Friday, January 28, 2011

It's a kitchen, not a catchall


For many people, the kitchen also serves as a way station. It's where the kids dump backpacks and sports gear after school, where mail stacks up, and where purses, briefcases, keys, phones and musical instruments are deposited.

"The kitchen is the hub of the home," says Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet , an online company that specializes in home organization. "A lot of activity takes place in the kitchen that is not related to cooking."

Begin organizing by assessing the space and determining whether you are using it efficiently. If your kitchen is the place where everything seems to land, Marrero recommends a "destination station" for these items, preferably where you enter and leave the house. "All that stuff should have a home because it's not going to go away. Giving it a place will keep it off the kitchen counter."

Leah Daniels, owner of Hill's Kitchen , a kitchenware store on Capitol Hill, is a proponent of getting clutter off the kitchen counter. "I feel like I have less clutter when my counters are clear," Daniels says. Among the changes she made was to move her knives from a knife block on the counter to one that fits in a drawer. The knives are within reach but out of the way. In her shop, she carries a line of knife sleeves so blades can be stored in a drawer even without the block. The sleeves are color-coded so you can easily find the one you need.
Daniels reorganized her spice storage by putting spices she uses most often into magnetic jars that she keeps on a metal strip. The rest are in stackable glass jars that she keeps in a cabinet.

She further banished clutter by hanging some of her pots and pans on a pot rack. As for the perennial problem of where to store the lids, Daniel says some manufacturers, including All-Clad and Mauviel, make lids that slide over the handleof a pot or pan so that they "nest happily together" even when hanging.

For Aviva Goldfarb, keeping an organized kitchen depends on keeping an organized tally of groceries. Goldfarb, who lives in Chevy Chase, is founder and CEO of the Six O'Clock Scramble, an online subscription service that helps busy families plan dinner menus. So she does a lot of recipe testing - and grocery shopping.

"I really encourage people to shop with a plan and to shop with a grocery list, and to stick to that list," Goldfarb says. "First of all, this keeps you from continuing to buy pantry items that you already have. Otherwise, every time you see a can of diced tomatoes on sale you'll buy it, even if you don't need it." She limits her own grocery shopping trips to once a week and is disciplined about using up what she buys before getting more.

Goldfarb categorizes the food storage spaces in her kitchen, including those in the refrigerator. In addition to dedicated bins for fruits and vegetables, she stores dairy products together and moves older ingredients to the front of the refrigerator so that she finishes those before opening new ones. She keeps her pantry organized in a similar way, with savory snacks stored together in one space and sweet snacks in another.

She also encourages her family members to be mindful about adding what they need to the grocery list. "It has to be a family effort," Goldfarb says. "If my kids are running out of snacks or drinks and they put it on the grocery list, they know those items will reappear."

And Goldfarb employs her freezer in her efforts to organize. She keeps bags of frozen vegetables on hand for use in a pinch, as well as nuts for snacks (they stay fresh longer when frozen), and several frozen meals "for those nights when you just can't get it together." She keeps tabs on the contents of her freezer and builds them into her weekly menu plan so they don't languish for months.

Although tackling clutter in the kitchen may seem daunting, the Clutter Diet's Marrero says the chore can usually be accomplished in a single day, especially if you recruit family members or friends to help. And when it comes to paring down your stuff, Daniels adds, it helps to be just a little bit merciless.

"We all have things that we don't want to part with, but on the other hand we are always bringing new things home. When your potholders are burned through, it's time to get rid of them. You have to throw away things when they die."

Homeowners again look at remodeling, but landscape has changed after recession


Tentatively - and with price and practicality their top considerations - area homeowners are once again starting to ring up remodeling contractors.
Those pondering a remodel are likely to find a recession-changed landscape. One in which contractors don't turn their nose up at jobs because they're too small. One in which prices are significantly lower than just a few years ago. One in which product deliveries come more slowly. And one in which everyone needs to be concerned, even more than usual, about the financial viability of the companies they deal with.

The homeowners tiptoeing back to the market are changed, too. They're not as free-spending. They take longer to make a commitment. And they're painfully aware that, eventually, future buyers might punish them for choices they don't find appealing.

Following a brutal couple of years for the remodeling business, the leaders of several area remodeling firms said they saw a noticeable uptick in inquiries starting in December, and they're hoping it will carry through into spring.

"It's certainly better than it was last winter, which is setting the bar pretty low. . . . At least for us, that was the worst," said Mark Scott, president of Mark IV Builders in Bethesda.

Josh Baker, founder of Bowa, a remodeling firm based in McLean, said that his high-growth business flattened out during the recession but that the company managed to remain profitable. In December, Bowa fielded a flurry of inquiries from homeowners; calls were up 47 percent from December 2009, Baker said. What he called "quality leads," clients they were working with but who had not yet signed a contract, were at a 20-month high.

Nationally, remodeling expenditures are likely to increase by 3.5 percent each year, adjusted for inflation, over the next five years, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The center points to deferred upkeep during the recession, a normalizing economy and continued population growth due to immigration as reasons for the increase. Also, it said, a large share of the population will enter the peak remodeling years, from the mid-30s to mid-50s, which will boost spending on home improvements.

The Washington area, long one of the nation's biggest spenders on remodeling, is expected to remain among the leaders. Accounting for the D.C. area's spending is a combination of older housing stock and household incomes that can accommodate expensive jobs such as room additions and kitchen overhauls, the center's report says. Area homeowners also are more likely to spring for professional design and installation instead of do-it-yourself projects.
adjusted for inflation, between 2000 and 2009. (Fueled by hurricane rebuilding, New Orleans homeowners spent the most: $5,700 per household.)

But the D.C. area's cutback in spending during the recession followed the national trend. The Harvard study cites census data showing that homeowners' spending on home improvements fell by more than 23 percent between the market peak in 2007 through 2009.

Chris Landis, an architect and owner of Landis Construction in the District's Takoma area, said the dollar volume of his business dropped 25 percent in 2009 from the year before. It fell another 15 percent in 2010.

Thinking smaller

The recession has changed what consumers are looking for in remodeling.