— Mieke Gerritzen
I think that in our kitchens, we have taken a few things for granted as good solutions...one of these things is the lazy susan. This is one of the worst possible additions to a kitchen (after the trash compactor) that I can think of right off. And one of the most requested. I can tell you, most people look at a good kitchen layout, and notice a dead corner and consider it wasted sapce...."can we put a lazy susan in the corner there to fill it up?" is an extremely common question. The problem is that the lazy susan is a HORRIBLE solution! 2 drawer cabinets is so much more efficient! The lazy susan twirls around, and items fall off in the back and get lost or stuck, or jam up the system completely & cause the whole cabinet to get stuck! Not to mention you have to get down on your knees to see what is going on in there. where as a drawer will pull right out and you can see what you are dealing with. Items rarely fall out in back & get stuck, and if they do, you simply pull the drawer out completely & fetch whatever is causing the problem.
Not to mention that the lazy susan mechanism is ROUND and goes into a SQUARED cabinet....hello! Wasted space!
This is not to say there haven't been improvements in the corner solution realm, there are some great newer additions to cabinet hardware to address these problems such as the 'magic corner'. this is a mechanism (shown below) which pulls out straight & then swings out to one side bringing the basket behind forward. These tend to lose less items as the sides are generally higher on these baskets than on the lazy susan, and the dead space around the baskets is significantly reduced as the baskets are rectangular and fit better inside the cabinet.
So why now, I ask, do people still want to use old solutions like the lazy susan when there are much better solutions to their problems...is it just what we are used to? Do we need to have the same tools our mothers & grandmothers suffered with?
