We need to downgrade our expectations some in the US for what a minimum, viable kitchen is. We tend to have oversized refrigerators compared to other countries and it's actually problematic because you can't keep milk cold enough to not spoil in a mostly empty, oversized fridge.
European kitchens for a family tend to have fridges like US hotels and dorm rooms. My understanding is most Japanese kitchens have no oven. They use a wok for most things.
We have ridiculous minimum standards and it actively gets in the way of providing basic, decent housing.
I can't speak for all of Europe, but here in Amsterdam most people have a decent supermarket within walking (<15min) or cycling (<5min) distance, with plenty of unprocessed / raw ingredients (so not mini-markets that mostly sell sandwiches and microwave meals). So we tend to buy groceries often (daily or every other day) and in small portions, or even on a whim. We also don't own a car (yes we do have a child, and we know plenty of multi-child families without cars).
AFAICT, that's a lifestyle that's not available to most Americans. The flipside is of course that our houses are tiny by American standards.
In the few Asian cities I visited, there were also plenty of small cheap eateries in walking distance.
>I can't speak for all of Europe, but here in Amsterdam most people have a decent supermarket within walking (<15min) or cycling (<5min) distance
I lived in downtown Boston (USA) for a number of years in 4 different apartments. In each, the kitchen and fridge were fairly small, but I had a neighborhood market no further than a 2-3 minute walk away. A larger market was only 10-15 minutes away. As a result, I tended to eat far more fresh produce since I went to the market almost every day and had little space for storage.
Now that I'm in the suburbs, I have to drive to the store, but I generally don't more than one to two paper bags' worth of goods at a time. I still don't shop for a whole week, even though I have the space.
Where I lived in Florida bodegas were common. It's definitely possible but high real estate prices don't help things.
There is new retail space being built in the neighborhood where I live now and unfortunately it most certainly will not have cheap, whole foods available.
This is how I live in Australia. Got a supermarket on the same street so I’ll think about what I want from lunch, and go buy as close to the exact quantities of what I need to make it.
You may not waste food but you probably produce a lot of packaging waste. At least that’s what I saw in UK and France.
The UK especially produces an astonishing amount of grocery packaging trash compared to the US. I probably produce more food waste in US but I compost so don’t feel too bad about it.
In the US, a single grocery trip can result in 10-20 plastic bags. Not sure about the UK, but in most European countries people bring their own tote bags.
Not a whole lot I don’t think. I take a bag with me and grab unwrapped fresh foods. The only packaging is meats which seems fairly unavoidable. Single use bags have been banned here for about 10 years now.
Of course it's relevant. Household sizes have also been trending down in Europe and Asia. But even for small households, if you need to drive >20min to buy milk, bread, eggs and unprocessed veggies, you only do that once per week or two weeks and need a bigger fridge. OTOH if you you have a big supermarket in the same building or block, you barely need any fridge at all.
> OTOH if you you have a big supermarket in the same building or block, you barely need any fridge at all.
I don't agree. Case in point: a friend of mine grew up without a fridge in her household and it's a massive pain, because now you have to shop daily and frozen goods are of course out of the picture entirely.
All that additional time spent going back and forth and standing in line adds up.
My personal experience is that replacing the fridge from one that keeps four days worth of groceries to one that can hold a week's was a massive improvement in quality of life.
For one it gives you a buffer should the shops be closed or out of the goods you currently require.
And, mind you, I've always lived less than 600m from a supermarket with fresh produce etc.
We shop daily for a family of three. I’ve never had to stand in line either. I walk in, grab what I need, scanning as I go on my phone, then walk out. It’s that easy. Sure, occasionally they want to check my backpack to see if I missed scanning some items, but that’s only once every few weeks.
To be clear, I would like to see more mixed use, walkable neighborhoods in the US. I have lived without a car for more than a decade in the US. I've been extremely poor and living in small spaces and spent some years homeless.
You're theorizing. I'm speaking from firsthand experience (plus substantial research).
I'm not theorizing, I'm relaying experience from visiting relatives in San Francisco and NJ, and from staying with friends or for work in DC, Chicago, and Austin at various points. There is of course variety in all those places, but grocery shopping was always a lot less frequent and longer distance that what I was used to (with the exception of a friend who lived alone in DC about 10min walking from a Target).
If you have relatives living in housing in San Francisco etc, those are probably not the kind of housing or demographic or lifestyle I'm trying to talk about here. And if your well heeled relatives can shop infrequently and fill a big fridge and it's an asset to them to have that big fridge, they aren't the demographic I'm talking about.
