Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Cohousing kitchen requirements

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

One of the things I thought was  interesting at the very first cohousing
conference in Boulder was an kitchen design program called follow the
dishes. Essentially you make a walk through of where a plate travels, from
food service pick up point, clean up to storage back to service to
understand the flow. You can do the same thing with the kitchen cookery. Yet
another design layer on this to follow the flow of a typical dish prep from
ingredients in to the kitchen, storage, prep, cook and serve, compost or
garbage. This gives you ideas about the flow of groceries. All this is
meta-design stuff, that you do before you look at counter top material type
details.

Using this model, I was very impressed with a camp kitchen I saw once where
the flow of the dishes worked out so well that when it came out of the pass
through tabletop washer the tray slid down into position where the dishes
where picked up to start a meal service. You simply picked up your dishes
out of the trays to start the meal.  No wasted motion at all. This kitchen
was designed so that you never had to pick up a loaded tray of dishes, only
to slide it from place to place. It was all stainless steel with a well
engineered counter drainage, and it was built in the 50's.I have not yet
seen this ergonomic a cohousing kitchen yet but I'll bet there are some
close ones. If you can figure out how to NOT have to pick up a heavy loaded
tray, especially one that is wet, you are thinking ahead of the curve in my
opinion.

Rob Sandelin
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous [at] msn.com


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Casey Morrigan
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 7:35 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: RE: [C-L]_Cohousing kitchen requirements



After three and 1/2 years of cooking in our kitchen I can say a few things
about a CH kitchen.  First, everything Liz said in her post matches my
experience here, about the frig, freezer, stove, and pantry.

We used hand-me-down appliances till we could afford something better, so we
are replacing as we find the right thing and gather the will to allocate the
money.  We replaced our ancient double ovens with new ones last year.
Lovely!  We do need two ovens often for our 17 households.

We need but do not have a deep deep sink (stainless will help you break
fewer things compared to porcelain), and could use a second prep sink and
kitchen island.

We have closed cabinets instead of shelves  - shelves would be easier.

We have a cut out so the kitchen is accessible to the dining area, and that
has been great all along.

That's it.  Don't worry too much about mistakes in the design--it's not
worth it to stress out over the "perfect" design, because you'll find the
ideal only after you move in and use it for a while.  And though it's nice
to get it right the first time, perfect design is not necessary to have
community or fun meals.

If there was one principle I wish I'd known ahead of time, it would be,
"make it easy to cook and clean up."  Because that's what motivates us to
have lots of meals together.

Casey Morrigan
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, California



> -----Original Message-----
> From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
> [mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of MerylD [at] aol.com
> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 3:02 PM
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: [C-L]_Cohousing kitchen requirements
>
>
>
> Hi all:
>
> After many years of delays South Florida is going to get its
> first cohousing
> community! Groundbreaking is expeced in the fall.
>
> We are working with a local developer, who is putting all his
> own upfront
> money into the project. Together we are designing the
> cohousing kitchen and
> were wondering what appliances and sizes groups felt were
> important. I
> followed the recent dishwasher discussion so I know the
> merits of commercial
> versus residential, but what about refrigerator (is one big high-end
> residential unit enough?) and freezer (stand-alone?) and
> stove size (number
> of burners?) and the number of dishwashers needed if we go with the
> residential type. Cost is a big consideration.
>
> Thanks!
> Meryl Davids
> Emerald Place Cohousing, Delray, Florida
> breaking ground fall 2003
> _______________________________________________
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> Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
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