by Cathy Perrins

Created on: April 18, 2008

"When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began."
Friedrich Nietzsche

Who was it that said "Follow the money"? Well, who said it doesn't matter - this is a kitchen so our mantra to efficiently design our kitchen is to "Follow the Food!"

The basic underlying purpose of a kitchen is to prepare food. For an efficient well designed kitchen anything else is subservient to that. To achieve a properly functioning kitchen the best designers study the efficient flow of food preparation and can use this same design process to create your own efficient kitchen. To have the most efficient kitchen for your meal preparation it is best to not only "follow the food", but follow your food. Each kitchen prepares different meals so your properly designed kitchen will be set up with you or your chef in mind.

Your kitchen will have a series of paths the food follows during the preparation process. Placing the various areas of the kitchen in proper relationship to one another so the food path flows easily will enhance your kitchen's efficiency. When your kitchen is properly designed, you can easily prepare the largest meal served over the course of a year which is frequently a holiday meal. Also, and more importantly for the ease of your daily living, your properly designed kitchen can easily and efficiently handle your daily food preparation, serving the efficiently prepared food and with an easy clean up afterwards. Properly prepared meals will enhance you and your family's health and well being so proper kitchen design can affect your family in profound ways.

The beginning of the food path is the acquisition of food.

How will it arrive in your kitchen? Are you ultra-urban with food delivered to your door or are you rustically rural with food growing in the garden out back? Many people are somewhere between these two and the food arrives in their family vehicle. Proper and efficient kitchen design starts with placing the kitchen close to or easily accessible to the food delivery. If your food arrives at your door then having a delivery door in your kitchen would make sense. If you are supplying food from your garden then a mud room or utility room with a sink between the garden and the kitchen would make sense so the vegetables could get a rough cleaning before being brought into the food preparation area. If you are bringing food in with the family vehicle

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