Have you been on a house-hunting adventure lately? Or scrolled through to-let property ads on social media? Mazee!!! They’re flooded with the so-called “American-style open kitchen”.

People who hate open kitchen plans, you’re my tribe! Let’s hate on it together, because honestly… it’s not ideal for our 1- and 2-bedroom small spaces!

As Nairobians we are known to not only love a trend, we also overdo it! Just like everyone copied the M-pesa shops, Smokie trolleys, drop shipping, quail and quail eggs, and dragon fruit farming… and when it’s just a business of copy-pasting with zero originality or differentiation, things get boring, the market get flooded, hence acquiring losses, and in the case of open kitchens, it’s dangerous for families.

We millennials remember growing up before bedsitters existed. We lived in double rooms with our parents, our beds separated from the “coffee table” by a piece of sheet and the “kitchen” was basically right at the door. It was tiny but functional, with a table, a tabletop cooker, and an LPG gas cylinder just next to that mess and very little privacy, and when our parents levelled up, they moved us into homes with proper closed kitchens. And honestly, that was a relief!

But now, developers are out here throwing open-plan kitchens into everything in Nairobi, from one-bedrooms in Kilimani to two-bedrooms in Kiambu, even houses deep in Utawala and in small Bungalows, with no thought about the design, safety, or practicality of it all.

Developers seem to lack the imagination to create an island-like space that ought to go with an open plan design. There’s no ventilation added to these designs that should go with a kitchen sharing space with a living room. Just looking for a way to save on stone and a door.

Why Open-Plan Kitchens Aren’t Cool for Nairobi Tiny Spaces:

1. No smoke vents equals to house fire hazards. These designs aren’t it with only 2 windows in the whole house.

2. You cannot grill indoors or even use a charcoal jiko. Due to the lack of wide windows, you’ll kill the whole family with carbon monoxide, buana!

3. It’s not child friendly. With toddlers running around the open kitchen and others turning the stove knobs, and you’re frying your mandazi, it’s a whole catastrophe.

4. You have grease, moisture and soot takeover. Without a smoke duct, all that cooking vapour settles on your furniture, cabinets, and curtains. Even if you don’t see the smoke. Your cabinets will get disgustingly oily within months. Don’t believe me, touch the cabinets to feel the grease.

5. Your whole house smells like food. Closed kitchens keep the omena, mbuta, mukimo, and fermented uji smells inside the kitchen. Now, your sofa and your clothes won’t be spared. Unaingia job ukinuka ‘eu de tilapia’ bana.

6. Zero privacy. Imagine cooking ugali in your two-bedroom open kitchen apartment while your spouse and their buddy are in the living room… they can’t even have a private conversation without you trying to listen in.

7. They are not chic, they’re not trendy; they’re simply half-baked imitations.

8. Without a proper range hood/smoke duct and space for a kitchen island, an open-plan kitchens are a scam, and we are being shortchanged.

Dear Contractors & Interior Designers, Do Better

  • Bring back closed kitchens with lockable doors, double sinks for aesthetics and practicality and big windows for proper ventilation.
  • If there’s no space for an island, forget the open plan.
  • If there’s no smoke hood, forget the open plan.
  • We want to cook with lo-fi in our headphones in the confines of our kitchens, not in the middle of the living room.
Just look at this ridiculous design somewhere in Nairobi…

Lastly,

Open-plan kitchens can be amazing, but only when the house is huge. For the rest of Nairobi, stop forcing us to stir our kamandee stew in the middle of the “sitting room”.

Closed kitchens forever. And period.

Categorized in:

Food & Health