Interesting that the features builders put in "some" or "none" of their kitchen are features that are typically discussed, desired, and installed on this forum. This is congruent with what most of us have commented on after looking at spec houses or the annual "Parade of Homes" events!

That's for reposting my article. Since I don't do any speculation development, I don't really follow this list. Just like the people who follow this forum, people who care enough to make the list specific to their own needs should ignore it as well and do what they want and what makes them happy.

It is your kitchen after all. Cheers to you all

Here is a link that might be useful: Life of an Architect

I thought that article was very interesting!

I think it is interesting that 38% of builders are putting "food preparation areas" in their Sometimes or Never, with almost 12% "never" putting a food prep area in the kitchen.

By definition 100% of kitchens have a food preparation area, without which they would not *Be* a kitchen.

But--this 38 percent of builders who think that they only sometimes or never put a dedicated food prep area in the kitchen goes a long way toward explaining why we see a lot of the kitchen designs that we do, where there is plenty of space, or even plenty of counterspace, just not in the right areas.

Wonder how researchers could tap into the DIY world for a parallel survey.
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I think this article's data goes along with the (disputed) data in the thread about the article in Atlantic mag about kitchens. It validates some of the "kitchens for people who don't cook" logic that the latter article described.

I sure wish that garbage grinders were less prevalent. This is the most shocking statistic to me in the whole article. Putting organic material directly into our water waste stream does not do us any favors as a nation or as a world citizen. I find it interesting that some localities have banned them for this reason. Brave different drummers.

I showed my new kitchen to a friend this weekend, and one of her first comments was, "What? No garbage disposal?" I tried to explain myself. I think I'll print out florantha's post and keep it on hand for next time.

I find it interesting that so many builders indicate that their kitchen size is decreasing. Maybe the arena-sized kitchen trend will end one of these days.

Florantha, that's a really interesting point about garbage disposals. I've been assuming we would have one in our new kitchen, though it would require retrofitting the 1934 kitchen sink we just bought (whose drain is not sized right for garbage disposals), but your post is making me reconsider. I mean, after all, what IS the point of putting food down the drain? It's not good for the water supply, not good for the plumbing... you're totally right!

I guess that leaves us with either composting it or putting it in the garbage as our options. My concern about compost is that our yard is small, so how much compost can we really use...

The issue of garbage disposals is not so cut and dried as that. It is a matter of shifting food waste to a land fill or semi-liquified food waste to a sewage treatment plant for removal, a percentage of which still ends up in a landfill. That which comes direct from the consumer if often sealed up in plastic bags to reduce odors and home, and thus becomes part of a non-biodegradable package.

Some cities have banned garbage disposals because they do not feel their water treatment plants have the capacity for the removal of the extra organic materials introduced by ground up food. But, we put organic material into the waste stream every day directly from our toilets when you come right down to it. So just saying that putting organic waste in the water cycle is bad...to a certain extent its unavoidable.

Other cities have *required* garbage disposers because they feel their water treatment systems have a better capacity to deal with it than if the entire volume went directly to the landfill.

On top of this, some municipalities do not allow composting because of potential issues with vermin, and in other areas composting is simply impossible for the individual homeowner. How is someone who lives in an urban highrise who has no access to soil supposed to compost?

The whole issue of being "green" is very complex. I think I am green as an urban dweller because the primary environmental impact of my neighborhood development was 180 years ago, I walk or take public transportation Everywhere, and am Never in a car unless someone gives me a ride in the direction they are going anyway, I use canvas bags for shopping and and generally a very poor consumer of new goods.

Compare this to a friend of mine who lived in the country and did raise food but put 40 miles on a car per day, and had to have a large truck for the winter time with a plow on it. She may have been green in many ways, but not in the same ways I am.

I would probably be shocked by how large my carbon footprint is in some ways, (I take a lot of showers, and live in an old uninsulated building), but some green research shows that people who raise their own food have a Huge carbon footprint because they lack economies of scale. Some research shows that people who ride a bike everywhere have a large carbon footprint.

Its not a clearcut issue.

OT Thanks palimpsest for commenting on the existence of required garbage grinding. We live in complicated times, don't we?

Our household goal is to cut down on all waste and to put compostables back into the ground. When we had a grinder, there was a temptation to grind what we could have composted. No longer are tempted--no grinder. Another goal is to reduce usage of oil-based products. If we do not use plastics to contain food wastes in garbage we put fewer plastics into landfills. If necessary we shove stinky refuse (e.g. fish residue) in paper container into freezer until Monday pickup. I hate to think that tankers are hauling crude across the ocean because I can't deal with my own household wastes for a few days.

No need to respond. Let's move on. The topic was kitchen stats and my point should have been that I was shocked by the number of commercially/professionally installed grinders. I had no idea.

