Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common House Kitchen Master List recommendations

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

Highly recommend Corelle plates and bowls, but these can be acquired via 
donations, yard sales, and thrift shops. Put out the word, and keep an eye out. 
These are very resistant to breakage, clean easily, and dry themselves quickly 
from a heated dishwasher. And most importantly, they are relatively lightweight 
and store very compactly. We have a three-shelf Rubbermaid rolling cart— top 
for plates and bowls, middle for flatware caddies, bottom for bins of clean 
white cotton dishtowels. The cart is at the beginning of the serving counter, 
then is rolled to where the dishwasher is unloaded, then rolled back to serving 
line.

We set a day for people  to bring whatever  they hoped to donate, laid it all 
out on tables, a small committee collected what was useful (Let’s see - how 
about 3 spatulas - which are the three best spatulas  on offer) and at the end 
of t he process donors could take back unwanted items or leave them for 
donation to thrift shop. 

Go for  quality in the small appliances: Cuisineart, Kitchen Aid, etc for rice 
cookers, blenders, crockpots. Set up a big notebook with plastic-pocket pages 
to contain manuals and  other paper work for appliances such as fridge, ovens, 
etc. too.

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA
23 households, common house since 2000.