How to Introduce Healthier Living into Your Home

(Last in the series on Kitchens and remodeling)

Today we are all very focused on increasing our health and well-being by exercising and eating right.  As a professional Interior Designer in Bergen County, NJ, I design healthier choices into my designs for my clients.

There are some new products for the kitchen that are currently available and some that will be available soon that will define the future of how we use them and how we live.  People like you and designers like me have been asked what they would want from their appliances and we have spoken.

If you can imagine something, there is probably an app for it now or it is being developed as you read this. Our appliances will be making our homes smarter and healthier.  We are more sustainable and better connected now and going into the future.  Makes you want to re-do your kitchen!

Here are a few new innovations in the products we use that can help.

#1. The Refrigerator

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your smartphone could photograph and see inside the refrigerator and to keep a digital shopping list right there so you would know what you need to purchase when you are at the supermarket?  You’ll never forget important groceries again!  You can buy that gizmo right now!  In the future it will be incorporated into the refrigerator and will make your life so much easier.

What if you could just knock on the refrigerator doors and suddenly the solid surface went from opaque to transparent! You wouldn’t have to open the door to see what’s inside.  That would be a big savings in electricity for you and would keep the temperature inside the refrigerator constant.

New refrigerators will focus on good hygiene and nutrition with the shelf life of food extended for greater freshness and reduced waste.  A built-in air purifier can rid the inside of any mold and bacteria every 20 minutes.  How many strawberry or raspberry containers have you thrown out because the produce is fuzzy only a day or two after you purchased them?

  This Samsung has a huge computer on the front door that does all sorts of things!

 #2. The Oven

Many new features are being incorporated into new ovens. Recipes are downloadable to the oven. Remote cooking through smartphone apps allows you greater freedom.  You can turn on and preheat the oven from your smart phone as you are on the way home from work or activities with the kids.  Button dials are now touch control panels, exhibiting a sleeker design with uninterrupted surfaces.  Oven doors are having a re-imagination.  Can you imagine opening the oven door with a tap or a touch?  No handles!  No burns!

Temperature probes to monitor the status of baking or roasting will ensure the perfect results.  You could be a gourmet cook!

#3. Other appliances

Dishwashers, warming drawers, coffee makers, and a host of other products are smarter and more convenient today. The faucet that you can touch and the water comes on is available today.  You can also get the type of faucet that senses your hand just passing it by like a wand and it turns on the water!  What a great thing for old and young alike.

It’s been around for a while, but the TV in the mirror is another great invention! There are devices that can shut off an electric cooktop if you leave the kitchen unattended for a set period of time.  What a great way to keep everyone, young old and forgetful,  safe from fires!

Sometimes we shake our heads and say, “Just another thing to break!” But, once we start to use these new conveniences, we will say, “How did we ever manage before?”

Who knows what’s in store for us in the future?

What can you imagine?