I'm totally with Palimpsest on this one. Not just about raising your own food (at least in greater quantity than a hobby garden), but cooking your own food isn't a particularly green thing to do. Neither are the kitchens we're building. Eating out or bringing home cooked food in reusable containers, as they used to do in old world cities for centuries, with minimal kitchen areas, is a much better use of resources.

So...what? If this were a Utopia, would we all eat in college style dining halls? Live in cooperatives? That doesn't really work when there's a choice. In Israel, the kibbutz movement started partly from socialist idealism, but more specifically from having to work and live in the most efficient manner because of extreme scarcity of resources and too much work needing to be done to spare many people doing the same task. In succeeding generations, however, when life became easier and work wasn't a constant struggle, people added onto their housing units to have a home kitchen, and liked to cook their own meals, for just their own families, rather than taking all meals in the community dining room.

How is someone who lives in an urban highrise who has no access to soil supposed to compost?

In my urban area, we have "greens" recycling for "vegan" waste, which gets composted and is available to citizens who just want a little garden compost. This is available for houses, townhouses, and lowrises. Perhaps in the future such service will be available for highrises as well. Some cities have hot composting plants for all organic (as in carbon based--not a style of farming) garbage. Perhaps as plants are renewed and replaced more will be able to handle this kind as well. Handling the wastes of a single highrise is a challenge to begin with. This is probably a factor in why they're the last to get recycling of any kind (others are that they have private pickup, and campaign contributing owners/developers), but considering the number of people who live in these buildings, developing a better model for solid waste removal would be worthwhile, and shouldn't be all that hard to accomplish if there's any will to do so.

Honeychurch, thanks for posting the article. It is very interesting, but I read the stats differently than some of you. Of course most builders aren't putting in wine racks and induction. Those are personal taste specific and not selling points for most houses. Of course they're putting in granite. Even with all the people on GW who prefer quartz, marble, soapstone, metal, wood, tile, eco-whatsit, etc., granite is by far the most popular. Quartz used to be less expensive with many of the same features. At this point, with the amount being cut and shipped, the economies of scale have kicked in, and market price has driven it down below other choices that require fewer resources to produce. I, personally, could not live with a very popular granite color, and would tear it out pronto if confronted with it, but there are lots of granites I would be fine with if they came with the house, even though I couldn't find any I wanted in a kitchen I designed for myself.

The garbage disposals don't shock me the way they do Florantha. Most new construction, by quantity being in developments, is being done with newish infrastructure (or heavy assessments to improve existing), so handling the waste isn't usually a problem. OTOH, a disposer is inexpensive and an expected "feature". The prospective homeowner can use it or ignore it as she/he pleases. In previous discussions, a lot of people who compost conscientiously have mentioned that they appreciate having a disposer for the little bits and shards of things that stick to the sink and can just be washed down. I think this is the best of both worlds. The bulk is removed from the waste stream, but convenience and pleasant living still exist.

BTW, many sewage treatment plants compost all "solids" and provide very high quality fertilizers. I'm sure this is much more expensive than throwing your potato peelings in a compost bin, but reclaiming the sewage is definitely worthwhile.

Its fine I was engaging in some thread drift because I thought you brought up an interesting point. I think its one of those things the more we learn the less we find out we know.

I was interested by the almost 2% who never use Energy Star appliances; the 7% who never use low flow faucets, the 5% who never install granite; the 20% who never use full height cabinet or never install a corner lazy susan.

Its almost harder to pick an appliance thats Not Energy Star (even though this rating has its own controversies).

Palimpsest, I think the "nevers" are probably a combination of the ultra-high end Viking or better crowd, ultra-low end builders who get deals on old models and cranky people who say "never" because they don't like "paying extra for less" and want to skew the results. :) Just speculation on my part, but there are still plenty of lowest end, old design, and ultra high end, "damn the waste" resource hogs out there.

These kitchens are being built to sell, not to use. That means, by definition, most will not contain the very highest-end features, because most are not designed to appeal to the very highest end buyers. Also, builders are focusing on what they think buyers think they want--not what buyers would actually find useful or good in real life. Which is why most of the layouts I've seen in new construction and flips around here are so unspeakably wretched.

I wonder if the "kitchens no one cooks in" trend is tied to the "kitchens no cook would design" trend. Imagine young marrieds, scrimping to get a toehold in the housing market. No funds, nor time, to change the kitchen around. It has nice enough cabinets, all the requisite appliances, pretty counters. Even though it would cost less, be healthier and more satisfying, to cook at home, they never really get into it, and buy a lot of prepared foods plus eat out a lot. Then a baby or two come and they have even less perceived time, but mom wants to be a good mom and, having received that fancy orange and green babyfood making set-up as a shower present, really tries to make nutritious food for the baby, but it's just too danged hard. By the time she has all the equipment she needs out, and the food assembled, the baby wakes up and demands her attention. There's nowhere safe for baby in the kitchen at all.

