The (Kitchen) Bermuda Triangle

There is a thing in kitchen design called the “golden triangle” or “work triangle.” This concept puts the three most-used kitchen items…the stove, the fridge, and the sink… within just a few steps of each other and provides counter top space between them. It is not a new or even a high-end concept: my father and step-mother bought a modest new tract home in the early 1960s that incorporated this concept to great effect.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your kitchen is, how fine the finishes, how modern, trendy and up-to-date the lighting is, if the kitchen is not laid out efficiently, it is going to be a nightmare to work in. A golden triangle layout puts you within easy reach of the fridge, stove and sink, with food prep space in between them. I have had several kitchens of this design and they are excellent, efficient, workspaces.

South Africa has never heard of the Golden Triangle. South African kitchens are more like the Bermuda Triangle, a space given to disaster for even the most casual, laissez-faire cook. Even in new homes, the kitchens here are horrendous, classic examples of inefficient design and poor layout, and a testament to having been designed with no thought given to function. Oh, many of them are lovely…the kitchen in my rented house is beautiful---and spacious, too---but it is an absolute nightmare to cook in because the layout, in a word, sucks.

I paced it off the other day…eight paces from stove to the kitchen sink (which is in another room), ten paces from the sink to the refrigerator (which is in yet another room), twelve paces from the fridge back to the stove. This is about double the optimum distance between the major points in the kitchen...imagine carrying a heavy pot of pasta and boiling water into another room to drain it! I’ll give a bit of credit for good thinking…a small round prep sink has been installed a few feet from the stove but, unfortunately, it was installed in a corner, set well back from the edge of the countertop, and one needs to have the arms of and orang-utan to use it without neck and back strain.

Sadly, this kitchen with the lovely window overlooking a lush garden (in front of which there is no sink but should be), is typically South African. The lighting consists of a single light fitting in the centre of the ceiling…the kind you might put in an entry way and which uses only one dim bulb…and a light in the exhaust hood above the stove. That’s it…no task lighting, no wall sconces, no downlighters…and when I try to chop veggies after dark, invariably my shadow falls on everything because there is but a single light in the centre of the kitchen which, wherever I might be standing, is behind me.

This lack of forethought and planning is typical of the South African kitchen. This is a country where the vast majority of middle-class families have household help…the PC phrase is “domestic workers,” but the truth is, we have maids. And a rather large percentage of South African kitchens have a second room attached to them and that room is called a scullery. Originally the scullery was intended for washing up…that was where the grubby work was done, like washing pots and such. But, because the scullery is a rather amorphous space, without any hard and fast conceptual rules to keep it honest, South African kitchen designers (and redesigners and homeowners) each have their own ideas of what a scullery is/should be…and the result is nothing short of disastrous.

The scullery in my house isn’t too bad. It has a tall cupboard for cleaning supplies, brooms, etc., a double kitchen sink (remember, the kitchen has only that puny little prep sink) and space beneath the counter top for a washing machine and dishwasher (washers are all front loaders here). There is a door to the garage and another door out to the “drying yard” with the clothes lines. This is pretty much what a scullery is supposed to be…a place for washing dirty dishes, storing cleaning supplies, keeping the stinky trash bin, mops, brooms, laundry… But there is a problem here… I have acres of counter-top space in the kitchen and a table that seats eight. On either side of that scullery sink is barely a 2-foot by 2-foot piece of counter space…hardly space to put all of the dishes before and after washing and certainly no space to hide the aftermath of a cooking orgy from the view of my dinner guests seated at the dining table in the open plan space that combines kitchen and dining room. Also, the trash bin is in a cupboard in the scullery, meaning I have to hike there and back to dispose of eggshells or packaging…actually, I toss it in that silly prep sink, which is useless for draining potatoes or pasta (awkward location splashes boiling water all over the counter top) and impossible to reach for peeling anything.

As inadequate as my scullery is, some of the ones I have seen in houses for sale were downright flabbergasting. In two houses in the last ten days I have seen kitchens that contained nothing more than a breakfast table/bar and a stovetop. I am not kidding! Oh, a few cupboards and some countertop space, but no refrigerator, no microwave oven, no sink (not even a prep sink)…nothing but a stove and a place to eat. I tried to imagine myself cooking breakfast in one of those kitchens…eggs burning on the stove, toast burning in the toaster in the scullery while I’m digging around in the refrigerator out in the hallway looking for the cream for Hubby’s coffee. The major “stations” of the golden triangle were in different rooms…and this was a remodelled kitchen!! I shudder to think what it must have looked like before!

