Plus A Bit of History About Modern American Kitchens
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My friend Kelly recently left New York City for the suburbs of Westchester, where she and her husband bought their first house. Her new yard, her vanity table, and especially her reading nook thrilled her, but she confided that she wished the kitchen were a bit smaller. “You want less kitchen?!” — I needed to make sure that I’d heard correctly. How could anyone — let alone someone leaving New York City for the ‘burbs — want a littler kitchen? “It’s just awfully large … I think I’ll have to do a lot of puttering,” she explained. “I’d rather have a more compact, more efficient kitchen. Like a Gilbreth kitchen.”
I had no idea what Kelly was talking about, but it turned out that I had a Gilbreth kitchen (or at least a Gilbreth-influenced kitchen), and chances are that you do too. To learn more about Gilbreth, a female industrial engineer and mother of 12 whose work shaped the modern American kitchen, see below.*
Whether your kitchen is bigger than Kelly’s or tinier than the little L where I spend so many hours, chances are that you’re picky about what you keep out on the counter. The counter is always prime real estate. This week, we’ve chosen to share some of our favorite countertop items: the ones we happily use and look at day in and day out.
Our round-up confronts us, yet again, with how difficult it can be to define “sustainability.” Can a plasticky cutting board ever be a good choice? What about a small appliance that doesn’t use recycled or “green” materials, but reduces overall energy usage and lasts a long time? Or a product made with plastics that, over its lifespan, dramatically reduces overall plastic and aluminum consumption? As you'll see, we’ve decided “yes” to all of the above. Bluedot Living is all in on products that are made to last, perform important and necessary functions, reduce energy consumption and emissions, and increase our enjoyment of life at home.
These items make our lives a little greener — mostly figuratively, but in two cases, quite literally. We hope you like them as much as we do. Happy browsing!
What Bluedotters keep on our own kitchen counters
Bluedot Living’s Marketplace Monday newsletter features items we believe in. When you make a purchase through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Lomi Composter
We love anything that makes composting easier, especially for cityfolk and people who just never warmed to the idea of keeping a bin full of slippery stuff. The Lomi, a chic little electric composter, takes up little more than a cubic foot of counter space and turns food scraps into useful fertilizer. Get $50 off with code Bluedot.
Material Kitchen Cutting Board
“Indulgently practical,” Material Kitchen makes gorgeous, thoughtful goods for the kitchen and dining room. This brand gets big points for innovation, transparency, sustainability, and philanthropy. Our favorites include the re(Board) recycled plastic cutting boards and the Forever Peeler with a replaceable blade.
Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro
Cooking for two can be an exercise in sustainable thinking for the eco-minded cook: Will we really eat these leftovers? Does it make sense to run the dishwasher? Should we use the oven? Bluedot’s founder keeps the answer on the kitchen counter: Breville’s Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro.
AeroGarden Planters
Bluedotter Whitney Multari doesn’t have outdoor space, but that doesn’t keep her from gardening. She lucked into finding a small hydroponic AeroGarden at a thrift shop, and now cultivates herbs in her kitchen. It’s proved fun and easy to use: she adds water, food, and watches the plants grow.
SodaStream
You’re either a fizzy water person, or you’re not. If you are, you need a SodaStream, the magical device that makes plain water sparkle. In this household, (Marketplace Editor Elizabeth speaking here), we drink two to three liters of carbonated water a day. Our SodaStream sees a lot of action, and it just keeps giving, with no signs of wear.
Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron
Le Creuset, one of the best-known cookware brands in existence, will celebrate its hundredth anniversary in 2025. The past century has given them plenty of time to prove the lifetime guarantees on their signature enameled cast iron pieces, which often become family heirlooms.
Let’s learn about the mother of modern kitchens
Back to Lillian Moller Gilbreth, born 1878, industrial engineer, doctor of psychology, and mother of 12, is often credited with redesigning the American kitchen. Along with her husband, Gilbreth studied and published papers on industrial efficiency, but she rarely took any of the credit. After he died young, she needed to pay the enormous family’s expenses. She decided to channel her expertise into the niche of improving household efficiencies, an arena in which she thought men might deign to employ her. She studied homemakers in their kitchens, then usually large rooms with entirely separate pantries for provisions and dishes.
Gilbreth designed a system that would reduce the average woman’s steps in the kitchen by nearly 75% (close to 20 miles a year). In her ideal kitchen, the stove and counter were next to one another, with cookware stored below and ingredients above, and a refrigerator close by. She added a foot pedal to the trash can and shelves to the icebox. Her work would fundamentally change the way American women moved about their homes and their lives. In collaboration with the Brooklyn Borough Gas Company, she showed the world a model kitchen at a 1929 exposition, and the model became extremely popular. (She also believed that countertops should be customized based on the height of the cook; unfortunately, that concept did not take hold.)
When women could carry out their domestic duties more efficiently, Gilbreth believed, they would have more time to devote to “happiness minutes” — the pursuit of personal interests or professional studies. She also apparently thought that there was no reason to bother with ironing sheets! As with a distressing number of important historical figures, Gilbreth has her own dirty laundry, so to speak; she was a known proponent of eugenics, at least early in her career. And, sadly, we all know that more streamlined kitchens have not, in general, freed women from so many of the responsibilities that have bound them to the home.
Still, Gilbreth is a fascinating figure. Her work has saved many of us with C-, L-, and U-shaped kitchens thousands of hours of to-ing and fro-ing. Regardless of whether the savings comes from the grids or from within ourselves, we at Bluedot are always proponents of conserving energy.
