A Bit Extra.
For those who like to read around a subject,
the ‘long-form’ version …
There’s an old joke about an elephant in the kitchen:
Q: “How do you know there’s an elephant in your fridge?”
A: “the footprints in the butter”
The fun is in the punchline and its absurdly incidental reveal of the absolutely obvious.
But, joking aside, there is a proverbial elephant that lurks in many of our kitchens. For while a kitchen is essentially a functional space, when it comes to remodelling or designing a new one, we’re too often distracted from discussion of its grey matter by our hard-to-pin-down thoughts on more obviously attractive elements: like the colour of the cabinetry, or the visual appeal of other finishes and flourishes.
The appliances – already largely designed to be ‘integrated’ and ‘invisible’ – move further into the shadows of our interest via their overwhelm of options and plethora of price-points. In a design process that presents so many choices, the complexity in the tech often proves the last straw – making it easier to defer choosing appliances until ‘sometime later’, when we can fit ‘whatever works’ into the furniture with ‘whatever’s left’ of the budget.
There are also, sad to say, designers who genuinely believe that “a fridge is a fridge is a fridge – it makes things cold” – an opinion confidently voiced by the creative lead of a high-end kitchen design company while dismissing the idea that an appliance choice might have much consequence. As if design direction and attractive features might only attach to furniture, as if environmental concern is not a collective responsibility managed through all of our choices – and as if it were true!
In reality, a fridge is a piece of sophisticated technology carrying with it significant impacts – on our habits, our wastefulness, our environment, and our enjoyment of using a kitchen. And all fridges are by no means created equal.
It’s not only the fridge that carries footprints of course – anything connected to chilling, heating, cooking, washing, draining, or managing waste, warrants careful consideration when we care to create a kitchen that gives full expression to our beliefs, behaviours, and values.
Tell me more – I’m all ears!
I’m here to help you look the elephant full in the eye, embrace its hidden charms, and make choices that are as clear-eyed as they are sure-footed – as mindful of your own enjoyment as they are of their environmental impact.
This is about being happy to live with and able to justify the choices that you make in your home, in the short and the long term: to yourself, to those who live with and around you, and to future generations.
This isn’t about adding expense for the sake of it, or about ‘upselling’ products. Responsible choices rarely form part of a simple ‘good’ v ‘bad’ binary, or are necessarily the newest or most expensive ones available.
Good choices in the tech are the gifts that keep on giving after the paintwork on the furniture starts to fade into the background.
How can you add value?
My experience – with using kitchens, working with designers, and putting the technology to the test – helps me to help you distinguish the useful, appropriate, and worth consideration, from the pointless, the disingenuous, or the expensive for its own sake. I care why you might choose one appliance over another, and to look into the practicalities and realities of any promises made.
My focus is on your perspective. My motivation is not based in sales or in targets, and the service I offer is as an independent with no brand allegiance, no skin in the marketing game, and no direct or indirect paybacks from outside sources keen to sell their wares.
My objective is to help you find balance on the tightrope of functional appeal and responsibility to the planet as you look to your own story, identify your own needs, and make your own choices – my experience and knowledge act as simplifying guide and reliable saftey net.