Accessible storage essential to today’s modern kitchens

“It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.” Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), French poet and critic, “Intimate Journals” (Translated by Christopher Isherwood 1947)

Lucky girl that I am, I just enjoyed spending time back in North Carolina with my family. One of the things I noticed while there was that everybody seemed to be on the move. Interestingly, a lot of folks I grew up with who moved away after school, are now moving back to the mountains.

So, I had the opportunity to see a lot of new spaces that my friends were building, buying or renovating. And I thought it was very interesting that the most talked about rooms in their new spaces were the kitchens. I would have thought it would be media rooms or guest rooms for grandkids, but, no, I guess we’re all still consumed with eating and drinking and everything that goes with it.

Our conversations centered around how the kitchen has evolved into the center of the home, the place where everybody wants to be — family and guests — and it should serve as much more than a place for food preparation and storage. Seems like everybody’s a designer now, too.

One of the major concerns was storage and, luckily for my Carolina friends or those of us here in Las Vegas, there are so many options now that look beautiful and are extremely functional. We talked about how we would all like to have storage drawers instead of standard cabinets with doors. Being able to pull out a drawer and see all of your pots and pans, serving pieces and even dishes would be a dream for me.

Older cabinetry designs gave us the volume we needed for storage but not the accessibility. Being a contortionist to retrieve something from the back of a cabinet doesn’t appeal on any level. I, for one, have corners of my lower cabinets that haven’t seen the light of day for years. Who knows what might be in there.

Cabinet makers are offering undercounter pull-out drawers, tall pull-out pantry cabinets that fit next to a refrigerator or in a small space, and cabinets made especially for garbage and recycling purposes. We also all agreed that the older we get, the more convenient everything needs to be. Calling 911 to get up from rummaging through cabinets is not cool and eventually I’m sure the emergency medical technicians would stop coming!

And, quite surprisingly, in addition to good, easy-to-reach storage we decided we want it all to be fun, whether building, buying or remodeling. That’s the beauty of getting a little older. We’re no longer trying to impress each other; we’re just happy to be together and realize that we’re much more alike than different. And, we all want to have fun.

Most of my friends who are getting new kitchens today will probably have them for years, so making them all they can be is essential. So whether we’re moving back to the mountains of North Carolina or here to Las Vegas, and regardless of our ages or circumstances, if we have the opportunity to get a new kitchen, yippee! Check out every option and enjoy the process. The time and money you spend on it will come back to you many times over. On that I believe we can all agree.

Carolyn Muse Grant is a founder and past president of the Architectural & Decorative Arts Society, as well as an interior design consultant/stylist specializing in home staging. Her Inside Spaces column appears regularly in the Home section of the Review-Journal. Send questions to creativemuse@cox.net.