Please do not tell me what solutions I'm allowed to desire for my country. I don't tell you how you should run things in the Netherlands.
You mostly adapt your fridge size to your way of living. Living off of sales, not having a decent convenience store nearby, making meals preemptively etc. all contribute to having a bigger fridge. This was still pretty bad here a few years ago when most shops in a 30km radius would be closed for multiple days on end for religious holidays, most big families would stock up big time.
That's the big thing Tokyo does best. If going to a convenience store is actually convenient, you don't need a large fridge at all, except for some niche situations most people don't care for anyway (cooking dishes which require a lot of space in the fridge/oven/freezer). I'd also wager eating staples kept in cupboards helps.
Can't speak for the remainder of the kitchen though. You don't need 4/8 stoves, an oven etc., but appliances don't take that much space when packed together. Even fridges don't really take that much more space.
Most Japanese kitchens have a combined microwave and oven; the oven is consequently small compared to one in the US but works well enough. Woks are used for Chinese cooking and so aren't standard in a Japanese kitchen.
The fridges are small by comparison but, especially in cities, most people shop several times a week and so space isn't a problem.
Having a walkable city makes frequent grocery shopping much more comfortable. When I lived in Osaka there was a grocery store between my apartment and my nearest station. I only had to meal plan a day at a time, my food was always fresh, I never bought more than I needed and ended up tossing out food that I didn't get around to cooking. Every grocery store was walking distance to another grocery store, all the way from my place to the downtown Namba. Grocery shopping in the states is such a pain in the ass that I don't want to do it more than once a week, and my friends have trouble understanding why I hate car culture.
Trade-offs. Americans might have huge kitchens, but you don't usually have several cafes and restaurants that make great food 10-15 meters from your house entrance. Last place I lived at in Istanbul had it right on the first floor — I didn't even have to go out to "go out".
As I said: trade-offs. Huge spaces, cafes and other amenities of an urban walkable center, (relatively) affordable — you can only choose two. I don't see how a first-world city (where a barista gets $15 an hour and not $200 a month) can have apartments that would be the same size as a typical american suburban home that would cost less than $1 million.
Europeans choose urban centers with small or even tiny (Paris) apartments. Americans choose suburban huge homes.
> Europeans choose urban centers with small or even tiny (Paris) apartments
Some Europeans choose that. However, a bit more than half (56% in France, similar elsewhere) choose single family houses. That percentage is highest in Scandinavia, lowest in Spain (~33%) and Eastern Europe.
Quick googling shows US has ~75% of the pop living in single family houses, similar to Scandinavia. It seems when people have the means, they choose to live in houses.
> It seems when people have the means, they choose to live in houses.
I’m not sure why this point escapes so many people. When your country is vast in size and all it takes is a little bit of driving to get where you need to go, most people are going to choose big, cheap houses to tiny, expensive apartments all day long.
Can you clarify what is meant here by minimum standards? I'm not American.
Over here in the UK no-one is stopping me from replacing my fridge with whatever fridge I want. It's weird for me to imagine that this could be otherwise. Like, it's just plugged in.
There's a mildly amusing joke I don't quite recall right now about how everything in America is big. Serving sizes, houses, cars, political parties, theme parks, the people...
In the case of housing standards, a lot of stuff is codified in zoning laws and such.
Our legal standards for what constitutes minimum acceptable housing actively fosters homelessness and any discussion of how those standards are excessive -- even in comparison to other developed countries with high quality of life -- gets ridiculous replies completely shooting down the idea that if civilized, well heeled people in other developed countries can feed a large family with a smaller kitchen, then maybe we have room to design smaller kitchens in some of our housing units.
IMO these standards just make no sense at all, scrap them. The market is literally designed to sort this sort of issue out - if you want a bigger kitchen pay for it, someone will provide.
Artificially restricting the minimum size of dwellings is just forcing people to either overpay for housing or be homeless.
I guess I don't really get what is meant by 'expectations' on a country-wide scale. The US is massive and has loads of people in it.
Like, there's NYC and SF and then there's rural Kansas. There's people earning $10k a year and people earning $10M.
In the UK we don't have any sort of national expectation from what I can tell. I have friends living in house shares, in apartments, in houses, and in really big houses, they all have different kitchens, obviously they do. You get what you can afford, having an expectation is meaningless.
If there's some sort of building code that says fridges have to be massive, then yeah, that's bloody stupid, but that's not specifically a kitchen issue, that's just anti-poor law.