In another house with a remodelled kitchen, the scullery was literally twice the size of the actual kitchen and was, in fact, the kitchen minus the stove. In a long narrow space adjacent to the scullery there was some countertop space with a stovetop fitted into the centre. If you were standing there cooking, your back would be to another countertop that was supposed to be the breakfast bar, and beyond that bar was the family room. Unfortunately, the chairs for the breakfast bar completely blocked the walkway space from the front of the house to the bedrooms, so if anyone wanted to travel from the front door or living room to the bedroom, those sitting at the breakfast bar would have to move to allow access. This kitchen had no prep sink, no appliances, nothing except the stove…the rest of the kitchen was in another room.

South African kitchens tend to have the washing machine plumbing in them. I consider this kinda gross. Even if the washer is in the scullery, I don’t exactly relish the thought of my soiled undies and Hubby’s dirty socks sharing space with the drinking glasses and forks…ew! And what if a basket of laundry is sitting on the scullery floor and you trip and spill a plate of leftover spaghetti onto a basket of whites? I like the idea of a laundry space, but my kitchen…or scullery…just doesn’t do it for me.

Kitchens in this country don’t have garbage disposals and most of them have insufficient drawer space as well. For as large as my present kitchen is, there are only four drawers. Base cabinets here do not have a drawer above the doors, as is the norm in American kitchens. I have a single bank of four drawers which is next to the stove and more than 15 paces from the dining room table. So, forks, spoons and other table ware are now kept in the drawer of the china cabinet in the dining room…that one piece of furniture has five drawers in it, one more than my entire kitchen and scullery combined.

The lack of a garbage disposal is not that big a problem in terms of food preparation, but I live in a country that has aggressive flies. You know those TV ads soliciting money for starving children in other countries, the ones that show big-eyed little black children with flies crawling all over their faces? Yup…those flies. Nasty buggers that will fly under your glasses, up your nose, and even try to enter your mouth as you open to put a forkful of food in it. They have never heard of window screens in this country, so the flies are everywhere, and I’ll bet you can just imagine what a kitchen bin smells like in 90°F heat…and how difficult it is to keep the flies away from it. A garbage disposal would be nice…

One of the things I do like about South African kitchens is that they all seem to have ceramic tile floors, which are pretty easy to clean. They’re awfully hard on dropped crockery, though, but seem to clean up easier than the vinyl floors that are the norm in American kitchens.

But the bottom line is, the average South African kitchen is a dismal affair. Poorly designed and badly laid out, unimaginative (no kitchen islands, no pot racks, no gas ranges or microwave shelves) and wholly dysfunctional, the kitchens here are, at best, bleak.

We’re still house hunting but have come to the conclusion that as far as the kitchens go, we are just going to have to take one that has sufficient floor space so I can tear it all out and do it right…and that means a complete redesign using the golden triangle concept.

**sigh** So much for finding our dream house…

Open Plan Gone Awry

Well, I'm back. Have been in my too-small and insect-infested rental house for a month now...and have more than 60 mosquito bites to show for it...and we are desperately, daily, house hunting. And so far, the results of our search is, at best, dismal. Contrary to local myth, Johannesburg is much more costly than Cape Town, it rolls up its sidewalks at 6 pm (except for the unbelievable abundance of bars, clubs, pubs, and other watering holes), the roads are worse than any country road I've ever driven, at any given time half of the traffic lights in town are not functioning, the traffic is akin to LA's, and I don't think I have ever encountered so many rude, self-absorbed people in such a short time anyplace else in my life. To put it succinctly, Joburg sucks and I am not happy here. (And that is without even giving a passing mention to the absolutely horrific weather here.)

But despite my feelings, I am stuck here, at least until we can find a way back to the Cape and, because Hubby must pay back the cost of relocation if we leave within one year, we are pretty much stuck here for a while. (Don't even ask about the move...suffice it to say that my list of grievances against the moving company has more than 50 items on it, from breaking a piece of heirloom china to packing an antique doll beneath a cast iron door stop to finding my missing lingerie packed in a box beneath a soiled dog bed and blanket to damaged furniture.) Yesterday was Valentine's Day and after a sumptuous lunch at a landmark restaurant, Hubby and I hit the streets, looking for open houses (called "show houses" here).

