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Where the flatware goes
May. 13th, 2026 08:50 amIt is Lore that the first decision in any kitchen, whether designed or moved into when one had no say in the design, is Where Do I Put the Flatware? Lore is not wrong, of course, and each kitchen and each person making the decision about the kitchen has different constraints.
There are less legendary decisions in any living arrangement. Some obvious — where will I place the bed? — some less obvious — where will my keys/wallet/phone land when I walk in the door and put stuff down? The latter decision, for example, is prone to be made impulsively and, worse, inconsistently. Personal Organization / Decluttering Lore is full of Hero Organizers who come in and impose order on the drop zone.
Anyway. My sister and I had some discussions about requirements of our spaces. Early on, during the more intensely locked down months of the pandemic, I had envisioned a house with almost as many home offices as bedrooms, which I still am a little sad about not insisting on when the architect unilaterally decided that wasn’t necessary, but that the home theater and music room I had specifically said I didn’t want somehow were. The home theater went away because of some buildability issues (woot!); the music room “stuck”, because that’s where another R. requested feature, the turret, rose from. It has never had a particularly well-defined use assigned to it and for a while was going to be R.’s office. However, R. did a little too much complaining about the lack of windows in the exercise room, and I decided that entirely too much of the house was devoted to him wanting things for extremely specific purposes and then complaining about what he got. So the music room remains somewhat his, but is now operating as a hybrid 3rd living room qua guest suite (there’s a neighboring but not en suite bathroom that isn’t assigned to any one or two other people in the house), and this is all quite close to “Door 10”, which is the main secondary entry that isn’t the garage. Yeah, that’s confusing.
I felt somewhat bad that the office in my sister’s space wasn’t really large enough or well configured to be an office for her as well as her not husband B (in the event, even after contortion to satisfy her not husband, he’s still uncertain if he’ll ever even move in. He’s an adult. This is a decision he gets to make, and whatever decision he makes will be fine with everyone else). She described where she usually sits in her house, and I commented that this was also one of the places I set. My version of it is the stool at the end of the island counter by the fridge. Obviously, there is no comparable place in the new home.
I mean, there kind of is — I bought a vintage (not 100 years old so not “antique”) school chemistry table that I intend to use in the kitchen, and I made sure that the pneumatic stool tucks under it and rises to an appropriate height, so I can sit there if I so desire. But it is in no way the same type of “place” because the kitchen is intentionally enclosed in a way that the island countertop in my current house very much is not.
There is a bar in the new house, that is roughly the right location and space, but I don’t know if I want to perch at a 42” bar. I mean, maybe?
But there will also be a 36” square dining table with two dining arm chairs between the swinging door to the kitchen and the bar. If you come into the house through the front door, or from the garage door into the house, and you head toward not my sister’s side of the house on the main level (you don’t go up to the 2nd floor, or down to the basement, and you don’t head off to my sister’s suite — look at all the contortions I’m going to to avoid saying either “my side” or “the main side” both of which do and do not apply), you will inevitably walk past this table, whether you turn into the kitchen, stop at the bar, proceed into the living room and stop or continue through the living room or the kitchen to the dining room or deck, or R. and my personal suite.
In an “L” of cabinets, there is a difficult to access space and a lot of solutions to accessing that space effectively, many of which I am deeply familiar with. In the house I grew up with, that space was accessed from the back side of the cabinets, where there was a counter height bar with three stools. If you pulled the stool by the window out, there was a door, and that access to the counter space was where we kept the containers of breakfast cereal.
In this new house, I have a cabinet with a very simple face, painted the same color as the surrounding wall in the living room next to where that dining table will sit, that nestles into that awkward space in the “L” of cabinets in the kitchen (specifically, the “L” between the fridge and the smaller sink, where the granite is and ideal for baking — I really did cram every fucking thing I love into this house, and I’m still trying to shove more in there every day).
Obviously, this whole time I was wondering where my butt was going to land every day, I was plotting not just the comfy reading spaces in my bedroom and living room and other places around the house. I was also setting up a table with some drawer storage and a spot for someone to sit opposite or next to me and have a cup of tea (or another beverage) and an important conversation. In the really impressively comfortable new dining chairs. It would have been more helpful if I had known that’s what I was doing. I could have more clearly communicated it to everyone else.
ETA: Oh, my sister’s spot is almost certainly going to be the dining height table portion of her kitchen island. It’s a very clever solution to a really tricky room, that the kitchen subcontractor came up with, when I finally understood what the architect had planned, after JB (one of the project manager’s) pointed out how much was budgeted for the banquette and massive table in the corner. It was awkward, in the way that all large restaurant corner booths are, and because of the orientation of the table and because of some mobility issues was likely completely unusable for one of the two people who the space was designed for. And because of other mobility issues was going to be a problem for at least three other people living in various parts of the house. A genuinely impressive feat of That’s Not Going To Work For Us.
