Kitchen Remodeling Ideas

Accessibility is Key

Just as important as using all available space, is making sure that what you store in the kitchen is easily accessible.

Your kitchen storage solutions may be sized correctly and located exactly where you need them most, but unless they are easy to get, they do not qualify as optimal.

Follow these simple rules to avoid this problem and make your kitchen accessible:

• Always put the items back in their proper place if you are not willing to spend half of your time searching for the right tool or ingredient. This is especially important when more several cooks are sharing the kitchen. Put everything where it belongs and you will avoid frustration and save lots of time.
• Avoid piles. If you keep serving dishes under dinner plates, which in its turn have dessert dishes on them, you have a problem. Do you really want to spend time pulling out the plate you need from under the others? Lifting half the stack and laying it aside while you are taking the dish you need and after that putting everything back in place sounds just as time consuming.

This problem has an easy solution. Add shelves or use racks so that each stack of dishes can be easily accessed by anyone. Consider vertical racks, too. They may require a bit more space though, because you need dividers to keep the items upright.

• It is best to store heavy items between waist and eye level, if they are not stored on the kitchen countertop. Do not keep fragile items or heavy pots where you will have to stretch to get them. After all, you don’t want to drop a heavy pot and damage your kitchen floor, or even worse, hurt yourself, do you?

These types of kitchen shelves will help avoid the mistakes described above:

Tiers allow you to see what is stored behind the first row. You can buy tiered shelf inserts at most home-goods stores, or you can make them yourself at little or no cost.

Elongated, clear containers make good use of cabinet space and allow you to see what you have. Always choose food containers that have air tight lids.

Helper shelves make it easy to reach the dinner plates without having to remove the dessert plates first. Many models are available on the market today, or you can build your own.

Consider this:

When loading a cabinet, put the tallest items toward the back. This way, you can see smaller items up front, while at the same time the taller items remain visible.

Are you taking full advantage of that deep space under your kitchen sink? Many folks don’t.

Here are a few ways to make it work harder in your quest to cut the clutter and make use of this kitchen storage place:

~ Add a shelf

Shelly F. added space under kitchen sink by adding a permanent shelf. “My husband Tony is handyman, so I convinced him to build a shelf in the cabinet under kitchen sink. It doubled my space down there. I use the top shelf to store my feminine products and stockings, and the bottom shelf to store my lotions, cremes, and bubble baths.”

If you are not so handy with tools, visit a kitchen store and purchase a small plastic coated wire shelf on legs. This clever product allows you to store items on – and under – the shelf.

~ Hang a caddy

Many kitchen stores sell caddies that mount on the inside of kitchen doors. These caddies, designed to hold dishwashing liquid, scouring powder and the like, work well in the bathroom. Mount the caddy on the inside of the door to your vanity and use it to hold toiletries or cleaning supplies.

~ Take your stuff for a spin

Make better use of that deep space under your bathroom sink with a low cost lazy Susan. Place your toiletries and other bathroom essentials on this mobile tray, that is widely available in discount and home stores.

When you need something, simply spin the tray until the desired item comes into view. This trick keeps items from disappearing from sight – and mind.

~ Draw boundaries

Most under-the-sink cabinets are deep and tall, but rarely is the space used to the fullest. To make the most of the space – and save time – try this: Place all cleaning products on the left side of the cabinet and all your extra soap and shampoo bottles on the right side. Keep the 2 types of products segregated will save you from having to rummage through everything under the bathroom sink every time you need something.

According to the Carbon Trust web site, businesses are missing a huge opportunity to save money by utilizing energy efficiency investment:

Business Case For Energy Efficiency Investment

Siemens Energy Efficiency Survey

Manufacturing

Restaurant chefs are turning to lab equipment to perfect their culinary masterpieces

High-end restaurants have begun adding a new piece of equipment to the kitchen that until recently was found mainly in medical laboratories and university chemistry departments. The bigger version looks a bit like a washing machine, but the spin cycle in these ultracentrifuges is a lot more powerful than that of any Maytag. They whirl vials around tens of thousands of times a minute, generating centrifugal forces up to 30,000 times as strong as Earth’s gravity.

You might think that such crushing force would be enough to obliterate any foodstuff, but in fact the intense pseudogravity causes fluid foods such as purees – mixtures of liquids and solids of various kinds – to separate. For example, the meat of centrifuge-pureed tomatoes settles, along with bits of skin, in a compact pack at the bottom of the vial. The water in the tomato forms a clear layer in the middle, and the intensely flavorful oil floats above.

Chefs find centrifuges handy for several reasons. A centrifuge saves a cook time: a separation process, such as extracting the oil from a vegetable puree, that might take days under natural gravity finishes in mere minutes at 20,000g. The results are also much more predictable than those obtained by natural settling.

The biggest selling point for these culinary tools, however, is amazingly clean division they produce among the components. Because the food emerges from the centrifuge separated into distinct strata, it is easy for the cook to then decant or scoop off the layers he or she wants to use.

In many foods, the high speed spin concentrates the flavor molecules in a powerfully aromatic liquid layer that is ideal for cooking. A chef might use just the water and oil from a centrifuged tomato puree, for example, to make a consomme that has a brilliantly strong tomato flavor yet is perfectly clear.

Indeed, centrifuges are great for spinning fat out of all kinds of vegetables and nuts; you can use the purified fat to make constructed creams having consistencies similar to dairy cream but with dramatic and unexpected flavors – and because they are dairy free, they are suitable for vegans to eat.

To make a soup or sause that is transparent and smooth on the tongue, you must somehow remove solid particles that are larger than the tongue can discriminate: about seven microns (a mere 0,0003 inch) in size. Stainers, filters and other culinary tools can do this, with enough time and effort. But it is hard to beat the convenience of just pouring the mixture into a bottle, sticking it in the superspinner and pressing “start”.

by W. Gibbs and N. Myhrvold

At the birth of our country, the kitchen was a very different place.

Centered on an open hearth, kitchenware was homemade or handcrafted by the town blacksmith and other local craftsmen. Families had relatively few kitchen implements. Kitchen storage was less of an issue than it is today – a few shelves could handle much of the typical kitchen’s contents. Many foods were stored outside the kitchen in larders, smokehouses, and root cellars.

In the early nineteenth century, however, technological advances and mass production changed things. The iron range displaced the hearth. Cooking tools became less expensive and multiplied in number. The kitchen also had greater demands placed upon it. Iceboxes displaced root cellars and brought food storage into the house. Mass-produced jars and tins allowed for new methods of food preservation – and new demands for storage in the kitchen The advent of modern cooking fuels (gas in 1860 and electricity by the end of the century) ushered in a new era in kitchen appliances.

The evolution of the kitchen continues today.

The average homeowner has hundreds of items that need a home. Kitchen cabinet systems have evolved to hold this trove and to keep it manageable. In addition, manufacturers have devised hundreds of ways to store the overflow on walls and ceilings, under kitchen cabinets, and in every empty corner imaginable.

Appliance manufacturers, for example, offer their wares in every size and configuration, allowing you to put only what you use most where you need it most. Split fridges and freezers, for example, allow you to put the fridge where it is handy, without gobbling up prime real estate with a less-used freezer. Many household appliances can now perform multiple tricks, another space-conserving opportunity.