from it all in this home as she would be in dozens of others. Doubtless the students who designed it were all filial types, and each remembered that his or her mother had been saying for years how she wished she had a stainless steel bench and plenty of cupboards. These have been provided, and very useful they are as far as they go, but the rest of the kitchen seems unimaginative and completely lacking in incentive for the worker to try to raise her toil to a science.

Economy, I realise, was a guiding factor, but, just for instance, there must have been a spare piece of timber somewhere to use as a partition in the drawers under the sink bench. Anyone who has dived into a well-stocked drawer for the vegetable kife will see the point.

In any case, the idea of putting kitchen implements into drawers and saucepans and basins and jugs away into cupboards is hardly labour-saving. A man who has any kind of workshop in the back yard does not put his hammers and chisels in drawers so” that he has to dive every time he wants one. A thoughtfully-designed kitchen would have some kind of rack round the work bench for the more commonly-used implements to be stored immediately to hand. Just as effective is a narrow strip of wood strong enough to hold a line of medium-sized screws. Small screws can then be attached to the end of the handles of knives, peelers, potato-mashers, etc., so that they can be hung up.

Again, much time is wasted through thoughtless storing of basins and pots and constantly used china. For the family envisaged by the Architectural Centre there would be plenty of basins and saucepans needed every day. It is irritating, to say the least, to have to undo a nest of basins before the right one is reached. All that is needed is an open shelf for the basins and jugs to be kept singly. The same principle applies to the storing of saucepans. The same inspiration that lay in the divisions of the broom cup-board could have been brought to bear on the putting away of saucepans. Even a few nails on the inside of the pot cupboard would help to avoid that nesting problem.

One very baffling omission is that of a plate-rack. There is obviously no provision made for a dish-washing machine, although possibly the children of the family were considered as a labour-saving device. A dish-rack not only saves time with a tea towel, but, by storing dishes in the immediate vicinity of the worker, considerably eases the effort that is required in opening a cupboard door, taking a plate out of a pile, setting the pile to rights and shutting the cupboard door again.

Two of the most frequently used commodities in the kitchen are flour and sugar. Taking tins from cupboards, opening them, removing some of the contents, shutting the tins and replacing them is a maddening process. The solution seems to be a pull-out bin with compartments for flour and sugar. A similar container would be useful for bread.

For a family of four there is not really very much work space in this kitchen. One or perhaps two pull-out boards just under the sink-bench would be a great help. These are invaluable for cutting bread, as pastry boards, or just for a little extra space when speed is necessary and there is already a pile of dishes on the bench.

It struck me too, although this might be just ignorant prejudice, that the method of storing vegetables was not altogether satisfactory. I thought it might be an improvement to make a sliding tray, flush with the floor, which could be slid out and properly cleaned without the necessity for crawling into corners.

The last important omission is that of a properly designed chair. Scientific tests have proved that it is much less fatiguing, and therefore much more efficient and much speedier to perform many kitchen chores seated. The chair need not be much more than a stool of the right height for the work bench with a low back support and if necessary a foot-rest. The happy housewife in this kitchen could conceivably shell peas at the built-in table sitting on one of the stools provided but her back would probably kill her.

My reactions to the kitchen have been largely governed by the disappointment of one who has looked for Higher Things and has plodded away with no greater inspiration than that which could be derived from any advertisement of any “model” kitchen photographed from a distance. None of the additions I have mentioned would add anything to the appearance of the demonstration kitchen as it stands, but owners of factories and workshops do not as a rule seek to improve the efficiency of their workers by wrapping their machines in chintz when work is over. Personally, I would swop the tea towel gadget any day for just a few more aids to the speedy completion of work in the kitchen.

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