When I lived in Germany, rentals did not come with installed kitchens. As an American military wife, the US Army installed a fridge, sink, etc so I had a kitchen in one of my apartments.
My German relatives told stories about moving in and having no kitchen at first. That's inconceivable in most parts of the US.
Rentals here typically have a fridge that is property of the owner. And you aren't supposed to change it.
Edit: To be clear, they installed a kitchen of their choosing over time. (I also cleaned up typos.)
Many Europeans today would scoff at the idea of not having a kitchen, FWIW. Pluggable electric stoves have made it easier, but most still want a functionable sink with drinkable tap water outside the toilet / bathroom and a few counters to prepare food on.
Yeah. I've seen some old apartments where the kitchen is basically a few shelves, a mini-refridgerator a small sink and a couple of hot plates. That's pretty much the bare minimum, though. Without a kitchen, I'd consider it a dorm room and not an apartment.
Really puts things in perspective again. With even my plans
Just bought new apartment. Was considering adding more surface and some cabinets in kitchen. That is 3+3 cabinets and work surface about 160cm in width. Price 1000€+ plus installation and delivery...
Really does put things in perspective. So much for rather small amount of space and not even any appliances. Just some cupboards with doors...
In the end I will just buy still pretty expensive shelf, for fraction of cost.
> In the end I will just buy still pretty expensive shelf, for fraction of cost.
The "kitchen triangle" seems to be an important thing to keep in mind when (re)designing kitchen layouts:
> Developed in the early twentieth century, the working triangle—also known as "the kitchen triangle," also known as "the golden triangle"—is a theory that states a kitchen’s three main work areas should form, you guessed it, a triangle. Specifically, the sink, the refrigerator, and the stove.
The total summed distance between those three appliances should (ideally) be in the range of 13-26 feet (4-8m); each side/edge of the triangle should ideally be in the 4-9 foot (1.5-3m) range.
Then each of the sink, the refrigerator, and stove should have have a certain minimum counter space around it:
I also encountered this theory while designing our new kitchen but I doubt it's value for home kitchens regarding the refrigerator. In our current (old) kitchen we have moved the refrigerator to a different room next to the kitchen with a door in between. I don't notice much of a difference in efficiency or annoyance. Most of the time you gather all cold ingredients before cooking anyways so there is not much back and forth during cooking.
The stove and sink distance is more important I think, as well of a place to hang towels close to the sink so you can quickly wash after touching meat or sticky stuff. Our current towel rack is off to the far end of the kitchen and causes a lot of walking around.
One thing I also keep in mind, but this is more cabinet placement, is the orchestration when setting the table or other interruptions during the cooking (eg: kids washing their hands). Ideally you don't want your spouse/kids to have to pass you when you are standing in front of a hot stove or cutting with a sharp knife. So move the plates, cutlery and stuff to the edges of the kitchen (and also take into account the dishwasher and place to store dirty dishes).
Is that really expensive though? Someone has to cut the wood, someone has to transport it, then someoneone will cut up the trees, someone will finish the wood, someone will build a cabinet out of it, and then someone will deliver it to your door. All those people need to be paid for your cabinet to exist.
I like to consider how much people would have to pay me to spend a similar amount of time, and the cost would be much, much higher than €1000.
That is the price for one from IKEA. Apart from the surface entirely build from standard parts that are probably made with relatively high levels of automation. In the end it seems expensive to me.
“… this household each adult can consume goods and services worth … US dollars each month. “
This is not an intuitive measure.
“We guesstimated this amount based on the assets the family owned and the incomes they reported.”
So owning a ridiculously expensive espresso machine is supposed to be a measure of the quality of food produced in a kitchen? No.
I have an electric steamer and rice cooker which I use a lot, and the quality of my food is excellent.
I understand a measure of nutrition is too far to be expect. But relevant to kitchen technology are CO2 production, energy efficiency. And these measures don’t need to be so granular. A multi-factor analysis on binary scale would be more informative and thoughtful than saying the dirt kitchen is $40/mo and Manhattan Penthouse kitchen is $7k/mo, and some other kitchen in India is 4K/mo?? Nonsense.
I noticed that the dollar value on this page is not income, instead it's the dollar value of the consumption per adult in the family and adjusted for purchasing power parity.
That means that if there are two households in India and USA, and both have an "income" of 1000 USD, their consumption is similar. However it's very likely that the Indian households has significantly less actual income because stuff in India is cheaper. This also means that for goods that cost almost the same around the world e.g. an iPhone would be more affordable for American household.
