rainynightstarz

Most of the dorms, if not all, have kitchens.
I am pretty sure not every student who cook has a full set of pots and pans.
So, how does sharing kitchen normally go?
Share pans? knifes? etc? a

molliebatmit

Most people who are interested in cooking have at least a pot and maybe a skillet or wok -- having that much stuff isn't a significant investment. People who are more serious tend to have more stuff.

I always had friends whose cooking equipment I was able to borrow at a moment's notice (and vice versa), but we never had a truly shared set of kitchen equipment.

pebbles

We have hall pots and hall pans even hall butter (which is gross just smell it).

iostream

in my floor at random, pretty much everything is shared. we have pots, pans, cooking oil, common seasonings, measuring cups, etc.

jessiehl

Depends on the living group. On my hall, we had pretty good communal supplies, and many people had private supplies as well.

curious8582008

Do people do other stuff with the communal kitchen supplies?...My sister goes to a different college and she says that some of her friends who live in dorms somehow lost all common sense when they entered college and made candles out of crayons with their pots and pans. Do MIT people do that too, or are the shared kitchen supplies only for making food?

jessiehl

I could certainly see people making candles out of crayons at MIT - really, that would be quite tame compared to some things MIT students get up to - but I rather doubt they'd use communal kitchen supplies to do it. At least on my old hall, people would be annoyed with them - you're not supposed to mess up the common supplies.

PiperXP

Same with my hall - the pans are overall treated OK (and we do have communal stuff - pots/pans, food, etc). And then there are hall feeds, where someone cooks for the entire hall one night (and gets reimbursed). Those are fun.

rainynightstarz

thanks!
just wanted to get an idea of how much cooking supplies I should bring.

smelly pots? try scrubbing with baking soda? might work?

LauraN

Arg, my kitchen *technically* had a rule that anything in your cabinets was your stuff, and someone had to ask before using it. This rule was completely ignored. I used to think I was a huge slob, because the sink was always full of my dishes, and I couldn't believe that I used that many dirty dishes per day. Then I slowly realized that probably half of the people in my suite didn't have their own dishes, so they just used mine all the time.

Ok, that was a tangential rant. The real answer, for BC anyway, is that each suite will have a meeting at the beginning of the year to determine the rules surrounding the kitchen and bathroom, which may or may not be followed...

kryptonsa36

Simmons kitchens are stocked full of cooking utensils residents don't mind letting others borrow. The Golden Rule? Wash them when you're done, or expect all your food in the communal fridges to be looted.. though that seems to happen regardless of whether you deserve it..

PiperXP

For the most part people on my hall followed the rules with other people's stuff - but hall stuff would remain in the sinks forever =D. Though for the truly paranoid, one can lock their cabinets...

molliebatmit

Laura, thank you for making me feel like my suite was not the exception to everybody else's happy communal living.

I had a full set of pots and pans, and I put them in a freely accessible cabinet with a sign that said, "Use whenever you like, but please be careful (no metal on the nonstick pans) and clean it and return it when you're done." It did not work well, to say the least. It's quite possible that I'm entirely too anal about my cooking equipment, but it still didn't work well.

rainynightstarz

well, I am totally with you on the no metal on non stick pan part!
Or else it will become super stick pans. I always use like those bamboo spatulas and use the soft side of sponge to wash the pans and never scrub too hard. If it won't come off, let it soak for a bit.

Basically all the pictures of kitchens i've seen so far have piles of unwashed dishes in the sink.... is that how it is most of the time?

KnightMair

I've never had a problem washing my own dishes. If people leave their dishes there, I'll move them (hiding them sometimes is a good incentive to get people to wash dishes) to the side.

However, to answer your question, it does seem like there are almost always dishes in sinks. It does seem like a college thing to not wash dishes until they are needed again...