CHAPTER XXVII

FEDERALIZING YOUR KITCHEN

Fancy a carpenter with his tools all over the room!

Fancy a painter with one color here and another color there! Do you think we would have had a Michelangelo if he had been forced to get down from the scaffold every minute for a tool or a bit of clay? And yet women for the most part, women who need their energy for making the home a fit place to live in, still persist in scattering their tools about the kitchens and walk miles daily, because they have not mobilized their tools.

To what can be accredited the woman’s hatred of saving steps, even though she complains of fatigue and extra work? What can account for the woman’s dislike of having her things handy? Is it money? No, because she often buys motors, “movie” tickets, dogs, jewels and garments in quantities far more than she needs. It is perhaps due to a past vastness of ignorance. But now when there are specialists descanting on the glories of saving steps, time and money there is little excuse. In this article one stumbling block will be removed and the kitchen can well transform itself into a room where the most methodical man can work and where any maid coming in for the first time will not have to use levers, telescopes, periscopes and what not to prepare the first meal. For the kitchen cabinet is the first plank in the platform of standardizing domestic work even as it is being standardized in the factory. This is the basic glory of the kitchen cabinet. Now, for the more important details of its makeup.

[Illustration:

_Courtesy of Janes & Kirtland_

A STEEL UNIT KITCHEN CABINET FLANKED BY BROOM AND DUSTER CLOSETS. SEE THE ELEVATION FROM THE FLOOR. THIS CAN BE BUILT-IN TOO]

These cabinets group in one place the necessary tools and materials for getting together the meals of the house. They hold the spices, flour, sugar, bottles, pots and pans, sometimes linens, ice and gas or electric stoves, packages of cereals, etc., and they are the table, the bread board, the flour board, the flour bin and dish rack all in one.

Here you can work where everything is within arm’s reach; you can sit at your work and not fatigue yourself. In short, you have a work bench at last and can feel as professional as the carpenter or the artist, and you must, if the kitchen is ever going to be as important in the life and best living of mankind as it deserves to be.

Built of steel entirely in some cases, all wood in others, and a combination of both in still others, they are comfortable and worth while in the best makes. Of course in this product, as in all others, one must go to the best manufacturers who know their business and take an interest beyond the sale.

When you buy a kitchen cabinet you must get the maximum comfort and utility. Go about and see which one you think will save you the most work.

The all-steel cabinet, of course, is less responsibility to keep free of vermin. The wood type is a little more care.

If your cabinet is to be of wood, see to it that it is ant proof (the castors as well), has all round corners, is varnished and finished steamproof, has locks that lock, doors that easily open, whether one leaf is shut or both, whether it is winter or summer, supplies a broad enough table to sit down and work at comfortably, a table top impervious to liquids, grease and heat, sanitary glass drawer pull, dovetail wood joinings, easy rolling castors, everything easily withdrawn to clean, and of non-warping, well-seasoned wood. The finish must be the best, whether enameled, painted or varnished.

In the cabinet of steel construction you must be sure that the enamel is on to stay; that the doors, drawers and locks are of the best construction, electrically welded. The doors, etc., must be rigid enough not to emit hollow sounds every time they are closed. In the best type the doors do not dent or wobble but are double, about ⁷⁄₁₆″ thick, reinforced on the inside with heavy steel angles, making them rigidity enthroned. The frames are rabbeted to receive doors and drawers, thus giving no overhang but making a flush surface. The doors in the steel cabinet are more comfortable to handle if they are hung on concealed brass hinges, with bullet catches which enable the doors to open and shut absolutely independent of each other.

In both the steel and the wood cabinets the table tops are all of different material. The best steel type in our opinion uses nickled zinc; the best wood cabinets use porcelain, iron, aluminum, vitreous steel, enamel, etc. Any of these tops are good and when in the standard makes you can be very sure that they have been well tried and not found wanting in any essential quality.

In general, then, the cabinet is a receptacle for the most used things in the kitchen; therefore, is so much used itself that it cannot be too good and should be adapted to your special need.

