The Elysian Fields

I griped about lighting and vented about venting in the kitchen in the last episode; many, many moons ago I laid waste to the makers and installers of bathroom sinks.

Those two great tastes poor grasps of basic ergonomics and lack of understanding of use paths and just plain bad design (sigh. I suppose "great tastes" is a bit catchier, and far more succinct. So it goes...) come together to form this particular rant.

I have three and a half dishwashers, you see.

There's one under the counter that does the bulk of the work when it gets filled, and the other two dishwashers take care of the care and feeding of it and the rest of the dishes not suitable for mass cleaning. The half dishwasher just likes to splash in the sink and play with the bubbles.

The glass lids of the two pans used for the bain-marie didn't get all that clean, despite the fact that the senior dishwasher was on the job. I wound up stepping in to provide a demonstration, and I realized the deplorable conditions which could easily lead to the problems at hand and several other related complaints.

You see, unlike the sensible two-basin full sized kitchen sink the builders had, well over a century ago, put into the house I grew up in, this house has a single basin, a bit bigger, but not much. In fact, if you drop a dish pan in, you have exactly four inches in which to stack and rinse soap off what you just washed.

Four inches. You can do the silverware, although some slides under the dishpan and hides. You can do two glasses, although if you put a third down there, you can't maneuver enough to rinse any of them without smashing them.

Now, the sink itself would make a fine utility sink for a basement, garage, mudroom, laundry room, or utility sink room. It's a nice enough sink. Okay, maybe not really deep enough, and a bit too prettified to be a really utilitarian utility sink, but I'm trying to cut it some slack.

What a kitchen needs, if it can't have a gigundo commercial basin with commercial faucets and sprays and so forth, is a double basin sink. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. You can't have something that tries to combine the wash and rinse steps in one sink, it makes for trouble, skips the use of the dishpan, and substitutes perpetually running water, an over-soaped-under-soaked scrubbie, and a lack of thorough cleaning for a proper job.

Two sinks can also help in preparation of foods, providing more room, and they only take up a little bit more counter (and under-counter) real estate. The plumbing is only slightly more complicated ~ I know, I absoflogginglutely hate plumbing, and I've successfully re-plumbificated a ninety year old double basin sink single-handedly. They use a single faucet to swing between the two basins, and a single spray, so the supply-side is identical to that of a single basin sink.

Now, if you want to go a step beyond the double basin, throw in a small sink with a spray on a counter or island, and you've provided a veggie prep station and some additional utility. That's a nice feature, but a distant second to the importance of the double basin.

But there you have it ~ why make the working conditions miserable for the poor dishwashers who don't live under the counter? Put in a double sink... why, think of how much easier and far less cruel it would then be to make a punishment like "You'll do it, or I'll have you wash every dish in this house, young man!" stick?

Picture, if you will, a bathroom.

Picture a single towel bar mounted on the wall.

Picture the sole heat source in the room installed less than half a towel length below that towel bar.

That's right: muffle the heat if you hang up a towel.

Yet more proof positive that the good folks designing and building our houses and other everyday items are actually amorphous aliens from galaxies and/or dimensions far, far away, who have never used towels, opened doors, or changed a lightbulb.