A funny thing happened last night at our house around dinner time. My husband called me for dinner (of course I was in my office staring at my monitor).
I go upstairs to the kitchen and what do I see but my husband making a plate for himself of the foods we are having for dinner. What was different about that scene was that he was doing it sort of buffet style, and the dishes that held the main food items were on the kitchen countertop.
I stopped and cried "I can't believe you're doing that! Why have we not done this before now?!" He didn't have an answer. So, we filled our plates and walked over to sit in the family room area and had our dinner. I went on and on about it for another few minutes (was he listening?) I was thrilled!
Have you yawned at this piece yet? In our case, our kids are grown and up until last night (mostly) we've walked all the dishes, serving dishes, beverages, condiments, yadayada to the table and then walked all of these things back to the kitchen after dinner.
Is it a chore to do that? Well, not really, but doing a buffet style dinner seems SO much easier, convenient, time saving, and just less laborious "feeling." When the kids were growing up, we always ate dinner at the table with all the accompanying stuff. But, now with the two of us (our son still living with us doesn't often eat with us) why not make it easier??
I was so excited at this new way of streamlining the process, I called my daughter and told her about this light bulb moment enthusiastically, to which she replied, "We do that all the time for dinner" (she and her husband.)
A bigger issue might be...it is important to anticipate this dinner time behavior and consider designing a kitchen around it. A good question to ask...
What about you? Dinner on the table or buffet style? My vote at this point in my life is buffet, baby!