When I was a kid, kitchens had their own sort of 'feel' to them. What's more, all of the kitchens in all (well, almost all) of the houses I lived in had exactly the same ambience. There were two porcelain sinks side-by-side, one bigger and deeper than the other, in order to accommodate washing. Not washing dishes - washing as in laundry. I'm ancient, remember, and most of the houses I've lived in were built before washing machines were a common appliance in most domiciles.
There was also often a larder or pantry for storing food, as well as cupboards and drawers and all the usual trappings of a kitchen. Every house I ever inhabited but one (built in the early 1980s) also had a clothes-airer attached to the kitchen ceiling for hanging laundry to dry, which was lowered and raised by a cord and pulley system. When I flitted from one house to another, the kitchen always had the same 'feel' about it; the same 'mood', the same ambience.
The first kitchen of ours to have a stainless steel sink was in a new-built house we moved into in 1983. This was also the first kitchen to have a slightly different feel to it than previous ones, on account of having up-to-date (for the time) cupboards and work-tops, instead of the 1950s and '60s style ones we were accustomed to. It also had a dining area within the kitchen rather than in the living-room. It was also the first one without a clothes-airer on the ceiling.
Today, in my present house, the kitchen is relatively modern and doesn't have that same feeling as of old, on account of not having the same fittings it did when I and my family first lived here in the '70s. (We lived in the same house twice, with a gap of just over four years in between.) I don't know about anyone else, but I really miss that old atmosphere that kitchens had when I was younger. Everything nowadays is too spick-and-span and high-tech, and looks like the sort of kitchen JAMES BOND would have.
Tell you one thing for sure: the first time I see one of those overhead clothes-airers anywhere, I'm nabbing it for my kitchen, just to try and restore part of that familiar feeling of old which I miss so much. What about the rest of you? Any other Criv-ites feel the same?
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Update: Managed to get a clothes airer in HOME BARGAINS a little while ago, but haven't found time to fit it yet. Won't be too much longer hopefully.
4 comments:
I tell you what I liked about mid century kitchens. They looked great. Particularly if you had that design with the mini boomerangs and the plastic furniture.
It looked like the Jetsons.
One thing I can't figure out is electronics on a fridge. It tells me I need to buy milk? Because the notepad doesn't work? And I have to pay how much for my fridge to tell me?
Wouldn't it be cheaper to get a butler at that price?
You mean you don't have a butler, Phil? Hey, keep up with the times, man - all the best people have a butler these days. I've got three.
(Yeah, okay, I'm lying. I've only got two.)
The thing I remember about them is the smell of tallow soap, not the poncy designer variety they sell in The Body Shop now, the stuff that was the size of a brick and twice as hard. There was also a washing line strung between terraces, that you could only access from the kitchen window. Belfast basins, Ascot boilers, beech worktops they all disappeared to be replaced by stainless steel, immersion heaters and laminated chipboard.
Yeah, I remember that soap as well. Also, my mother had a wringer which fitted over the divide between the two sinks. She'd feed the clothes through it to wring them dry after washing them in the big sink. Bet she was glad when we got a washing machine around '62 or '63. I still remember the smell of the rubber seals on it. We must've had that machine right up until the late '70s at least.
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