Now this is the time to talk about kitchen plan. When Grandpa wanted a chicken dinner, he "ran down" a likely looking young rooster, "wrung" its neck, and brought it in for Grandma to "draw," to dress, and to roast. Meat used to be killed right on the farm, and all canning was done at home. This required a kitchen that at best was something less than a show place, especially when it was nec­essary to use a smoking old coal-burning cookstove, and all water had to be carried from the spring in a wooden bucket, and a kitchen sink was yet in the future. Yet these old kitchens were very comfortable as the center of family life. When the neighbors came over to visit, they usually "set" in the kitchen, the parlor being used on very special occasions only.

In many places in the world, even today, a kitchen is not permitted in a house, so people can't even consider to create their kitchen plan as a part of a whole house. As an English­man said to me in Singapore, "I want a kitchen to be just as far away from the house as I can get it." A glimpse of some of the nearby kitchens explained why. If you cook with charcoal under the kettles, with no flue, and no attempt ever to wash the outside of the kettles, just the inside being kept clean, and if you throw the cabbage leaves and potato peelings to the waiting pigs and chickens, and if you have only an earth floor, and no screens, you can easily see why kitchens are not too desirable in the house.

When I built a modern American kitchen, com­plete with sink, electric stove and refrigerator, the building inspector said, after looking the kitchen plan over care­fully, "Why can't we do it this way?"

Those of you who have visited George Wash­ington's home at Mt. Vernon will recall that the kitchen is a long way from the house. Modern food processing plants and the super-market have taken much of the messiness out of the kitchen, so that now the kitchen can be one of the most beautiful and attractive rooms in the house.

The kitchen is a place to work, but why not make it also a pleasant place to be? Give the best view to the kitchen and reflect it on your kitchen plan. A kitchen would preferably be on a corner, where it can get light from two sides, and where you can see in more than one direction. Many mothers like to have a kitchen window over­looking the play yard, so they can supervise the children's activities while continuing with their work. It is also desirable to be able to see who is coming to the door.

Although when you drive up with the groceries you should have easy access to the back door of the kitchen, I do not favor the door that opens directly from the garage into the kitchen.

The area for the pleasant activity of eating in­cludes not only a place for the table and chairs, but also a place to store and prepare food, and a place to clean up things after meals, and room to store the dishes and utensils. We often speak of kitchens, pantries, breakfast rooms, and dining rooms. Why are so many rooms necessary?

Try to make the most of your space when creating your kitchen plan. Space has to be counted only once in figuring the cost of a build­ing and the valuation for tax purposes, but it may serve several purposes and thus result in real econo­mies not only of building, but what may be more important, of housekeeping effort. One can't help wondering if it is economical to provide two areas for exactly the same function, one a little larger than the other, to be sure, but otherwise the same.

Is it wise to build an elaborate breakfast nook and build a dining room besides? Maybe it would be wiser to make the breakfast nook a little larger and omit the dining room, or build the dining room and then reduce the breakfast nook to a mere bar or shelf. Much depends on the way the family wants to live.

Another useful kithen plan tip is: a breakfast bar can be used to save many steps, if the family is not large, or if all members of the family do not eat breakfast at the same time. Work­ing couples will most certainly eat most of their meals at some place other than the dining table. The breakfast bar can also be used as a part of the working area when getting a large meal or when serving guests, buffet style, or for setting up salads, pies, desserts, etc.

If you entertain a great deal with elaborate meals served at the dining table, by all means build a fine dining room, large enough to do the job right. Then maybe you can let it double for a family room when it is not being used as a dining room. A better and more spacious room, used a larger share of the time, is much better than two smaller rooms, each used only occasionally. Make the floors and walls of dur­able and beautiful materials that can "take it" and then use the room to the fullest extent of its capacity.

Creating a kitchen plan so that it will be efficient, beautiful, and adequate takes time and imagination.

More work is done in the kitchen than in any other room in the house. It should be efficiently ar­ranged so that the work can be done easily and quickly, without wasting too much effort. Time and energy are the things that must be conserved now­adays; they seem to be the things that run out first, after money. Money, time, and energy are the three prime requisites to living in these rushing modern times, when it is hard to run fast enough just to keep your relative position in space, to say nothing of get­ting ahead.

Avoid too many doors when creating your kitchen plan, as they cut up the space and make for inefficiency. Many authorities say that three doors are the abso­lute maximum that should be permitted in any kitchen. Two doors would be better. Perhaps it is im­practical to try to get along with only one door, although it might be managed with a little ingenuity.

The kitchen should be so arranged that the food can be taken to the place where it is to be served without too many steps.

Kitchens are of three general shapes: the "U" shaped kitchen, the "L" shaped kitchen, and the par­allel kitchen. Each kitchen plan has its advantages and dis­advantages. How many people will be working in the kitchen at one time also has a bearing on its de­sign.

The "U" shaped kitchen is convenient for one person to work in, but two or three young daughters trying to help might be in the way in this type of kitchen, unless the "U" is rather wide and not too deep.

Although the parallel kitchen is perhaps the most efficient, it is subject to the same limitations as the "U" shaped one. This consists of a rather long room, with cabinets and equipment on both sides, and usually a door in each end. This type of kitchen must be at least 8' wide to give enough working space in the center of the room.

The "L" shape is good when it can be arranged in conjunction with the breakfast nook or the so-called "living kitchen" in which the kitchen is large and doubles for the family room, the dining room, and a general purpose room, with the kitchen really occupying only one corner of it. This is very good for informal entertaining, as the person preparing the sandwiches, instead of being off in another room, can do her work and still not miss out on any of the fun.

