Shoot, there was a homeschooling mom with 11 (if I'm not getting the number of her children mixed up with Worldmom's) children who had a fantastic kitchen with the breakfast, baking, and cleanup areas outside the main room. But her name is on the tip of my tongue and I can come up with it to do a search.

But did you see My3sonsnc's kitchen, just posted in the last couple of days? She has a separate 'prep room' in which they clean and store dishes.

Here is a link that might be useful: My3sonsnc's kitchen

It was Acountryfarm who had that set up.

Here is a link that might be useful: Best I could find of Acountryfarm's kitchen

Thanks for the links, Rhome. Although those are great examples, there's still another one I've been trying to find. I think it might have had stained cabinets and soapstone counters, but I'm not sure. I'm going to continue to play around with this idea.

How often do you grab a bowl or plate to hold chopped vegetables or whatever when you prep? How will you access plates when you need to take food out of a saute pan? To me, this looks like a problem where the cleanup area is not only out of the way of the cooking zone, but actually hard to access from it.

Are you thinking of Cotehele's kitchen with her baking area in another room? It's stained wood with soapstone counters, but her cleanup area was across the island from her cooktop...

Here is a link that might be useful: Cotehele's gorgeous, amazing kitchen

Our clean up area isn't in a separate room but is outside of the cooking/prep area. The cooking/prep area is a "G" shape with 3 walls plus a peninsula. The small sink and dw are located on the other side of the peninsula.

This works really well for us. The big sink is in the cooking zone and is perfect for us since I usually have several things going on in the sink during meal prep (filling large pots with water, draining colanders, peeling veggies, soaking utensils in sudsy water as I finish with them.) The smaller sink near the dw is used for drinking water, washing hands, scraping dishes before going into the dw, water supply for the baking area, and as another area for prep when others are in the kitchen. We pass cooking pots over the peninsula as they go in and out of the dw (I hand wash larger pots and pots with plastic handles in the main sink near the range.)

I like the way our kitchen flows from range to table to dw. When there are a couple of people doing clean up, it's handy to have one person stationed at the main sink washing non-dw pots, wooden ware and plastic ware while the other person is clearing the table and loading the dw. Dirty dishes can accumulate on the counter near the dw completely out of the cooking/prep area. My preference is to have dish storage close to point of use rather than close to the dw. Dishes are in a cabinet between the cooking/prep area and table (with doors that open from either side.)

I spent a lot of time imagining how things would flow in our kitchen and it works as I had hoped.

vedaZu's kitchen? It's in the Finished Kitchens Blog.

Rhome,
Are you thinking of Sabjimata? Her blog has details?