My husband makes fun of me because I prefer to use small spoons and forks, so they'll be staying in my cutlery drawer for some time yet!

I don't use salad forks much, but I definitely still use teaspoons. Probably more than tablespoons, in fact.

While I don't use them for actual dining, I have found teaspoons excellent for use a a tasting spoon while cooking. I use mine so often for that purpose that I run out of them before any other utensil!

We use the small forks and spoons every day, but perhaps not what they were meant for. Wee spoons are great for breakfast, dessert, coffee or tea, or scooping up small amounts of sauce, like salsa. Wee forks are also perfect for breakfast and dessert, sliced fruit, olives, and other similar small items.

I love salad/dessert forks! When I'm using a full-sized plate, I want a full-sized fork, but when I'm using a smaller plate, I reach for a smaller fork. When I serve cake or pie or some other forkable dessert, I always put out the small forks.

I know, I know, Miss Manners: I should properly put out dessert spoons, too, but that seems a little fussy. Anyway, I don't have them! My silverware set (a basement treasure from Mom's house, it's monogrammed for one of my great-great aunts) seems to have twice as many teaspoons as anything else, a handful of round soup/dessert spoons, and no larger spoons at all. When I serve ice cream or other spoonable dessert to more than four people, I use teaspoons.

Yes, I use salad forks and teaspoons daily. Our family sits down to dinner practically every day. This includes a salad and dessert. We also always have lit candles at the dinner table.

We use salad forks and teaspoons as our regular cutlery. The larger utensils just feel giant to me. We also use salad plates as our everyday dinner plates-- again, the full-size ones are just too big for me. My parents always served dinner using the smaller stuff so it's what I'm used to.

I wonder if the average size of flatware and cutlery has increased along with the average portion size served at restaurants these days... would be interesting to see some vintage place settings to see if they're smaller than today's!

My kids use the salad forks when they were younger. With small kids, it's easier for them to use and it's perfect for their size.

Teaspoons are used everyday as well, again... small kids, small hands, smaller spoons.

I find that the "soup spoons" sold with most sets are actually small serving spoons. Proper soup spoons are round and deeper. They are much easier to use. I have a section full of those and I have to find them in vintage and thrift stores.

I absotively posilutely despise tablespoons for eating food. They're just too big for ease of use. I always use teaspoons for soup, yogurt, cereal, etc.

As far as smaller forks: lately even more-costly tableware (think 80 bucks or more for an 8-place setting) has been of a crappy quality where even gently leaning on a large fork to cut a steak results in it warping. So I use smaller forks to lessen the lean.

We don't use the salad forks much unless we're having people over for dinner and want to look "fancy" (or if we're eating pie...mmm). But, I'm a big spoon person, and my husband is a little spoon person. So they get used equally!

and then you have little kids and find that the salad forks and teaspoons are the perfect size for little mouths. And I use teaspoons for things like yogurt and puddings so I'm not shoveling food in my mouth.

My 4yr old uses the salad forks and the smaller spoons and I love the smaller spoons for most every thing that calls for a spoon. The big spoons are just too large for me.

I agree with the commenters above who suggest that smaller forks seem more appropriate with smaller plates. And I generally use my small spoons for eating anything that calls for a spoon - they're just easier and neater for me than the big soup spoons.

Teaspoons forever! It's the perfect size for enjoying ice cream, yogurt, cereal, etc, with cramming a huge bite into my maw. I wish I had twice the number of teaspoons as I use them everyday. Salad forks, not so much....

Using salad forks and teaspoons allows me to delay washing dishes for a few more days...can't get rid of them.

And CUMINAFTERALL - the size of flatware has increased. Most current sets sold would not fit into my flatware chest and were huge comapred to my old set.

I'm with @cuminafterall - we use the smaller forks and spoons for everyday, and only use the large ones for serving (or if we haven't run the dishwasher in a while). Large forks seem a little big, but our large spoons are HUGE! They honestly barely fit into my mouth, they are quite uncomfortable to eat with.

We use them all for everyday, it doubles the time we can go between runnings of the dishwasher.

We go through a prodigious number of spoons---in all sizes. I use them all the time.

haha yes, I too have a tendency to eat my dinner with a small fork (or really whatever fork I happen to pull out of the drawer) and breakfast (yogurt) is always with a small spoon! I find I only use the big spoons for soup. I agree with @sillyputty, they are otherwise way too huge!

