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Most likely no, since Americans associate bigger everything as ones status in society! Some of the best cooks/bakers I know have/had very small kitchens, if one loves to cook/bake, they'll do it, no matter what! So when I hear these folks on TV House Hunter etc say, I'll cook if I had a bigger kitchen!...NOT!... Yes I cook/bake daily all my meals, I'm a health nut, no matter the size of the kitchen, to my home to my camper to traveling with a tent or staying at folks home , I still make all my meals!
Yes, people can make do with a tiny kitchen and even produce great results, but it's still nicer to have a more pleasant environment to work in.
And it's not size alone that matters. The kitchen in my last house was actually much larger than the one I have now, with tons of cabinets and counter space. But it turned out to be a terrible layout and it was awful to cook in. I was so happy with the size that I never noticed that until I was living there. When I bought my current place, it was new construction but in the model house, I spent several minutes going through the motions of preparing a meal, to make sure the layout worked properly.
And even though it's much smaller, it's soooooo much better to cook in. I still cooked in my old kitchen but it was more like bare bones assembly of meals because we had to eat. Now I enjoy cooking much more, and make a much wider array of things. Part of that is also that it's an open floor plan so I'm basically in the living room when I cook, and can interact with my kid, watch tv or listen to music, etc. which I also enjoy much more.
Yes, people can make do with a tiny kitchen and even produce great results, but it's still nicer to have a more pleasant environment to work in.
And it's not size alone that matters. The kitchen in my last house was actually much larger than the one I have now, with tons of cabinets and counter space. But it turned out to be a terrible layout and it was awful to cook in. I was so happy with the size that I never noticed that until I was living there. When I bought my current place, it was new construction but in the model house, I spent several minutes going through the motions of preparing a meal, to make sure the layout worked properly.
And even though it's much smaller, it's soooooo much better to cook in. I still cooked in my old kitchen but it was more like bare bones assembly of meals because we had to eat. Now I enjoy cooking much more, and make a much wider array of things. Part of that is also that it's an open floor plan so I'm basically in the living room when I cook, and can interact with my kid, watch tv or listen to music, etc. which I also enjoy much more.
Layout matters more than size. While none of my own homes have had bad kitchens, the one I am liking the layout of the most is the smallest, which is in the house we are still finishing. I waited a full year after moving in to get custom kitchen cabinets and counters, living with boxes and other makeshift storage and surfaces during that time.
Having realized that we just do not need the “average” amount of cabinet space, I wanted to see how few cabinets we could get and still be happy. Turns out it is even a little bit less than what I first guesstimated. Every placement, every dimension, has been thought through for a full year. Waiting and evaluating has resulted in getting the kitchen “flow” and storage exactly how I work.
We are still eating off a roll-up camping table and folding chairs as I mull over the design and dimensions of a custom wood table and seats to create a small diner-type nook/booth. We are also getting a stainless steel rolling food cart that will provide flexible, multiple uses in the kitchen as well as in the living room.
I love my small but exactly-right kitchen. No way would I buy a house without a kitchen!
If a house is built without a kitchen these days, then those houses will instantly cut their pool of potential buyers to the small percentage of people that would NEVER use a kitchen.
And therefore, IMO the "kitchenless house" would never catch on, because anyone with any economic sense whatsoever would never build one - even if they don't use the kitchen - for fear that they will lose their shirt when they can't sell it.
It may come to the point when no houses have kitchens at all, so that won't affect the resale value. But I don't see that happening for many generations, if ever.
As to the size of the kitchen, the best kitchen I ever worked in was when I was a short order cook. It was about 15 feet long (I guess) and there was just enough space between the two counters for two not-very-fat people to pass each other. Under counter and over counter were storage space, refrigerated drawers under counters, a big standup fridge, another big standup freezer, a tiny prep room off to the side, griddle, fryer machine, and so on. Cash register was on the same line.
You never had to take more than about 3 steps to go to whatever you needed to go to next. Floor was that red tile with a floor drain. All horizontal counter surfaces were stainless steel. We used the big white plastic cutting boards for cutting of course.
Because we were interested in cooking and serving food, not trying to impress the neighbors, this kitchen worked superbly well.
Once you get past about three steps to do anything, your kitchen is too big.
SO timed me for giggles a couple of times over the last weeks. Fajitas served with the work from scratch 25 minutes, chicken/pineapple curry 30 minutes, vegetable/ham soup 25 minutes, pasta alfredo with mushrooms/ham/peas - 20 minutes, all you can eat wings 10 minutes. Salad is a given.
Our six houses so far centered around the kitchen. We had a rental spanning the top floor of a high rise with a ping pong table in the living room an not enough space in the kitchen for doors on the cabinets. Company sitting in the sink with a plate in hand when there is room for four only at the tables just not my idea of fun.
I really do not care what others need. We meet at the kitchen island every day several times and it is big enough for people, news paper, cats and have nots.
My inlaws have a rather large house on a lake/golf course. The kitchen is some afterthought walk through corner. For at least ten years they ate out every night.