What really put things into perspective for me was seeing how despite the terrible gap in living conditions the "families" category just showed a bunch of pictures and videos of what looked to me like perfectly ordinary families.
It really helps show that people are just people and highlight the disparity of their circumstances.
Why not just store appliances not being used somewhere else? For me the only things that stay on the counter are a kettle and espresso machine. If I want to make toast I’ll just pull the toaster out of the cupboard.
Very cool site. While the disparity is pretty obvious in things like kitchens, it's also interesting to see just how similar most of us live when going through the categories of e.g. worship, applying make up, pets, etc.
I'd have liked to see Japan and it's all income levels...
it's quite comical when you apply your local jurisdiction's regulations on these
i bet one can make so much content on youtube filming reaction videos of your local regulator browsing this and either helpfully explain why/how or simply condemning; hilarious
Weird; I expected the most high-income kitchens to be either absent or completely unused. Don't nigh income individuals mostly rely on eating out and food delivery? As a digital nomad, I haven't cooked anything even once in most hotels/airbnbs I've lived at during the last 3 months.
That, in turn, sounds weird to me. I could easily afford not to cook, it doesn't have anything to do with money, and I definitely don't consider it a hobby either - I don't enjoy it particularly.
Making my own food allows me to eat exactly what I want, in the right amount, made from the right ingredients. It's also more healthy. If you want to get all abstract about it, it's also about keeping a culture of food alive that I grew up with.
I suspect your experience as a digital nomand isn't quite representative, and it probably also has a lot to do with where you're from originally...
The kitchen is considered the “heart of the home”, in the USA at least. The trend has been towards larger and more luxurious kitchens as they’re seen as the most used communal room and the centerpiece for entertaining.
So even if you don’t cook often you’ll see 48” ranges, counter depth fridges, and custom cabinetry and islands in high end homes.
It’s not uncommon for a modern luxury kitchen to cost more than most homes across the country.
American here. I happen to know some extreme high net worth individuals (incl. 1 billionaire). Anecdata, I haven’t personally seen a trend towards not cooking associated with wealth.
None of them have places that outright lack kitchens, that would be strange. Few of them shop for groceries though - the majority use eg Amazon Fresh
I completely agree with that. But this still means that cooking is more of a hobby, and people have a lot of very different ones — so my point about most (like 55%) of kitchen still stands, right?
There’s an income threshold where eating out/ordering in becomes viable as your main source of food. There’s another line where you can hire a full-time maid who’ll do the cooking for you in addition to other chores like cleaning.
Once you clear that second threshold, and especially if you have a family, it seems to me that most people prefer it over restaurant-centric eating. Also, if you’re used to prices in major tech hubs, it might surprise you how common it is that a full-time maid is much more affordable than eating out.
As a digital nomad you are probably able to live in places with a lower cost of living, but usually high salaries are in places with a high cost of living as well. This makes the price of eating out quite higher as well, often much more so than the cost of groceries.
Additionally, just because you can afford to eat out every meal doesn't mean you wouldn't rather do other things with your money (e.g. save to retire early).
Of course, if your income is high enough you might not even care about that, but I don't think this website covers such incomes (the highest kitchens I can see are $10k/month) and at that level you can probably pay someone to cook for you.
I used to barely cook when I lived small with a shitty kitchen (because it was so annoying and depressing), once I got a good job and could afford a nice place with a big kitchen, it suddenly become a lot more enjoyable to make my own food.
Where does this data come from? It doesn't look like people took these videos on purpose just for this site, as they show off kind of random (sometimes weird) things.
> We want to show how people really live. It seemed natural to use photos as data so people can see for themselves what life looks like on different income levels. Dollar Street lets you visit many, many homes all over the world. Without travelling ... A team of photographers have documented over 264 homes in 50 countries so far, and the list is growing. In each home the photographer spends a day taking photos of up to 135 objects, like the family’s toothbrushes or favorite pair of shoes. All photos are then tagged (household function, family name and income) ... Gapminder is an independent Swedish foundation with no political, religious or economic affiliations.
The title says that it's income per month, but on each kitchen page it says this is the amount of goods and services that the family can consume in a month.
European kitchens for a family tend to have fridges like US hotels and dorm rooms. My understanding is most Japanese kitchens have no oven. They use a wok for most things.
We have ridiculous minimum standards and it actively gets in the way of providing basic, decent housing.