I am not impressed with South African architecture, in the main, but then I'm not terribly fond of certain trends in American home design in recent years, either. I remember when the “open plan” concept, as applied to homes, began popping up on such programs as “This Old House” and Bob Vila’s home renovation shows. Touted as the latest and greatest thing in home design and already incorporated in newly-built tract homes, I was appalled at the blatant attempt on the part of builders to reduce their construction costs (fewer walls, less cost to build) by snookering people into accepting their self-serving, penny-pinching new design as something desirable. Two decades later, open plan is not only incorporated into newly built homes, you are hard-pressed to find a separate kitchen in even older, classic homes…everybody has jumped on the bandwagon and remodelled under the “open plan” banner. And, for the most part, the results I have seen have been unmitigated disasters.

I hate open plan. Just hate it. When I have spent hours banging about in the kitchen, dirtying pot after pan, piling the sink full of soiled dishes and littering the countertops with colanders, cutting boards, measuring cups, half-emptied cartons of milk and packets of pasta, why would I want the disaster-filled kitchen to be in full view of my guests? Or even my family, for that matter? Clean as I go along? Sorry, when making a choice between burning the chops or swabbing the sticky stuff in the sink, the chops win out every time. Besides, that is what kitchen doors are for…to separate the grunt-labour involved in putting a meal on the table from the innocents who should be allowed to eat their meal in peace, unburdened by the potentially guilt-inducing knowledge that their smiling hostess has just sweated off the equivalent of a marathon in her pursuit of their gastronomic happiness.

Think about it for a minute…have you ever worked in an open plan office? Think not? Do the words “cubicle” or “cube farm” ring a bell with you? If you truly haven’t ever been subjected to this kind of work environment, do you know anyone who has? Know any cube denizens who love working in a cube? There is no privacy…the sniffles of the allergy sufferer to your left cannot be shut out; the incessant and annoying giggle of the phone-addicted twit on the right cannot be silenced, and the toilet-mouthed guy with the booming voice over your third wall precludes any phone conversation you might want to make, for fear of the background noise of sniffles, giggles, and F-bomb backdrop offending your listener. You cannot speak freely as you most certainly will be overhead, and your activities (or lack thereof) are visible to anyone who happens to walk by your non-existent cubicle door. I used to laugh when given a “confidential” memo to type…just how confidential is anything you type up in a cube where anyone can stand at the entrance and see your computer screen without your knowledge because your back is to the doorway? Life in a cube farm is devoid of any kind of privacy, peace, or dignity…why would we want to replicate that in our homes?

But the marketeers did their jobs well, eventually convincing First World home buyers across the globe that spending more money for less privacy, fewer walls (and a lot fewer cupboards!) was the hip, modern, trendy thing to do (did I mention I also hate “trendy”?). Now, a couple of decades later, in order to attract serious buyers a house must have an open plan kitchen. And that is where it all started to go wrong.

You see, aside from the desire to save some money on construction and gouge gullible buyers out of a few extra bucks, the concept of “open plan” was supposed to be a way to keep the cook from being isolated from the family during meal prep times. Personally, I relished that brief respite from the demands of family life…let Daddy parent the little darlings for a while so I can vin his coq for him, steam a little asparagus and whip up some lemon butter and a mountain of fluffy mash to delight his taste buds. But sentimental home buyers…read that guilt-saturated career moms who left the fruit of their loins in daycare while they work…bought into the “spend more quality time” with their kids idea and the open plan concept took off.

But, like anything else, the basic reason for the whole concept became forgotten as the trend saturated the market and owners of traditional kitchens began dragging down cabinets and smashing down walls. Open plan as a concept, but devoid of reason, began to take over. Traditional houses, venerable older homes, seldom had family rooms and if they did, those family rooms were seldom adjacent to the kitchen. In the more classic home layout, the dining room was adjacent to the kitchen and the living room was generally on the other side of the dining room. In the frenzied stampede to jump on the open plan band wagon, homeowners overlooked the obvious: the room in which Mom slaves over a hot stove is NOT adjacent to the room where the kids sprawl out in front of the tube…but open plan now rules home desirability so dining rooms and kitchens began merging into a single open space. The fact that Hubby and kiddies were still in a separate room and Mom can no longer close the kitchen door on the mountain of dirty dishes and other detritus of meal preparation was immaterial in the face of the power of the trend.

