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Fitting Shelves to Space And: Service
By dint of keeping at it, I finally persuaded my landlord to have the carpenter put up one shelf, and after waiting vainly for the fulfillment of promises of more, 1 Fitting Shelves to Space and Service purchased my own shelves and screws and, by means of a dollar bill, induced the janitor to put up two more shelves. These gave ample room for the necessary pots and pans and the foods to be cooked in them.
On the topmost shelf are kept the cake tins, jelly molds, the ice-cream freezer, and other utensils which are not used every day. The next shelf is my grocery store and by stocking it well in the beginning and watching that the supplies do not get too low a complete dinner is always possible without calling on the butcher, baker, or grocer, or even stopping at the delicatessen shop. All dry groceries, as beans, split peas, cereals, sugar, etc., are poured out at once from the bags or boxes in which they arrive from the grocery store and placed in glass jars. Then no one is forgotten and reordered, or allowed to run out, as it is always easy to see when the supply is getting low. The lower shelf - although it is travesty to call it low - carries the casseroles, glass jars, and other food containers.
NOT STEPS BUT A REACH Because we have tiny kitchens instead of the old rambling ones in which our mothers or their hired girls traveled so many miles in preparing the meals, it does not mean that we cannot have the good things to eat, or that our womanly hands must needs lose their traditional cunning in cookery. Far from it-in fact it enriches our inherited cunning, for it makes us take a new tack, since our difficulty now lies not in having to walk so far from pantry to stove but in so arranging our cooking tools that each one is conveniently within reach, for there is no room to run about.
Each pot and pan, knife and spoon, must have its place and learn to keep it.
Fitting Shelves to Space and Service Each utensil for which a place is allowed must have its definite purpose in order to keep its place for there is no room for useless or merely ornamental kitchen devices in so small a kitchen.
On the back of one of the big doors which conceal the kitchenette when closed is my kitchen cabinet. To use it the door must be opened and by means of a foot clamp firmly fastened to the floor so that it will not swing. The hanging work table lifts up and by means of an adjustable bracket and support becomes a solid working surface. Sugar and flour containers are so fastened to the heavy outer edges of the door that they swing in to let the sugar or flour fall into the pans standing on the table below.
A curtain rod fastened to the door six inches above the table holds the knives, spatula, and cooking spoons. A ready-tohang shelf above carries the glass containers holding bread crumbs, cereal, corn meal, brown sugar, powdered sugar, elbow macaroni, coffee, and tea. The spice containers hold the nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, mustard, pepper, and paprika, as well as cream of tartar, baking powder, and salt.
Hanging from hooks just below the shelf are the vegetable chopper and cutters, can opener, Dover egg beater, kitchen scissors, and measuring spoons. glass On an enameled rack fastened to the end wall and fitted out with hooks for carrying pots and pans hang most of the cooking tools. I call this my Kitchen Carryall.
On the first row of hooks hang the measuring cups, one glass and one aluminum to measure sugar and flour and show the half and quarter cupfuls so frequently used in kitchenette cookery, and metal to measure scalding water or milk for sponge cakes. Two cups make cake mixing much quicker under any circumstances.
A KITCHEN CABINET ON THE BACK OF THE BIG DOOR, Fitting Shelves to Space and Service The "crab" hangs on the top row, too.
It is a metal lifter which closes like a crab's claw on the hot pan or food which needs to be lifted or turned. Beside the crab hang the candy thermometer, skimmer, and egg whip. The food chopper hangs just below, where it can be readily lifted off and screwed on to the table edge.
It is quite a worker in this kitchen.
On a ready-to-hang shelf, which is securely fastened to the back wall by means of two large screws, reside my dishes, a cottage set of forty-three porcelain pieces.
There is no unused space on this shelf either. Each dish has its place and must take it. Several brass-headed tacks placed near the back of the shelf form a plate rail to hold the platter and vegetable dish in place, while six screws under the shelf hold the six cups.
The roll of paper toweling hanging just below does away with the old-fashioned and unsightly kitchen cloths. At a cost from one fifth to one third of a cent apiece for absorbent paper squares it is not unduly expensive to use them in place of cloths which must be frequently laundered, especially if you must needs pay for every bit of laundering done. Here paper towels have found many uses, such as wiping tables, as oven cloths, drying lettuce, wiping off greasy plates, and for draining greasy water.