I remember way back when microwaves were new.

I first saw one in Disney’s Tomorrowland — it seemed like a dream. Then, my parents bought one. This was the 70s, and they were early adopters of technology and we were the first on our street to have a microwave. Kids would come over with their parents to see this new cooking machine.

My mother took cooking classes at the YMCA and I joined her. We bought into the idea that anything could be cooked in a microwave. My mother microwaved eggs, which ended up a little more fluffy than the stovetop variety. She baked microwaved cakes and microwaved cookies. She made just everything in the microwave. She really believed that if you could master microwave cooking, you could eliminate the bulky stovetop and oven. She also didn’t like how hot the oven got. It would heat up the room, and on our hot summer days in California, my mother thought the microwave was the only way to cook anything.

Before it was a pantry staple, my mom experimented with popcorn using a brown paper bag. Early attempts weren’t successful, if you consider the fact that the bag caught fire. However, she mastered it and we regularly cooked popcorn in a bag and it felt so novel. Though I missed the Jiffy Pop variety and seeing the magic of that on our stove, the microwave bag blowing up, becoming bigger, was also a sight to be seen.

Ever the designer, even at a young age, I loved thinking through puzzles of design and space use. My mother would engage me and ask what we should do with the void where the stove would be, once it became obsolete and she mastered microwave cooking. I thought we could replace it with more pantry space, and she liked that idea. So even then, I was thinking about the placement of appliances and their impact on the home, and on the kitchen.