There are less legendary decisions in any living arrangement. Some obvious — where will I place the bed? — some less obvious — where will my keys/wallet/phone land when I walk in the door and put stuff down? The latter decision, for example, is prone to be made impulsively and, worse, inconsistently. Personal Organization / Decluttering Lore is full of Hero Organizers who come in and impose order on the drop zone.
Anyway. My sister and I had some discussions about requirements of our spaces. Early on, during the more intensely locked down months of the pandemic, I had envisioned a house with almost as many home offices as bedrooms, which I still am a little sad about not insisting on when the architect unilaterally decided that wasn’t necessary, but that the home theater and music room I had specifically said I didn’t want somehow were. The home theater went away because of some buildability issues (woot!); the music room “stuck”, because that’s where another R. requested feature, the turret, rose from. It has never had a particularly well-defined use assigned to it and for a while was going to be R.’s office. However, R. did a little too much complaining about the lack of windows in the exercise room, and I decided that entirely too much of the house was devoted to him wanting things for extremely specific purposes and then complaining about what he got. So the music room remains somewhat his, but is now operating as a hybrid 3rd living room qua guest suite (there’s a neighboring but not en suite bathroom that isn’t assigned to any one or two other people in the house), and this is all quite close to “Door 10”, which is the main secondary entry that isn’t the garage. Yeah, that’s confusing.
I felt somewhat bad that the office in my sister’s space wasn’t really large enough or well configured to be an office for her as well as her not husband B (in the event, even after contortion to satisfy her not husband, he’s still uncertain if he’ll ever even move in. He’s an adult. This is a decision he gets to make, and whatever decision he makes will be fine with everyone else). She described where she usually sits in her house, and I commented that this was also one of the places I set. My version of it is the stool at the end of the island counter by the fridge. Obviously, there is no comparable place in the new home.
I mean, there kind of is — I bought a vintage (not 100 years old so not “antique”) school chemistry table that I intend to use in the kitchen, and I made sure that the pneumatic stool tucks under it and rises to an appropriate height, so I can sit there if I so desire. But it is in no way the same type of “place” because the kitchen is intentionally enclosed in a way that the island countertop in my current house very much is not.
There is a bar in the new house, that is roughly the right location and space, but I don’t know if I want to perch at a 42” bar. I mean, maybe?
But there will also be a 36” square dining table with two dining arm chairs between the swinging door to the kitchen and the bar. If you come into the house through the front door, or from the garage door into the house, and you head toward not my sister’s side of the house on the main level (you don’t go up to the 2nd floor, or down to the basement, and you don’t head off to my sister’s suite — look at all the contortions I’m going to to avoid saying either “my side” or “the main side” both of which do and do not apply), you will inevitably walk past this table, whether you turn into the kitchen, stop at the bar, proceed into the living room and stop or continue through the living room or the kitchen to the dining room or deck, or R. and my personal suite.
In an “L” of cabinets, there is a difficult to access space and a lot of solutions to accessing that space effectively, many of which I am deeply familiar with. In the house I grew up with, that space was accessed from the back side of the cabinets, where there was a counter height bar with three stools. If you pulled the stool by the window out, there was a door, and that access to the counter space was where we kept the containers of breakfast cereal.
In this new house, I have a cabinet with a very simple face, painted the same color as the surrounding wall in the living room next to where that dining table will sit, that nestles into that awkward space in the “L” of cabinets in the kitchen (specifically, the “L” between the fridge and the smaller sink, where the granite is and ideal for baking — I really did cram every fucking thing I love into this house, and I’m still trying to shove more in there every day).
Obviously, this whole time I was wondering where my butt was going to land every day, I was plotting not just the comfy reading spaces in my bedroom and living room and other places around the house. I was also setting up a table with some drawer storage and a spot for someone to sit opposite or next to me and have a cup of tea (or another beverage) and an important conversation. In the really impressively comfortable new dining chairs. It would have been more helpful if I had known that’s what I was doing. I could have more clearly communicated it to everyone else.
ETA: Oh, my sister’s spot is almost certainly going to be the dining height table portion of her kitchen island. It’s a very clever solution to a really tricky room, that the kitchen subcontractor came up with, when I finally understood what the architect had planned, after JB (one of the project manager’s) pointed out how much was budgeted for the banquette and massive table in the corner. It was awkward, in the way that all large restaurant corner booths are, and because of the orientation of the table and because of some mobility issues was likely completely unusable for one of the two people who the space was designed for. And because of other mobility issues was going to be a problem for at least three other people living in various parts of the house. A genuinely impressive feat of That’s Not Going To Work For Us.