Cohousing-L Mailing List: Furnishing your common house kitchen - dishes, utensils

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA, long built:

When we were ready to furnish our common house kitchen, we started  
with donated stuff, but wanted to avoid folks dumping junk. This is  
what we did, that worked well:

On an pre-announced day, everyone with kitchen stuff to donate brought  
it to the dining room and laid it out on a table area. If they cared  
to "pitch" the value of their items, they could stay around. Also if  
they wanted to take back what wasn't adopted, vs having it go to a  
thrift shop.

Two or three kitchen-savvy folks made the choices. OK, we want to have  
4 sets of salad tongs: which are the best four available here? Let's  
have 50 spoons.  etc.

As I mentioned in another post, we assiduously collected second-hand  
Corelle plates and bowls for years, to the point where we have dishes  
for about 40 out on the cart, and another big stack for back up if we  
have some sort of event that uses many many dishes. They are the very  
best - light, stacking, dry fast, almost unbreakable. Their serving  
bowls are also good.

For health reasons, we've avoided aluminum, and Teflon.

Over time, we've learned what we really want to spend money on, to  
have good quality: knives, and Belgique soup pots, the ONLY ones we've  
found resist scorching.

Because people do sneak things into the kitchen, or leave things  
behind at events, we do periodically go through the kitchen and sift  
out giveaways. First we put them on a bench in the front hall, as  
inevitably someone will say "You can't get rid of THAT-- it's my very  
favorite whatsis..." So a few things go back to the kitchen.

Lynn Nadeau
at RoseWind Cohousing
www.rosewind.org
where we just had a delicious homemade pizza supper
and it's full tilt springtime, all flowery and green and sunny shirt- 
sleeve weather, and
we have a wonderful home for sale