The next phase of the movement returned to the new home build. I now live in a house that was built to have the lounge and dining room in a single open plan space. Interestingly, the living room is beyond the dining room and it has double doors on it to shut out the noise from the kitchen and the cooking smells! A large granite breakfast bar divides the dining space from the kitchen space…what kind of sense does that make? A breakfast bar literally beside the dining table! The purpose of the open plan concept is completely defeated in this house…Mum is still isolated from Dad and the kiddies while she cooks and they sprawl in front of the big screen, but now Mum can’t shut the kitchen door to hide the eyesore the kitchen became during meal prep.

Developers, however, are building on their success. If people will swallow the ridiculous notion of paying more money for fewer walls simply by telling them that this is a new trend, why not take it further? A couple of years ago we looked at a flat we were considering as a rental…until I saw the bedroom. The bathtub and the sink were in the bedroom, as was a shower stall. Only the toilet had its own walled-off space with a door. The salesman tried to tell me this was “romantic,” but I am sorry, as much as I love my husband, some things…like spitting toothpaste into the sink and gargling afterwards…should just remain private. Besides, who needs the steam getting into the closet and mildewing the clothes?

In our house hunting last week we saw a house that just floored me…this open plan bathroom thing had been incorporated when it was remodelled but they had just gone too far…from the bed you could see the toilet and there was no door! Speaking only for myself, there are times that being able to close the loo door is all that saves the rest of the family from being gassed in their sleep, such is the consequence of indulging in certain delicious but pungent and lingering culinary delights.

Maybe I am just getting old, but I value privacy. I want a door on my bedroom…a door that locks. It is nobody’s business but my own what goes on in there. I want to close my kitchen door when I bring out the roast so you don’t see the greasy pan, the gravy spilled on the stove, the mixer beaters coated with mashed potatoes still plugged into the machine…you should be looking at the art on the walls, the beautiful garden out the window, the perfectly steamed artichokes sitting invitingly in front of you. I want a door on my bathroom, too. There is nothing “romantic” about some of the ablutions and processes we go through to make ourselves clean, well-groomed and presentable. Give me a door and allow me to keep a little of the mystery alive, please!

Most of all, let’s stop getting sucked in by greedy corporations because they prey on our insecurities and lingering adolescent desire to be “cool.” Paying more money for a house that has fewer walls, less storage space, and deprives you of essential privacy because some marketing hack in a construction company tells you it is the “newest concept” (read that “trendy and saves us big money”) makes no kind of sense at all.

Of houses and homes...

South African houses are strange.

I’m not talking about my previous entry describing such things as no built-in heat or a complete ignorance of window screens, despite this being a land of abundant bugs, here. No, I am talking about the way the houses are built.

Hubby is thinking about building and, in going over the idea with me, he has asked if I would be willing to work with the architect to build an “American-style” home. He doesn’t mean a New England clapboard or Pacific Northwest timber frame, either…he’s referring to the kind of layout that most Americans, living in tract homes, take for granted.

For example, have you ever been in a house that, when you entered from the front door you were in the dining room? Well, if you’ve ever been to South Africa, your answer will be “Yes!” I cannot think of a single American home I’ve ever been in that was laid out in such a way. And sculleries…I thought sculleries were the exclusive province of romance novels until I moved to Cape Town! And garages…what house in America, built after 1960, requires you to walk through rain or snow or blustery storm in order to bring the groceries in from the car?

A few years ago we were avidly visiting Sunday open houses (called a “show house” here) in search of a new, larger home. A couple of months later we were back on the show house circuit, looking for our rental property. In that time we visited dozens of houses and got a look at the bizarre building practices employed by South African home builders.