Compare that to someone who has lucked into a well laid out, functional kitchen, who isn't much into cooking when they first get married, but soon finds out that making a chicken and a salad, or some chops and steamed vegetables, takes a lot less time than going out, and is easier, because it doesn't involve all the negotiations, driving, parking, etc., when they're both tired and hungry. So she learns to make her mother's potroast and he learns to bake a cake and pretty soon they're making most of their food. They're paying attention to nutrition and spending what they save by not going out on beautiful produce. They start looking forward to the farmers' market. It's their weekly "date". They're used to preparing good food at home, and just mince it up fine for baby.

What do you think? I hated my old kitchen so much that I avoided a lot of complicated cooking except for company. In my new kitchen I cook all kinds of things just for fun. I wonder how many people buy nice new houses with pretty but poorly designed kitchens, who never realize that their kitchens are preventing them from wanting to cook???

Pllog,

You bring up a very interesting point. I wonder how many people are "suffering" from a poorly designed kitchen and what are the aggregated social consequences of that situation. More easy-to-make but nutritionally margin packaged and prepared food? More resources spent on transportation? Worse health outcomes?

Last winter a friend of mine decided to embark on a kitchen update. What fun I thought and offered books and, of course, talked up the KF as resource. They were slightly intimidated by the high-end kitchen overhauls and didn't want to go there. Fine, but when I persuaded this person to draw me a basic sketch of the room and the proposed plan I was shocked at how inefficiently laid out it was. Even something as elmentary as positioning the DW on the dish storage and dining room side of the clean-up sink (either side was possible) seemed a revolutionary idea. But when I suggested that they "map" the paths of some typical meal preps in order to find the most efficient layout, they didn't want to bother. In fact the response was: "I've got better things to do with my life and besides this plan was done by a KD."

One of the reasons I often recommend Alexander's A Pattern for Living book is that I think it teaches you the critical importance of thoughtfully-made choices about the design and lay-out of living spaces.

L

I must really want to cook because I've managed to do all those things in some incredibly bad kitchens. Not only were they poorly laid out, but also it burned my eyes to look at them.

I suspect that some of the builders who answered the survey are building spec homes or rental properties and are going to choose the cheapest appliances/finishes possible.

I'll add that I'd be interested to see the data stratified by whether the builder was answering to an end user, to someone who intends to sell the property, or to someone who intends to rent the property.

I sometimes think the highest end appliances go into houses that are going to be flipped because it can be cheaper to buy a high end range than it is to make a kitchen functional, and once the high end range is in place, some buyers tick off the "high end kitchen" box and are satisfied.

A lot of the blame falls on the pernicious mythology of "the heart of the home." A place for homework, school projects, entertaining, cocktail hour--everything except cooking. It would be one thing if kitchens grew around a core kernel of good cooking space, then added all these extraneous functions onto it. Instead, the cooking function is sacrificed to everything else, so that a family can train the dog, practice acrobatics and put on a performance of Macbeth, but can't actually find anyplace to make lunch. These small, terrible old kitchens that produced wonderful food were governed by mothers and grandmothers who knew how to deliver a cheerful rap on your knuckle with a wooden spoon if you tossed your homework onto the pastry board. Today, the needs of the cook come last.

My grandmother (who had a 1920s kitchen that came from the Sears catalog) did not allow anyone to set foot in the kitchen when she was cooking.

Marcolo could not have said it better. A friend of mine is totally doing her kitchen remodel with "entertaining" in mind. I tried to point out that she entertains, at most, one night per week, which leaves about 20 other meals per week that she has to prep and cook in the kitchen when she is not entertaining. I thought maybe her priorities might need to be shifted.

"... the right type of built environment will necessarily lead to the right sort of behavior. ..." is this the idea in Alexander's A Pattern for Living ?

i have found that my new kitchen makes me buy and cook much more variety and better meals than before. An induction cooktop changed my relationship to cooking. Two medium small fridges hold temperature well and keep everything in good shape. Greens stay green. Meats don't get freezer burn.

Previously, the builder grade kitchen had symmetry but that made each counter segment small. I don't know how the article might have covered the subject of layout. I have TWO expanses of 4'+ countertop.

I have other things not covered in the article or not discussed as essential. Did the list in the article include "all drawers" as a subject?

Green + brown veggie matter is easy to compost indoors or anywhere outside like on a balcony. ( Composting T bone steaks is much much harder. )

Funny how the theme of the article is that builders *know* the kitchen is the most important room of the house - so why are so many of them so poorly designed that homeowners invariably have to remodel to make it functional for its intended purpose (to cook)?

About the garbage disposal, I think of them as an anti-drain clog device, we almost never use it to grind up food waste, just whatever small bits fall into it during use of the sink.