If you are building a house and want to have your kitchen a real comfort, install a kitchen cabinet or go to the firm that, with its unit system, can make up a kitchen cabinet combining most of the best things you see in any. This is an expensive way but a miraculous joy. If you want a cabinet to be installed before the house is built it is a saving in wall tiling where the cabinet is placed, especially if the cabinet is made of steel.

There is one cabinet on the market that has an ice box in it, which when installed with the back toward the porch wall makes it possible for the ice to be put in from the porch and all packages delivered from the porch through its parcel-service shelf opening on the porch!

In this cabinet there is, too, room for a gas stove or electric plates, so that with it you have a complete, compact kitchen.

The unit systems in steel are most elastic, as they can be duplicated over the broadest and the narrowest, longest and shortest kitchens. Whole pantries can be equipped with them. Diet kitchens in the upper floors of large residences can also be equipped with these units so that any member of the family, nurse or valet, can prepare a little meal with everything comfortably housed in the pantry cabinet. They are one of those examples of household developments which are so rapidly coming to the front to-day and mean so much in convenience.

Each maker of kitchen cabinets has a specialty or two which he tells you makes for superiority. Each one is right, so you must choose your favorite and most appealing speciality and buy accordingly.

Some, to obviate the little back bending, have a device by which the whole shelf of the bottom of the cabinet pulls out when you open the door and enables you to see what you want without strain, or time loss. This we think a delightful device. Others have gravity locks and catches which always fall in place; sanitary leg bases, high enough from the floor to sweep under; a rolling open front, which makes it simple always to keep the cabinet closed and away from cooking odors; white enamel interior; roller bearing on table so that the table rolls in and out with least possible rebellion or noise; and a drawer for kitchen linen, which is a great comfort.

Another advertises the possibility of its use with detached gas or electric range, its silver drawer, bread board, parcel service, and ice box and special flour bin. All the cabinets are proud of their flour bins and sifters. And nearly all have special construction so that they are filled and emptied with ease and dispatch.

One fine cabinet has a revolving spice container which is very convenient, of course.

The unit system is proud of the adaptability to any need, including even broom closets on the side of the cabinet, filling any wall space. These are usually made of steel and provide a cheaper method of backing up one side of the kitchen than by the use of tile or kitchen shelving.

The steel unit systems also come in special “store” sizes and are not much more expensive than the wood.

The steel are either 6″ from the floor to allow for cleaning or are stationary and are attached to the floor by curved constructed tile or linoleum, which gives continuity and unity, thus reducing the swabbing out of the floor to simplest terms.

The kitchen cabinet that is put in when the house is built, be it of wood or steel, is more convenient than any other closet, as no builder has given sufficient thought to maximum utilities. We have seen architects send their “handy man” to install closets who seemed to be absolutely unlearned in the necessities of the problems. Therefore, before and after building, the kitchen cabinet or the kitchen cabinet unit system is by far the best policy to pursue.

THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CABINET

The cabinet must be able to fulfill these conditions: It must be easily moved if on castors, it must be easily taken apart, drawers must run smoothly, racks to hold things must hold things, they must hold enough things, too, to prevent relay kitchen races.

The wood cabinets are excellent, the steel we think a degree more self-protecting because they cannot absorb odors, or get vermin investitures. However, the best grades of wood cabinets are so perfect that we can endorse them ungrudgingly.

The cabinet must have: Supply closets, china (nearly every case), molding boards, work table, cutting board, linen receptacle, pot, pan and lid holders, bread, cake, spice, sugar containers and flour and bin shifter devices.

All other departures are specialties and are more or less inviting according to the buyer.

There is a cabinet, remember, for any space as well as purse. Get the best of the best dealer and make yourself sure that the one you are getting is the least complicated and the easiest to keep clean. They range in price from around $50 up to the thousands. But no matter what they contain, or how thrilling they look, unless the cabinet itself is the acme of fine workmanship, you will be in constant irritation over warping parts, dust and uncleanable surfaces.

## CHAPTER XXVIII WHEN THE POT HANGS HIGH

My text is “one kitchen tool hung up is worth two in a low cupboard”--taken from The Kitchen Libel--