We’re guessing just about everyone is going to be an experienced cook by next year – and some of you may be thinking about optimising the kitchen while stuck at home. Here’s how to get started.
It might seem straightforward at first: put large appliances where they fit, fill the cabinets, and ensure that there’s some countertop space to work on. But the inevitable chaos of spring cleaning or moving in sometimes leads to less-than-optimal arrangements. All those extra steps we take, between the refrigerator and various countertops for preparation, cooking, and cleaning, they really do add up.
Photo by Kipras Štreimikis on Unsplash.
The Work Triangle
If you’ve ever spoken with an interior designer about your kitchen at home or worked in the back of a restaurant, you might have heard about this. Conceived by industrial psychologist and engineer Lillian Moller Gilbreth way back in 1929, the work triangle is still the most efficient arrangement of cooking elements – and it is the ideal starting point for you to plan your kitchen’s transformation.
No matter the size, shape, or quality of kitchen, the paths we follow to get our cooking done are going to be the same: -
1. We generally begin at food storage – the pantry for dry foods, or at the single largest appliance in any kitchen, the fridge.
2, The next destination would be a nearby countertop or island to prepare ingredients, ideally situated between 1.0m and 2.4m away.
3. A similar distance away is where we would then apply heat with the help of various large appliances, such as a stove or oven.
Although most of us would prefer to neglect it, washing up is the final phase. In restaurants or large domestic kitchens, this typically occurs in a separate section, as waste has to be kept apart from consumables. In most urban homes, washing up happens in spaces overlapping with preparation areas – which is why it gets lumped in with the prep area of our work triangle.
Urban homes require compact and utilitarian kitchens. As a result, separate wet and dry kitchens are unaffordable luxuries for the majority of people. Areas for preparation and washing up now overlap or occupy the same space – which makes perfect sense since, despite being on opposite ends of the workflow, both stages rely on a sink.
This also means that the last meal’s dishes (hopefully) get washed before the next meal is prepared.
With smaller, open floor plans increasingly becoming the norm, urban property prices necessitating communal living arrangements, along with household chores shared among people living by various arrangements and schedules, there tends to be more than one person occupying the kitchen at any time.
And this is where the classic work triangle can result in accidents. Photo by Alyson McPhee on Unsplash.
The smallest possible configuration, with 1.0m to 1.2m between three points (storage, preparation, and cooking) is ideal for compact floor plans, or if you’re the only person who ever uses your kitchen. But even if the space is your own, you shouldn’t have to dodge soapy water while prepping ingredients or navigate tight quarters while working with high temperatures.
The Size of the Work Triangle
While the minimum of one metre between points is adequate for most single-occupant households, kitchens that regularly see two or more chefs should have the sides of the work triangle extended to a maximum of 2.4 metres (or up to 2.9 metres in large kitchens).
Any more than that and the walking around will result in more accumulated strain than the cooking ever will. Besides, the luxury of all that extra elbow room will eventually be outweighed by property values, if not by the inconvenience of distance.
The Shape of the Kitchen
The size and shape of your work triangle are inevitably dictated by the same properties of your kitchen. The majority of small-space homes will allow for a single-wall kitchen, with the work triangle reduced to a line. But the ideal for homes both large and small should be a kitchen with an island to encourage socialisation.
Photo by Max Delsid on Unsplash.
If all you’ve got is a single stretch of wall: your work triangle begins at one end and stops at the other end of the line. For maximum efficiency, begin from the handle of the refrigerator door for easy access to ingredients, then continue down the line, with empty counter space of between 40 centimetres and one metre at every stop from the fridge through to preparation and cooking.
This kitchen, however, combines preparation and washing up at the end of the line, which works too. Photo by Joseph Ngabo on Unsplash.
With two parallel walls, allow around one metre of walkway for one chef, or up to 1.2 metres for two. The prep zone usually goes opposite the fridge and cooking beside it, with adequate counter space next to the sink and each of the large appliances. The other way around would also make sense, placing preparation beside the fridge and cooking opposite instead, but it’s worth noting that moving cookware across a walkway is generally a safety hazard.
Photo by Sidekix Media on Unsplash.
If you’ve got two or more adjoining walls, you could simply arrange appliances and fixtures in a triangle, while limiting the lengths of your transits between stations to less than 3 metres. As we’ve said, your feet will thank you for it.
As an added bonus, throw in a table or an island for extra preparation space, you’ll create the potential for dynamic movement and more work triangles to exist simultaneously in the same kitchen.
Share with us how your kitchen looks like at the comment section below!
(Article contributed by Giselle Markaz, edited by Kevin Eichenberger, 21st April 2020)
