Design Your Eating Area for the Holidays

An excerpt from Sarah Susanka’s More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home

“One must consider designing the eating area so that it can expand to accommodate holiday gatherings and parties. Although we typically think of the formal dining room for such occasions, the formal dining room for such occasions, the formal dining table is where many families lay out the buffet. Guests, however, take their plates to the family room to eat. 

A better solution is to make the informal eating area serve this function so that it is closer to the family room, the guests’ final destination. You can make the table in the eating area the place to set out the food, or-my favorite solution-you can design the table so that it can be extended to seat many people. With some thought early in the design process, this setup is not difficult to arrange and may eliminate the need for a formal dining room altogether. 

When something is designed beautifully, we use it automatically. It fits the functions we need it for without making us feel awkward or uncomfortable. It is often said that the kitchen is the most important room in the house, but I suggest that the informal eating area is at least as important, if not more, because for many households today, it’s really the heart of the social space. (pg. 39)”

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