I prefer the small forks, which I guess are salad forks. And I eat my cereal with a teaspoon; I'd have difficulty getting a tablespoon in my mouth. When we registered for dishes, we had such a hard time finding ones that aren't HUGE (went with Fiestaware, but the plates are still a tad bigger than I'd prefer.) With all that we know about portion sizes and tricking your eye, why would you use such large tableware?

i LOVE my smaller forks and spoons! i don't want to eat most desserts with a big honkin soup spoon, and when it comes to more delicate dishes or pastas, i prefer a small fork as well. it has nothing to do with table ettiquette, it has to do with how the shape affects your experience of the food... like using a tumbler for a fine wine vs a nice wine glass... its going to taste different.

I agree with @cuminafterall and the subsequent commenters who use the smaller forks and spoons as everyday cutlery. I have a small mouth, and I can't imagine eating with the bigger ones. Our silverware "set" is actually six pieces: knife, big and small forks (small get used, big set aside for guests), plus small, medium and large spoons (tiny spoons for jam, dessert, and tasting, medium spoons for soup/breakfast, large spoons for guests or for serving). Oh, and chopsicks. I only mention them because they have a place in our silverware caddy.

We also use "vintage"/heirloom plates, so the newer large silverware seems comically disproportionate.

It's funny, I've never in my life had silverware 'disappear' so what was used more would need to be replaced more. All utensils got washed and never went missing. That is until I lived with my last room mate and cutlery would constantly vanish. I could never understand it. Why would you throw away your utensils? I still can't understand....

Guess I have no manners and am uncultured because I don't have any salad forks or teaspoons, as far as I know. I wouldn't even know how to set a table with them or what they look like.

I agree with most of the commenters - I much prefer the smaller spoons and forks across the board. The big spoons are sometimes just way too huge! Little spoons 4eva!

My husband prefers the salad fork for everything. He feels its wider and gives him the ability to eat larger bites of food. This is an interesting post though. I love seeing how kitchen "stuff" evolves!

My teaspoons are the most commonly used item in my drawer... but I live in England, and we drink a lot of tea.

I always reach for the smaller forks and spoons first, and they're the ones we have less of because of loss. I attribute this to being a tiny person.

I sold sterling silver flatware for years so not exactly super up to the minute fashion trends in the kitchen but I can tell you what people bought and presumably used.

1.) It was not uncommon for someone to order twice as many teaspoons as regular place setting items.
2.)Table Soup (aka Oval Soup) spoons are great for soup but don't work so well when eating smaller items. I'd see these going well before teaspoons! Cream (or round) soup spoons were oddities but some people loved them.
3.) Salad forks were also purchased sometimes in doubles for patterns that did not have specified dessert forks. Yep, there is a difference between the two (dessert forks usually had a funky shaped side tine.)

Also, and this is trying not to be rude or condescending but how can one go through life and never learn to set a table. Clearly this would come up at some point!

Good point! I never use the small forks and spoons, but always took it for granted that they exist. When I buy a nice set finally, I'll save some money, or buy more of the full sized.

See how I call them small and full-sized? Dessert and salad, blah!

I'm with nearly everyone else here: Are salad forks and teaspoons outmoded for their original intended use? Certainly. Do they have still have a purpose? Definitely. There are many instances in which a smaller version of a fork or spoon proves useful. Personally, I use teaspoons more often than tablespoons, but salad forks and dinner forks are interchangeable to me.

I thought there was a study that said using a bigger fork translated to eating less.

No no! I love the small fork and spoon, and use them for everything! I even much prefer a teaspoon for my soup, the big spoon is just too big and awkward for a petite person like me!

I use them everyday, though I eat my salad with a regular fork and a knife. I use my teaspoons mostly to eat yogurt, and the salad forks if I eat something small (olives), and use both for dessert, depending on what dessert is. I even have old-fashioned ice cream spoons I use fairly regularly. And I set myself a complete table every day.

Hhmmm. I use the dinner forks at dinner or for breakfast, or eating a meal in general. I use the small forks for things like fruit at lunch, or to turn meat over while it's cooking (I don't have tongs) or what have you. Teaspoons are used for everything from stirring tea, to eating ice cream/yoghurt. The large spoons we rarely use unless I'm mixing or eating soup. None of them go missing. We wash almost the whole set every few days!