When we lived in California, we ate out probably 7 - 15 meals a week. We were on the light side compared to many of our peers. A lot of people used their kitchen only for breakfast (milk and cereal), and for hired chefs to use when they hosted a dinner party. I suspect that will spread and become more common, especially in cities where there are a lot of little places that you can grab a hot, healthy omelette for $5 - $10 that would take you an hour to make at home (including clean up, but not including shopping time) and would still cost you a few dollars for the ingredients, energy, and a lot of dollars for the investment in real estate for a kitchen, appliances, tools, dishes, dishwasher, maintenance, etc. where real estate is at an extreme premium, houses with no kitchens make a lot of sense. A single commercial kitchen can easily make meals for 125 people a day (or more) at a cost the is below those same 125 people putting 125 kitchens in 125 separate homes and cooking at home. Just think about the dishes alone. 30 - 40 sets of dishes are probably fine for feeding those 125 people three meals a day. However the same 125 people will need 300 - 400 sets of dishes to eat at home.
I is all about the economy of scale.
That's a strange analogy, that's like saying McDonald's has sold 100 billion burgers so that's 100 billion kitchens.
Well, let's make a distinction between the kitchen as a place to cook (after about a 10 x 10 galley, everything above that actually detracts from cooking efficiency) vs. the kitchen as a place to gather and eat.
For one thing, an intelligent design would in my opinion have some modest degree of separation between the gathering and eating area and the cooking area. For another, all these supposed city-dwellers who are going to eat every meal prepared by someone else will still need someplace to eat all that Chinese takeaway, unless they want moo shi sauce dripped all over their sofas.
so true.
I have a friend that her kitchen is nothing short of atomic, really horrible in every sense of the word.
best food comes from that old dinky 24 inch stove.....
Indeed! Just witness Julia Child’s kitchen from her Cambridge home displayed at the Smithsonian. While it certainly isn’t tiny it is very modest in size with a comfortable table for four in the middle covered in practical oil cloth and other than a commercial Garland range quite out of date equipment, fixtures and cabinets. She sure as heck didn’t need an air-craft carrier landing deck sized island, Sub-Zero appliances and perfect cabinetry to produce some amazing dishes.
Many if not most of the huge, super-high end kitchens in today’s McMansions are for arranging and displaying the take-out or catered food ready for eating more than an actual functioning kitchen.
Those of us who have cooked professionally in restaurants know that outside of the prep area the line where the action happens is actually quite compact, and that’s with several people occupying their stations. You want to have as few steps as possible between the processes of cooking and plating.
Since I still do most of the cooking and we eat at home the great majority of the time I also enjoy our compact, straightforward U-shaped kitchen in our 92 y.o house with a peninsula bar on one side to keep the guests in the kitchen but out of the cooking zone- I literally make a line with my hands when cooking to keep them out. You can still access the fridge and the wine cooler so enjoy a glass but stay out of my way! I can crank out large or small sit-down gourmet dinner parties for my friends and family from that small kitchen and it’s typically more enjoyable than the haphazard food and service (and expense!) one often encounters when dining out.
Most likely no, since Americans associate bigger everything as ones status in society! Some of the best cooks/bakers I know have/had very small kitchens, if one loves to cook/bake, they'll do it, no matter what! So when I hear these folks on TV House Hunter etc say, I'll cook if I had a bigger kitchen!...NOT!... Yes I cook/bake daily all my meals, I'm a health nut, no matter the size of the kitchen, to my home to my camper to traveling with a tent or staying at folks home , I still make all my meals!
Has nothing to do with status for most people. I have a decent sized kitchen, (not HGTV large, but it’s a nice size) but I don’t have a big house at all. It was one of the most appealing things about this house when I looked at it and was deciding on the purchase. It’s nice to have room for people to hang out and cook together, and if you bake a lot of things you do need the room to spread out. Also obviously you have room for storage. That makes a huge difference for most people. I would be very frustrated in a tiny kitchen. It does not mean I would not cook, but I would be annoyed having to do it in a small environment.
Seems as likely to happen in the US as coffin-sized sleeping berths being rented instead of hotel rooms, for overnight stays. They already have the latter in some Japanese cities.
Given that kitchens provide a kind of wishful illusion of domestic life, I don’t think kitchens will go away. They might, however, become smaller and less lavish than they have become.
This is the third house we have owned that has a kitchen continuing into the living room, as opposed to the more separated kitchens from my childhood years. But we still have a full-on kitchen and use it a lot. I cannot see giving it up. If anything, as I get older I am more interested in cooking things I’ve always bought, since then I can make them more healthful than typical commercial products. It is potentially a way to save money also, though the high-quality and high-priced ingredients I prefer to cook with partially offset that.
One niche wherein kitchenless apartments might get chosen is so-called microapartments. How common are microapartments in the US? Guessing: not common.
There are several micro-apartment developments in the Front Range. They all have some type of kitchen.
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Yes I cook/bake daily all my meals, I'm a health nut, no matter the size of the kitchen, to my home to my camper to traveling with a tent or staying at folks home , I still make all my meals!
