When I came to Italy I was determined to make the best of it. Of course, I was also very optimistic about the future too. Love does that to people, I guess.
Actually, it has been very refreshing living here. I find that the lifestyle is less materialistic. My life certainly is, anyway. I don’t own an i-anything and I don’t have a flat screen TV or a Wii or any of those little handheld gadgets other than a very simple cell phone. We have a decent car, but nothing fancy, etc.
One of signs of a less materialistic lifestyle is that people here aren’t constantly moving to a bigger house with more square footage and more rooms than they could ever need. It seemed a constant thing back in the states. Most of the people I worked with moved every few years into a newer house and bought a new car every couple of years as well. Fortunately there’s no “keep up with the Joneses” here – at least not where I live.
But, there is one thing that I miss and that I made O promise me that I could have if we ever decide to buy or fix up a house. That thing is an American-style kitchen. Why? Because, frankly, Italian kitchen design is stupid. OK, maybe there are some well-designed Italian kitchens out there but I have to admit that I have never seen one in any of the houses I’ve been in. The only smart thing in an Italian kitchen is the dish rack. (Mine no longer looks like the one in that post since I moved to a new apartment shortly afterwards. Now the one I have is smaller and less efficient.)
The reason I say this is because Italian kitchens have no counter space and very little storage space. My kitchen, for example has very small top cabinets that are built so that you can put things to display on top of them – knick knacks and the like. I’d much rather have space to put stuff in them considering that there are so few of them. Knick knacks just need to be dusted. Plus, the kitchen is just along one short wall so I’m only left with about 10 inches of countertop that I can actually use for anything. That’s a pain when chopping vegetables and mixing batters.
Another thing I hate about my kitchen is the stainless steel. Now I know that there are kitchens all over the world that also use an overabundance of stainless steel, so it’s not an Italian-only thing. I can’t stand it though. Besides the fact that your kitchen looks overly institutional, it’s also a pain in the neck to keep clean. All it takes is one touch and it looks like you never clean it. In order to keep my stainless steel rangetop and sink clean I have to spray it with special cleaner and buff it dry. Come on people, who has time for that? Who in their right mind would design a kitchen that takes twice as long to clean?
And speaking of design.. who’s designing these Italian kitchens with all of the wasted space? Maybe I ought to go into the kitchen design business here.
**End of rant**
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I agree with you about the kitchen design problems here, and I find it so strange because the kitchen is such an important part of an Italian house and Italian family life! We have a great kitchen that we designed ourselves, with lots of storage space and a fair amount of counter top (there could be more, but I’m satisfied.) When we ordering everything from the furniture store, they told me that it wouldn’t be necessary to put in as many cabinets as I wanted. I thought that was funny because I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough space!
Our kitchen is also very large because when N restructured his house, he moved all the kitchen hookups to a large room that I think was once a bedroom or sitting room. The old kitchen used to occupy half the space of one of our current bathrooms…it was not much more than a galley kitchen! But when he had that done, everyone in his family criticized his choice of location and the size of it, saying it was too big and a waste of space, that the noise and odors from the kitchen would disturb anyone in the two bedrooms on either side of it, and other stuff I can’t remember now. Well, our kitchen is now the envy of anyone who sees it, even the former naysayers!
I hope someday soon you’ll get to design your own functional kitchen. As for who is designing the kitchens, at the shop we went to, it was just a couple of middle-aged men, who had very little experience of actually using a kitchen, from what I could tell.
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Mary Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
I’m jealous of your kitchen KC. Mine is actually quite large in size, but in usefulness it’s small. O could have made it more functional by installing a floating island, but there’s a huge fireplace in the middle that pretty much eliminates that possibility. So, I have lots of unusable space. That’s the *really* stupid part. It’s funny that you mention how at the store they told you you wouldn’t need that many cabinets. They said the same thing to a friend of mine who lives up north. She insisted on having cabinets that went all the way to the ceiling and they thought she was crazy.
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There are lots of good kitchens here! Yours sounds desperate, however.
One thing that is true among my neighbors is minimal counter space and it’s because they work a lot on the kitchen table, which is huge. The table is 30-31″ high, the counters a standard 36″ high. It’s simply easier for average or shorter women to work at the lower height. They also have big pieces of furniture in which they keep a lot of stuff Americans would keep in cupboards. I altered an old armadio to make it a combined broom closet and pantry.
If you say that Italians sometimes, or even often, sacrifice practicality for beauty as they see it, I would agree. One neighbor actually cooks in what would be a walk-in closet in the US, while the kitchen itself holds only the stufa, table and chairs and a big china closet. There’s also a full formal dining room in which I have never eaten in 9 years!
Stainless does not have to be difficult. My kitchen is full of it on purpose. I clean it just like any surface, but with a Vileda blue chamois type microfiber cloth. Dampen, wring out and wipe off a surface. It works!
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Mary Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
I guess if I had to buy more furniture, I’d rather just buy more cabinets, preferably with some counterspace on top. The majority of kitchens I’ve seen are like mine though with very little space and I know people who have kitchen goods and food stored all over the house for that reason.
There are a lot of houses with a “dietra cucina” which is just like a walk-in closet, but they sometimes have more space than my huge room does.
As for the stainless steel, I may have to try your blue cloth, but I still feel it’s an extra step that I shouldn’t need to do. With a toddler who’s busy climbing chairs whenever my back is turned, I need less things to do, not more. Buffing the sink and stove so they shine often gets pushed to the bottom of the list.
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Judith in Umbria Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 10:35 am
Do you imagine that I buff my stove, sink and refrigerator? Hahahaha! Just clean with it wrung out and you don’t need to buff.
I don’t recommend buying kitchen furniture, I was just explaining how my neighbors manage without it. They also have huge fondo with loads of space and freezers, etc.
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Mary Reply:
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:23 pm
OK, I’m going to have to get one of those cloths and try it out.
The kitchen in our rental house has a wood stove in it that can’t be used at the same time as the big fireplace in the other room. I have covered it to protect it and that is my counter space. Otherwise there was about 18 inches of counter space which was uneven since it was made from 2 pieces of stone. And this is in a kitchen designed by two gay guys who cook. One is from Ireland which might explain some. Both are tall. The overhead cabinets are so high that I can only reach the first 3 inches of the bottom shelf without a stool. My hope was that I won’t cook as much and possibly we could lose weight. Yeah right!
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Mary Reply:
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Well, Martha, I guess that’s one way of looking at it. But your kitchen sounds much worse than mine. I guess I should be thankful for what I do have.
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Goodness, I have been trying to find pictures of “real” Italian kitchens online and I think you just painted a pretty accurate picture for me. I have a large kitchen, here in the States, but very little counter space. It’s poorly planned. But one day I’ll put in a better design. I also don’t own a dishwasher which is so weird to some folks here. I don’t long for one either even though I hate doing dishes. Nice blog. I bookmarked you.
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Mary Reply:
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Hi Michelle. I think poor design is the main problem with kitchens. I once had a very small kitchen that was designed so well that I had a ton of counter space and closet space in it despite the lack of square footage. In this case I’ve got lots of square footage and little space. I guess you can’t win them all. We did go out and buy a dishwasher though. It’s a big help with a toddler running around.
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