We almost exclusively use the salad forks in our set of silverware because the others are too big and unbalanced - they will fall right off a plate if you aren't careful. Doesn't help that I eat off the salad plates all the time. So in this case, we could do without the large dinner forks.

Our soup and tea spoons aren't much different in size, but do differ in shape (soup: round, teaspoon: oval) so they are mostly multipurpose but do have a few separate uses. Either way, we use enough of both to justify them.

I don't own salad forks, but teaspoons are great for eating desserts, measuring sugar for coffee and tea, stirring said coffee and tea, and eating yogurt that comes in tiny cups. I also use them for serving sauces and gravies.

I prefer the smaller teaspoons and salad forks to the bigger forks and soup spoons, so those get used much more at my house! I'm not a small person, but I guess I've been trained to take small bites.

When I prepare dinner on plates in the kitchen, I'll often put a little more on my fiance's plate (or less of the foods he doesn't like as much.) He usually doesn't notice the difference in food, but I often lay out a fork on each of our plates, with the salad fork plate being mine, and the full-size fork being his. I'm a big fan of eating with salad forks and teaspoons.

I exclusively use teaspoons and salad forks when I eat! The regular forks and tablespoons just seem way too big.

I use my small forks and spoons all the time. My favorite breakfast spoon is actually the small sugar spoon from my serving set that is smaller than my teaspoons. I even prefer to use baby cutlery or appetizer spoons and forks to keep in my lunch bag (for little cans of flavored tuna and yogurt). I too am a small person (only 4 foot nine) and have a small mouth so I guess that's a lot to do with it. And I never use my dinner plates for myself I always eat off a small square solid plate or a flat pasta bowl.

That's salad plate not solid plate (iPhone autocorrect ha!)

The small forks and spoons are the most used in my drawer. The rest of the family likes the small spoons for cereal and we all use them for ice cream -- can't imagine eating a little scoop of ice cream with a soup spoon. And we always use the little forks for lunch, although it's the big forks for dinner. That said, I never set the table with two forks, no matter what we're eating.

I'm with the other commenters who use the salad forks and small spoons frequently. They're scaled just right for my kids to use as primary cutlery, and I use them for other things, too - salad forks are perfect little whisks for eggs. Teaspoons still dole out a neat spoon of sugar for coffee. And call me old-fashioned, but I still like setting a table for a party with all the silverware - casual as it may be in style - because it just looks more 'complete'.

While I use my salad forks and teaspoons all the time and treasure my cream soup spoons (thank you, Battra92, for naming them), I think could adapt to a 3-piece set. It would just have to have a spoon a little bigger than a teaspoon and a relatively dainty fork.

I do set the table with both salad and dinner forks if there's a green salad (or any salad served on a seperate serving plate/bowl). My set doesn't have desert forks - but does have shrimp forks - WHY??? And I ordered a double dose of teaspoons, AND a set of long iced tea spoons. The soup spoons in my set are huge - use them for serving ware only.

BTW, my set had as an option, a set of children's silver - the spoon was about the size of a teaspoon, and the fork a bit smaller than a salad fork, but both had much shorter handles. I thought that was a great idea.

Less expensive to produce and sell by eliminating the salad/dessert fork (the small one) and teaspoon (the small one). Most of my long life, it's been knife, teaspoon, fork and salad/dessert fork. Only the soup spoon if soups/stews (or morning cereal) were part of the meal.

If there's a salad or dessert (cake, pie etc.) and no small fork; that ideed is too casual and clueless.

1. I'm with the person who wondered how cutlery could go missing -- I've never lost a piece in 18 years and ours even goes out on picnics with us sometimes in the summer. I just don't get how you could accidentally throw it away. However, having just moved into a place with a disposal for the first time I think I found my answer. We haven't totally ruined anything yet but it will probably happen.

2. I'm surprised only one person so far has mentioned they eat off salad plates most of the time. We rarely use our dinner-size plates anymore. Pretty much only when we have dinner guests or if all the salad plate are already dirty by dinnertime.

I use salad forks and teaspoons daily also.

