Right now I have a large and stylish open kitchen but there are times where I miss having a galley kitchen, where I could stand in one place and reach everything I needed - pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, knives and accessories on magnetic racks on the walls, fridge contents reachable while standing at the stove... somehow it even had enough prep space.

Optimize why? So that we can spend the extra seconds on our social media apps? People need to learn to slow down and not try to save twenty seconds when boiling water.

I find kitchenwork provides good case studies for computational thinking. Thinking about stacking dishes by their sizes leads to a tour of sorting algorithms and datastructures. Thinking about predicting the prices of different preparations that use the same ingredients leads to principal component analysis.

There's also the application of computational methods to cooking.

I think B. F. Skinner liked that sort of things. (In "Walden Two" he gives a rather detailed description of a contraption to conveniently carry around a glass full of a hot beverage without risk of spilling; I'm positive it was one of his inventions.)

This is great keep going.

I find mis-en-place is a great optimization, especially if you have kids.

For hot water, I have a 2L thermos which I keep filled with boiling water to make hot drinks, with a quick reboil if necessary, and also to use as cooking water. I think there are plumbed in versions of this which would be even better.

Bread-making - I just use a bread machine to make day-to-day bread (specials hand baked etc on weekends sometimes.) For the daily, I pre-measure ingredients (both wet and dry) for 10+ loaves, individually packaged (kids are a great production line again). The to make the bread, just throw in the packets and press the buttons...

No doubt most people already do this, but for some reason my wife can't get it .. keep everything in the same place all the time. It really wastes time and 'stressergy' to have to hunt for the measuring spoons or the molasses or whatever because they were put back in a different place.

I'm sure commercial chefs could add a huge list of tricks that are still applicable at home to this.

A foot pedal faucet is the biggest optimization I need to make. It's like giving yourself a third arm in many situations.

One thing we do is to load a new dishwasher tablet immediately upon emptying the dishes.

Result:

If there’s a tablet: it’s dirty.

If there’s no tablet: it’s clean.

I've found that cooking extra food with the intent of freezing it in individual portions is a game changer for when I'm alone at home - my fiancée can also pack them for lunch. Rice, curries, ragoûts are really nice to get out of the freezer, put on a plate in the microwave and eat a few minutes later.

Look at Souper Cubes (or any silicon knockoff) for the molds.

I'm not sure I understand the thing about boiling water:

1. Put a modest amount of water in the pot and turn the stove element on.

2. Put a modest amount of water in the electric kettle and turn it on.

3. If one boils before the other, either combine them (if the other is nearly boiling) or add a little more water to the already-boiling one.

What happens if they boil at the same time? Don't combine them? What happens if pot boils before kettle? Add water to the pot and forget about the kettle?

And overall boiling water seems to be the worst example to pick to show how to optimize cooking. You can't over-boil water, so depending on your appliance, if you don't start using your boiling water as soon as it boils, it will either stop heating and start loosing temperature, or it will keep boiling, water will be lost through evaporation and energy consumed needlessly. But if your focus is time, then boiling is not an issue. You can do whatever you want during heating. Furthermore, with electric kettle and induction stove, you'll hardly have time to chop a few onions or clean a few carrots before water is ready.

I've seen people needing half to a full hour to make pasta with a store-bought sauce, and thought that was crazy, but that's because they weren't doing things in parallel and/or not in the right order.

Like, if you plan to make pasta, first you put water to boil, then you get your pasta and everything else while its heating. And don't wait for your pasta to be ready to get your strainer. Same for the sauce. Get it and open it while the pasta are cooking.

there are indications that cooking and doing other house related chores are actually beneficial for the mind. Cooking is specially important.

I don't know the reasons as I only read parts of papers and posts about it, but it seems something related to human brain evolution, but I am no expert. If someone knows more I would be happy to know

The water boiling one doesn't make any sense. One of those devices (stove or kettle) transfers more heat per unit of time into the water. Just use that device for the full amount of water.

An induction range would remove the need for transferring boiling water around. At least in the US, that's the fastest device, since countertop kettles are limited to 1.8kW or so. Induction 'burners' usually are 2.5-4kW, and assuming the right cookware, much better at transferring that energy into the water (and not the air like a gas burner)