First of all, I am astonished at how many houses have built-in barrooms! We visited an interesting house that had dining room in what looked like was previously the foyer…when you entered the house you practically fell over a dining chair! To the left of this dining area was a galley kitchen so small that once the microwave oven was placed on the counter top and a dish drainer next to the sink, the counter space was gone. Through the dining room we came upon a tiny lounge (South African for “living room”) that managed to squeeze a sofa, TV, and free standing steel fireplace together, leaving a narrow space for walking through to the next room, a huge bar room. This room was two steps down from the lounge, twice the size of the lounge, and was dominated by a built-in bar backed by mirrored shelves full of liquor bottles. Sliding glass doors lead out into a patio and pool, and a rather shabbily kept garden with a cabana area with its own bar! I was astonished!

The person from whom we bought the rental property had a bar and her new house actually has a separate bar room built behind the garage and connected to the house by a glass breezeway. A beautiful provincial-styled house we visited also had the entry through the dining room (the lounge was upstairs!) and a fully stocked bar complete with ice machine and professional bar accoutrements.

When we bought the rental property, we removed the bar and brought it to our house. Today it sits in the garage, turned backwards so we have easy access to the shelves beneath, which are used for storage. The top is handy for putting bags on as I unload the car after shopping. Our liquor collection is behind the closed doors of our punched tin pie safe, only revealed when we have guests or when one of us infrequently wants something stronger than Coke Light or a glass of wine. I’ve never in my life seen so many houses with rooms dedicated to housing a domestic equivalent of the corner pub!

Garages are another story. In my present house, my garage opens out onto a covered patio, from which there is a quick right turn into the kitchen. My last house here saw me walk several feet in open air from the garage door to a covered porch, and from there I had to walk through the living room and halfway up the hallway to get to the kitchen door. This became somewhat of an ordeal, slogging two or three trips laden with heavy bags while the wind lashed ran onto the porch, soaking me and the bags as well. Unfortunately, most of the houses we have seen here do not have easy access from garage to kitchen. One house we saw recently would require you to climb a steep set of stairs out the back of the garage (assuming there was enough room to get around the car while laden with bags of groceries), out into an uncovered, unpaved space (grass), and then enter the house through sliding glass doors. From there, you’d have to walk through the middle of the family room and then the dining room, in order to reach the kitchen. Another house we saw just a few weeks ago, has had some extensive remodelling recently done, and the appearance from the outside was stunning, Unfortunately, in order to get from the garage to the kitchen without getting wet in a rainstorm, you would carry your bags through the side garage door which opens into the master suite dressing room! From there, through the bedroom, down the hallway past the other two bedrooms, then a right turn into the kitchen.

Most American tract homes are designed with the garage having a door that open directly into the kitchen. My house in Northern California had it, the house my father and stepmother bought in 1962 had it, as did the homes of most of my friends. It seems so simple that you don’t even miss it until you find yourself dodging slanting sheets of rain and having to make multiple trips through the weather to bring in the weekly shopping!

South African houses often have sculleries. What is a scullery? Well, it’s difficult to explain because each South African household seems to have a different definition. The most common definition is a room where you wash the dishes, separate from the kitchen. Seems rather pointless to me…but it gets better (or worse, depending on how you view it). In America, most modern houses have the laundry area in the garage, near the hot water heater (called a “geyser”…pronounced geezer with a hard “g”). In South African houses, if you are lucky enough to be plumbed for a washing machine, it will be in your kitchen (front loader). Space for a dryer? Not bloody likely. And dryers sold in South Africa tend to vent hot humid air into the room as they have no vent pipes to the outdoors. I’ve gotten around that by buying a costly Bosch dryer that condenses the moisture taken out of the clothes and deposits it into a water tank that is emptied periodically…usually once per wash day. It works well, keeps the humidity and heat in the house down, but sells for approximately three times what a “normal” dryer costs.

You also are unlikely to find garbage disposals or dishwashers in South African kitchens, and in some kitchens you won’t even find a refrigerator or a sink! Why? Because they are out in the scullery! When he was looking for his first house here in SA, Hubby would email me photos of houses he saw and liked. He was particularly taken with a house that had dark wood and green malachite counter tops in the kitchen. I have to admit, the effect was stunning. But as I peered at the pictures of the kitchen I began asking questions…where is the fridge? Where is the kitchen sink? What is all that huge empty space in the middle of the room used for? Why is there no counter space next to the stove? He didn’t seem to think this was much of a problem until I suggested that he imagine himself making a cup of coffee and a sandwich in that kitchen…how much hiking around from point A to point B would be required? American kitchens tend to have a more efficient layout, requiring fewer than four steps from the sink, stove, refrigerator, which are set out in a triangular pattern. A centre island may be used, something I have seen only once in South Africa.

