Kitchen Design Tutorial: Don't Put away the dishes, Pre-position them

Never put anything away

Kitchen design, I mean really good, functional kitchen design, is really based on a few pretty simple ideas, many of which come to us from the work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth.

Perhaps the fundamental idea is storage at point of first use. Store the thing where you will be standing when you first need that thing. Give the best storage to the things you use the most. Store by use, not category. If you are designing your kitchen, let this be your mantra: storage at point of first use.

The Gilbreths devised a variety of tools for assessing work processes. One of these was a sort of alphabet of motions known as the therbligs (see below). Using these names, you could describe or enumerate any work activity. One of my favorite therbligs is Pre-Position.

Gary Cooper's six shooter, or my carpenter's hammer, are great examples of things that are pre-positioned. They are located right where they will be used and pre-positioned so that Gary or I can grasp them using the same hand position needed in use.

In the kitchen, my favorite example is a knife slot. At your prep area, your favorite knives are stored in a simple slot at the back of the counter, where you can grasp the one you want in an instant, with the grip you will use for chopping or slicing.

My idea for today is that as you design your kitchen, don't think in terms of storing things, or stowing them away. Think of pre-positioning them for their next outing. Dry the knife quickly, and slide it into its slot. Locate the oatmeal pot, and the measuring cup, near the sink, where you can measure out a cup of water, and dump it in the pot, and grab the salt on the way to the stove, etc.

Were you to keep your knives in a drawer, you would use up a lot of therbligs putting your favorite knive to work. You'd have to move your hand to the drawer (transport empty) open the drawer (transport again perhaps), find the knife (search), pick it up (grasp), move your arm to the counter (transport loaded), maybe adjust your grasp (grasp), and so on.

The idea of pre-positioning rather than storing things works best for the things you need the most: certain spices; your favorite pots, salt and pepper, maybe the coffee or tea. The oil. If you can preposition, rather than store, the twenty things you use the most, you have made your kitchen work much easier, and I think, more graceful and fun.

My all time favorite prepositioning device is the wall mounted dishdrainer we call a “wonder-no-dry”. Usually, washing dishes, you wash the dish, rinse it, dry it, or let it dry on your rack, then a bit later you come back and put it away in a cupboard. If you have a dishwasher, you may (or may not) prerinse the dishes, stick them in the dishwasher, come back later, unload the dishwasher, put the stuff in cupboards, then get it out later.

With the dishdrainer, you wash the dish, rinse it, and stick it up in the wooden dishdrainer where it dries itself, the few drips finding their way back into the sink. The dish is now prepositioned, easy to see, ready to grab when wanted, in short, pre-positioned. No unloading, no storing, no searching. The drying process, the loading and unloading of the dishwasher steps are eliminated.

When you approach storage this way, you are saving work, but also space. In the case of dish management, conventionally you have two locations devoted to storing the same dishes; the cabinet, and the dishwasher itself. With the drainer, you have just one, opening up your kitchen layout to othe possibilities while saving the cost of the dishwasher.

I'm not pitching exactly these solutions; if you want a dishwasher – most of our customers do – fine. If you want to store the knives in the drawer, that's OK. It's more the idea of thinking in terms of work processes, and shortening them, up, and making them not just more efficient but more pleasant. There's an old labor song, “Don't Mourn, Organize”. My point here: “Don't Store, Preposition”.

The Therbligs:

1:   Search

2:   Select
3:   Transport empty (i.e., move your hand toward an object you
      need)
4:   Grasp
5:   Transport loaded (move something by dragging, carrying, etc)
6:   Hold
7:   Release Hold
8:   Position
9:   Pre-position for later use
10:  Inspect
11:  Assemble
12:  Disassemble
13:  Use
14:  Unavoidable Delay
15:  Avoidable Delay
16:  Plan
17:  Rest to overcome fatigue