How to save your back?

A very critical part of the home is the kitchen where the homemaker spends most of their day. Homemakers have through the process of chores, cleaning taking care of children strained their back in some way or the other. Cooking should be fun. But because of the home maker’s back pain it could become a stressful experience.

Cubit Homes has over two decades of experience building homes. Kitchens are a critical part of every home where we spend a considerable amount of time. We hope our experience helps you.

And stressing your back, it’s no fun. And at the end of a cooking session, we generally want to just sit back and relax- our body feeling like it’s gone through a rigorous workout session.

Kitchen making is a priority in every household.

Let us go through 6 simple solutions by which we can avoid this backache and make cooking fun.

Solution 1:

Dont keep bending.

One might ask how to avoid that in kitchen spaces dominated by unintelligent design.

Let’s talk about what most kitchens look like.

Vessels are always below us in a basket. And these are items we use the most!

Boxes of grains lie in three layers on inaccessible shelves below the counter. You have to open a shutter, pull out the front layer and then finally access what you may need at the far end.

While designing the kitchen if you have an opportunity to design two counters. Let one counter be 18" and the other be 24".

A 24" counter is necessary for the stove and sink. Whereas the 18" counter is perfect for mixie, cutting, toaster, griller, and all preparation activities.

The lower side of the 24" counter is where we will plan all our drawers. Let us discuss the details later.

The lower side of 18" can be used as shutters and to store big boxes, accessories, thali storage. Things that we can place in one layer. This demarcation of storage will again help in reducing the cost of making the kitchen with zero compromises on the functionality.

In terms of shape definately avoid the L and U shape counters. The corners are cumbersome to use and almost always ends up somehow wasting precious storage space. There are some high end efficient hardware available for corner usage but will increase the kitchen budget by a huge margin. So if possible while detailing, avoid it.

Now if we already have a builder provided counter, lets look into whats best to do.

The stove area. Wherever we place the stove we like to have three drawers right below it. The upper drawer can be narrow say 6" for your spoons, ladles, masala dabba depending on the size.

Middle drawer is the medium size drawer say 8". This can be used for glasses, cups, small katori, etc.

The lowest drawer would be a deep 14" drawer to keep all our daily use bartan. Remember this is 24" deep drawer hence can take a load of vessels.

With this configuration, all the immediate needs are very accessible at hand reach.

The use of drawers brings the elements to us rather than us having the need to bend and reach out to them.

Solution 3:

Convenience

On the right side of the three drawers, you should build a tall masala pullout as shown. As the name suggest its where you keep your daily masalas and oil/ketchup bottles. All our constant requirements are available in a snap of a finger. And no back pain.

Solution 4:

Hardware

The hardware used to create drawers is very important. Try to use softclose tandem drawer channels. Like as seen in the attached image, its a concealed channel system which also forms the side of the drawer. Since you cannot see the channel, grime and dirt will not collect on it. This ensures smooth functioning.

Why softclose?

Ever noticed those almost closed drawers and shutters. They are open as the last few inches takes a second push to close it and by that time you have moved on to the next task. And now that you have your drawer open it has turmeric powder on it and the chappati you were cooking is burnt black.

This can all be avoided with softclose hardware.

A slight nudge and we can shut the door/drawer completely and get on with the act of cooking. No burnt chappati, no dirty drawers.

Solution 5:

Overhead storage

The lower storage is organised, lets focus on the upper storage. The upper level storage is generally about 8" less in depth compared to the lower storage. Lets keep only one layer of items and only what we need regularly and immediately at the lowest level.

Solution 6:

Everything at hands reach

Below the overhead storage on both sides of the stove is precious space for a rod with your knives, salt, pepper, etc. depending on the space you have. You can also build a full thin shelf below the overhead unit to keep bottles of what we need daily.

Ultimately what we are trying to achieve is methods to save your back and while we have the stove on we should be able to access all we need at our hands reach.

There is a lot of dynamics to kitchen planning which can all not be covered in a single blog post.

Keep connected to know more nuances of home planning.

We strongly believe design is a necessity and every home should be planned correctly to make our daily lives easy. There is so much stress in our lives and our home should be our escape from the stresses. If everything’s built smartly we can definitely reduce anxieties.