The scullery idea has some merit, but more like a pantry-cum-mud porch than in its present incarnation. When I see a house with a scullery, about the only thing I can count on being there is the sink. Some houses have a dishwasher or washing machine in the scullery, some have the refrigerator, and others have extra cupboards, like a pantry. Almost all of them have a door to the outside, which is convenient for carrying laundry out to the wash lines. But for the most part, the scullery seems not only superfluous to me, it seems to be inefficient. I don’t like them at all, despite their apparently being a big selling point around here.

Electric stoves are the norm here, despite the energy crisis we are currently experiencing, and I find it surprising that more people have not converted to gas. Now, gas mains do not run in the streets here like they do in America, but I have two 19-litre gas bottles installed outdoors, connected via copper piping to my kitchen stove, and in three years of living here, I’ve used two bottles of gas. Not such a bad deal…and they are amazingly cheaper than the electricity I would be using for the same cooking! But while gas stoves…very nice commercial-type ones, at that…are readily available here, builders continue to install electric stoves with ovens so small you are challenged to roast a large chicken, never mind a Christmas turkey!

It amazes me that South Africans think nothing of having their dining rooms just inside the front door. I have seen dozens of homes with this set up, and it always seems to be just so wrong! I have never cared much for open plan design, and this particular twist on the concept I find particularly offensive. I like my kitchen behind closed doors so that when my guests sit down to table, they aren’t forced to view the mess of dirty pots and pans that went into the creation of their feast.

I also do not like the concept of having to walk through one room in order to reach another. In that house with the extraordinary bar room, one had to walk through the dining room and the living room in order to reach the bar. If you were sitting there swilling beer, every time nature called you’d have to pass in front of the TV in the lounge and dodge the chairs in the dining room just to get to the hallway that leads to the loo. The traffic simply does not “flow” in so many of these houses…the rooms feel like afterthoughts, tacked on in the cheapest, most expeditious manner possible.

So, if Hubby decides we shall build, it appears I will be tasked with educating the architect in the subtleties and pragmatics of American home design. It will have thermostatically controlled ducted heat/air conditioning in zoned areas that can be cut off from each other…why heat or air condition the guest room if no one is visiting?

We’ll have a huge geyser…solar heated, of course…so we never run out of hot water. The windows will be double-paned, energy efficient, and will open in such a fashion that window screens can be used to keep insects out. The doors to the outside will be screened as well…no more mosquitoes!

The garage will be attached to the house in such a way that I can step directly from the garage into the scullery. Yes, there will be a scullery, but unlike the traditional South African one, mine will be more of a utility room, housing the washer and dryer, a space for ironing and a hanging rack for the clothes. There will be pantry cupboards, a laundry sink, and space for an upright freezer, as well as a cupboard for brooms, mops, and the vacuum cleaner. There will also be a storage room adjacent to the garage, one with a workbench, good lighting, rack shelving, and places to store such things as the lawn mower, garden tools, ice chests, and various other bits and pieces of suburban life that simply have no place in most houses.

The kitchen will be laid out with the “golden triangle” of the sink, stove and fridge, and my stove will be gas. The breakfast bar here gets good use, and I like the no-stain, easy to clean black granite counter tops, so that will be repeated in the new kitchen. I’ll get another Franke 3-bowl sink, but this time it will be hooked up to a garbage disposal and a lovely dishwasher will be tucked in under the counter right next to it. I love my wrought iron pot rack, so the new kitchen will definitely have one, and I’m sold on ceramic tile floors in the kitchen and baths. The rest of the house, however, will have French Oak floors, like my present bedroom.

The main bedroom will have a huge bath with a big American-style walk-in shower. A Jacuzzi for two, and double sinks, and the heated towel rail Hubby has grown so fond of on winter mornings complete the bathroom “must haves.”. A walk-in closet and dressing room are a must, and each of the two guest bedrooms will have their own small baths.

With a proper foyer and hallways connecting the various rooms, rather than walking through one room to get to another, the house will be All American in design…at least inside. I’m wondering how a New England Colonial might look here, though…