I've also lost pieces to the garbage disposal, but was lucky to find replacements and more pieces to match my set on eBay.

And I use salad plates most of the time. Dinner plates only get used for company.

People tend to eat less at meals when using smaller utensils, so we've been using our smaller salad forks at all meals anyway!

We have used the smaller utensils for our kids. They are the perfect size for smaller hands. I also prefer the smaller spoons for ice cream.

Regular spoons and forks are giant. I also use small spoons and forks on a regular basis.

Salads are eaten with chopsticks, because you simply can't fork a piece of lettuce which has been glued to the bowl with dressing. Oh yeah, salads should be served in a bowl, not a plate.

Soups are eaten with Asian soup spoons, which are nice and deep, as opposed to shallow and worthless for soup like Western ones.

I love eating yogurt, ice cream and other creamy and dessert-y things with little teeny coffee spoons, but I only use salad forks for getting cat food out of the can.

OTOH, my preferred flatware is from the 1970s and it's much smaller than stuff you buy new, now. There are soup/dessert spoons, but I avoid using them as much as possible.

I really dislike the way everything seems to be getting bigger and bigger.

My husband uses the standard dinner fork and soup spoon while I use the salad fork and desert spoon. He has a standard mouth. I have a desert mouth.

If you live in TExas where they drink lots of ice tea, you need those long teaspoons.

I use teaspoons for everything except soup and, of all things, cereal -- using the bigger spoons gets you a better milk:cereal ratio with less left over at the end. I use salad forks mostly for desserts or snacks, and flipping meat while cooking (so I'll never accidentally use the same fork for eating and cooking).

I recently got iced tea spoons, and I love them -- there was one I used as a kid, but it disappeared years ago, and I'm so happy to have my own set in my own place now. Really convenient -- I use them way more than I thought I would.

Yep, use them all. My peeve is that our flatware drawer tray doesn't have enough slots for all five pieces (unless you store the chopsticks and serving spoons elsewhere, which seems unnecessarily complicated) so I put salad and dinner forks head to tail in the same slot, and tea and tablespoons head to tail in the same slot. But it annoys me because Someone in my household is oblivious to the difference and I hate digging through.

Thank you Battra92! Also, I suspect that the skyrocketing cost of producing flatware is the real reason why place settings are shrinking. Fierce international competition for metals like molybdenum and chromium (which are used for making stainless steel), gold, and silver have led to shortages and higher prices for consumer goods. Starting back in the nineties, many of the companies that made silverplate flatware switched to making only stainless items, largely due to increased costs. The multiple sets of stainless, silver, and pewter flatware that I purchased inexpensively twenty years ago now would cost me quadruple what I paid for them, given the current prices for my patterns. The bottom line is: if you use them, replace those missing salad forks now or pay higher prices later!

We never use the large forks or spoons! I love our set of silverware, I'm trying to find more (I think they stopped making them since our wedding), but we would only bother with the small stuff. I'm not sure we've even unwrapped the tablespoons after 4 years!

i use salad forks and teaspoons exclusively. i don't know how people shove giant soup spoons into their mouths.

Those are my two favorite utensils!

I am thrilled that I was given service for six with soup spoons, salad forks, fish forks, teaspoons, etc, etc. I will definitely use all these when I have cause to. However, if I had been given this silverware by someone who was downsizing, I wouldn't go seek out a formal service.

I frequently cook and dine at a close friends house. Despite her age (50+) she has a motley collection of mismatched flatware, maybe because she does not enjoy cooking. Same for her plates, etc. I hate trying to set a table for 3 or 4 people and not being able to come up with 4 dinner forks. I do not like eating a main dish with a salad fork. I never do this at home and I also can serve and eat a reasonably sized portion on a full size plate. Guess I am in the minority here. Wish I had more teaspoons for all the reasons you folks have posted. My set was passed down from my late mother and for some reason in her later years she seemed to loose teaspoons. To each his own. I would never serve dinner to a guest on a salad plate.

I hate trying to hold huge, heavy silverware. And pieces are steadily becoming bigger and bigger. I refuse to use the regular forks and spoons from our new set. I only use the salad forks and teaspoons which are actually the same size as the regular pieces from our old set. Ugh, why is flatware growing like this? Pretty soon we'll be stirring tea with a ladle and eating salad with a pitchfork.