apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

One problem I have with eating dinner right in the kitchen is that it's pretty hard to hide away the mess from making dinner.

Our apartment features a breakfast nook which is currently outfitted with a snazzy table for dining...and the laundry room, and the cats' litter box. We mostly eat in the living room or bedroom, I don't think we've ever actually used the kitchen table, which most of the time gets covered with pots, pans, and cookbooks from whatever I'm cooking at the moment due to general lack of counterspace in the kitchen.

As for eating in the actual kitchen, in our little galley kitchen that would be near impossible.

In our "two-bedroom" apartment, we use the bedroom that's adjacent to the living room (via French doors) as our dining room. I'd love to have a guest space, but our apartment is just too small.

In terms of dining, I do really enjoy having a peaceful, clean space to eat dinner. For the most part, we always have a tablecloth and candles ready for meals, which makes it relaxing to sit there. I just wish the room wasn't so far and closed off from the kitchen.

I think this trend will fade. I can't wait to have a snazzy dining room! One with a huge table (via a leaf) that can accommodate my large family or a huge gang of pals. That's one of the things I dream about in my future small-cool dream house.

As for now, living in a one br apt, there are trade-offs. I have a quite generous eat-in kitchen, but because the kitchen part is so poorly designed (and like others the kitchen corner is where the litter box lives), we eat in the living room.
If we have people over for a sit-down dinner, we move it for the evening and pull the table out from the wall.

I live in a little condo with an open kitchen and living space, so I serve my meals on a little table situated between the kitchen and the living room area. It's by necessity though, not by choice. Someday (hopefully fairly soon) I would love to have a house with a separate dining room - although one that is connected to the kitchen. I think eating in the kitchen is great for casual meals with friends, but when I serve a holiday dinner to family or host a formal dinner party, I would prefer to have a formal dining room. Someday...

It is easy to understand the demise of the formal dining room, at least for everyday meals and most entertaining. Having the kitchen open to the living and dining space means that the person(s) doing the cooking are not shut away from the action and can maintain a conversation with guests and family members. Guests too, seem more relaxed, and feel less guilty about the host being stuck off in a lonely kitchen. Also, I believe that more people are interested in food, and seeing what is going on in the kitchen. And, we as foodies like people in our kitchen. Kitchens are warm, inviting places and tell so much about a person.

i someday want a separate formal dining room. i love the idea of eating away from the cooking mess and the hot kitchen. i also really like the idea of being able to surprise someone with a cake, for example, which can't happen when you're on display mixing the batter, etc. while i like being able to chat with people while i'm cooking at a dinner party sometimes it can be very distracting. sometimes i really just want to be able to shut a door, get the food made, and then be able to go out and fully join everyone. ideally i'd like a breakfast nook in the kitchen that seats four for informal family meals and then a larger formal dining room that is always kept clean and ready for entertaining.

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My tiny condo has only three rooms. When it's just me, I either eat my dinner at my desk in my bedroom or in the living room. When I have a dinner party, we fold open my gateleg table. I do wish I had something like a breakfast bar for two and better lighting in my kitchen, though. I meticulously clean as I cook, so mess wouldn't be a problem. As for what I wish I had, I do wish I had room for a bigger table to sit more friends. I could care less about having an entire dining room, since my friends and I do like visiting and hanging out in the kitchen while I cook or while we all cook together.

My condo is tiny also, so I just have a small, two-seater table in the living area. Ideally, I'd like room for a larger table, but I have no interest in a formal dining room. My life is completely casual, and I clean as I cook like OneWallKitchen, so mess isn't a problem. My brother has a formal dining room in his house, and only uses it for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They eat in their great room the rest of the time. It seems like a waste to have a room that you only use a few times a year, but my sister-in-law insists on having a dining room in all their homes anyway.

I usually eat in the living room and often entertain there, too. There's a small breakfast area next to my kitchen but if I have more than three or four people over there's not enough room there and it often gets taken over by cooking stuff. Very little counter space and zero outlets tend to encourage that. Despite it all, everyone ends up in my kitchen when I have company so I think that's probably where the trend has come from. If they're all there anyway, why not just feed them there, too?

Our just-purchased apartment has an eat-in kitchen and one large living room that we'll put a long dining table in for bigger crowds. I like the arrangement fine, and we'll use the table the rest of the time for projects and such, but it's not ideal.

I think my "dream house" would have one large open space with a big kitchen/dining table, with room for anyone who happens in and for big holiday meals, as well as just family dinners (and maybe some sort of breakfast bar for, well, breakfast). But I'm kinda anti-formal dining room, really any room that only gets used a few times a year and "for company." I'd rather have the big table as part of the kitchen, which in my dream life would not be messy, even after cooking :P

This is why I am glad I don't have an open kitchen -- I would never use the dining room. We use it for everyday eating.

i love the concept of a dining room and use one when i have the opportunity but i feel that a grand dining table is sometimes only appropriate in scale when having large groups of people over.

Our old apartment had a wonderful pass-through that connected the dining room to the kitchen. It made for a lovely open space, but we were still able to plate and ferret away dirty dishes without impeding on the dinner experience.

One of the things I love about my small house is that it doesn't have a dining room. Our kitchen is large enough to hold a table for eight people, so we always eat there, or out on our deck when the weather cooperates.

The only drawbacks are that you do need to work (very) clean when cooking for guests, and that you never have that nice big dining table to leave projects out on.

Our new-to-us house has a fantastic kitchen and a nice large separate dining room just off one side. I can close off the mess in the kitchen if I want, and we eat all our meals at the dining room table.

The key for us was to keep the dining room informal. Big farmhouse table, FLOR tiles (so easy to clean) and easy-to-clean chairs keep things practical (we have little boys who eat there every day.) We can dress it up with linens for company (not that we do) and can add leaves to get up to 12 diners if necessary (I can't believe my luck on that one.)

I'm so much happier with that setup than I would be with an eat-in kitchen and a formal DR.