Curmudgeonly about Kitchens

You may well wonder why I feel curmudgeonly about kitchens.

Not all kitchens, of course. Lots of kitchens are convenient to work in, easy to keep clean, and fit their owners.

No, it's the shelter-magazine trendy fashion-fad kitchens - or certain aspects of them - I get curmudgeonly about. One of the current trends, for example, is colored appliances. Burgundy, mint green, fire-engine red, robins-egg blue... mmmm yummy! And some of them really are. But... remember the Avocado Green and Harvest Gold appliances of the 1970's? How quickly they went out of style and became an absolute fashion no-no? At the time the fashion leaders were just as ga-ga about those colors as they now are about the current colors.

My take is: if you want fashion colors in your kitchen, paint the walls, change the curtains or shades, buy new accessories, even repaint the cabinets or put in new vinyl flooring - but don't commit yourself to a wild color on something that costs thousands of dollars and will last 20 years.