Wherever the kitchen is placed, or whatever shape it may have, certain working areas and pieces of equipment are a necessity in your kitchen plan. These might include drainboards, baking area, sink, refrigerator, dish washer, stove top, oven, mixer, blender, toaster, waf­fle iron, silverware, kitchen hardware, kettles, lids, dishes, paper towels, waxed paper, garbage disposal, storage for package foods and for tin canned goods, and for home canned fruits and vegetables, and per­haps room for a deep freeze unit.

Perhaps the sink should first be considered. Many women seem to prefer the sink on an outside wall, under a window. Better still, let the window over­look a good view. When a sink must be on an inside wall, it is often a good idea to place a window-sized mirror over the sink to give the illusion of a little more space.

The sink should be of a good size. The old stand­ard sink was a single compartment one, 30" x 20" in size. The double sink which has come to stay, varies in length from 32" to 38" and from 18" to 22" in width from front to back, and is from 6" to 8" deep. Some sinks with drainboards in one piece with the sink are made from 60"to 72" in total length. The large basket strainers are a great con­venience, for they aid in keeping the sink and the drains in good condition. If you want a garbage dis­posal unit, it is easy to install as it fits the sink with the large openings.

The sinks with the drainboards made integral with them make an ideal combination in your kitchen plan. These sinks can also be bought with a complete cabinet under them, which is often the best way to get the most efficient set-up. A dish washer can be bought that will fit under the work area at one side of the sink, and it will be found to be a great convenience if one entertains with large dinner parties frequently, or if there is a large family. With only two or three people in a family, there is the probability that it is easier to wash up the dishes in the regular way than it is to bother with the dishwasher. There are good arguments on both sides, the deciding factor being the personal opinion of the person doing the work.

Sinks are made of several kinds of material. The cast iron sinks covered with white or colored enamel are the most popular. A cheaper model is made of pressed sheet metal, also enameled. You can tell the difference by pressing hard on the bottom; if it springs a little, it is of sheet metal. Cast iron is more durable and the enamel stays on much better. A sink, which must take a lot of hard usage, should be of the best.

Some people prefer a sink made of stainless steel, because with any amount of use it will still retain its good appearance. It is also easy on the dishes. Where the water is hard it seems to spot easily. Even if this can readily be scrubbed off, some housekeepers think that a stainless steel sink is hard to keep looking presentable. In hotel and institutional kitchens, where the wear and tear is many times as much as it is in a home kitchen, stainless steel is used almost exclu­sively, but this rugged dependability is not essential in your home although it has many things in its favor.

Some sinks are made of burned clay or china. Although these are very easy to clean and to keep in first class shape, if you drop something too heavy into them there is danger of breaking the sink.

A sink should have a mixing faucet so the water can come out at just the right temperature. Often a spray will be found useful.

Another good kitchen plan tip - in cases where a water softener is used, it may be desirable to put three valves on a sink—one for hot water, one for softened water, and one for cold water that has not been through the softener. This latter is useful for washing vegetables, in operating the garbage disposal system, and for the many other uses where softened water is not necessary.

With a garbage disposal unit in the sink, you can put down the drain all the fruit peelings, vege­table trimmings, and miscellaneous garbage that otherwise accumulates and has to be hauled away or taken out and buried. This way you just wash every­thing but peach pits, nut shells, and large bones down the drain and forget all about the smelly gar­bage cans. If you are not connected to a regular sewer, you will have to make the septic tank about three hundred cubic feet larger to allow for the extra load. Recent studies have shown that instead of the garbage disposal system causing trouble in the sewer lines, it actually has a scouring action that improves their efficiency.

An area next to the sink on your kitchen plan should be provided to stack the dishes as they come from the table, and a space on the opposite side where the dishes can be placed as they are washed. About 30" of space on each side of the sink should be adequate for most kitchens. Be sure these drainboards actually drain into the sink; the slope should not be so steep that the dishes will slide, but should definitely drain to­ward the sink.

The refrigerator is currently considered a neces­sity, and care should be used in locating it for the greatest convenience. The combination units with a deep freeze either above or below the regular re­frigerator in a kitchen are very useful. It might be possible to get a large deep-freeze refrigerator in a kitchen, but it might crowd out other more essential things. If it can be in an anteroom or utility room, perhaps greater efficiency would result. If you have a large pantry adjacent to the kitchen, it might also contain the deep-freeze.

A working area next to the refrigerator and not far from the oven or sink adds greatly to the effi­ciency of a kitchen, so you may keep it in mind when creating your kitchen plan.

The stove should be near enough to the sink so that when water is put into a kettle, it is just a step to set the kettle on the stove.

When wood or coal was the fuel, of course, since the oven and the cooking top were both heated from the same firebox, they were necessarily together. The electric and gas stoves have liberated the two units so that they can now be placed anywhere without reference to each other, but that does not mean that they must necessarily be separated. If the oven is under the cooking top, space is saved, but one must stoop to see into the oven. Even if this stooping is good exercise for the abdominal and back muscles, it can get tiresome. It isn't necessary, however, to feel that the stove is out of date. In a small kitchen it is sometimes actually more convenient to have a regular stove than it is to have the separate units. If the arrangement of the working areas is made better by separating the two, well and good, but if not, do not feel old-fashioned with a good stove.

Some of these new kettles, which when plugged in, start cooking and maintain a uniform temperature are worth considering. It might be possible to elim­inate the stove top entirely by having three or four of these automatic kettles and a frying pan or two. Then a small oven could be placed somewhere and the cooking service would be complete. This is all you need to know about implementing ovens and kettles in your kitchen plan.