I didn’t know this rotating part of a dining table was called “Lazy Susan” until two years ago. My childhood home has one. All formal Chinese restaurants I have visited, have them. When I was creating this Chinese New Year-themed set, it felt wrong not to include a Lazy Susan table because I have always associated it with Chinese food.
Lazy Susan sure is a great invention – it’s so simple and functional. But growing up with one gives me a bad memory about it because in Indonesian household, it’s a perfect hideout place for common house geckos. (If you live in Indonesia, you know the horror of finding this animal near your food.) The rotating tray is supported by one centerpoint, and beneath the tray is a narrow, dark and quite spacious space for the geckos to chill out. I didn’t encounter them on the dining table that often, but it’s still disgusting to think about…
I have never really paid special attention to Lazy Susan until now, and I wonder why a Chinese restaurant staple has such a western name. Although its history is quite blurry, the rotating system is said to be invented in China in 1313, but popularized in the modern dining setting by Chinese-American restaurant entrepreneurs in the 1960s. My favorite part however, is the first recorded dining-related story of Lazy Susan in 1917 when a Chinese-Malaysian doctor did a research on tuberculosis outbreaks. Double-dipping food and sharing them among strangers was a common practice back then. To solve this unhygienic habit, he proposed a revolving tray where each person could pick up food with their own utensils…hence the first Lazy Susan table was born. You can read the whole story is in this Smithsonian article. The name itself is rumored to come from this Thomas Jefferson story, but we might never know who the real Susan is.
Since Lazy Susan is the rotating system, it’s not only found on dining tables. In fact, I learned the term Lazy Susan from a TikTok video about 1950s refrigerator. Like many things from the past, this particular refrigerator was so thoughtfully built as it features built-in Lazy Susan shelves – you can store so many things without troubling yourself when it’s time to take out or put them back.
Given the house gecko situation I mentioned earlier, I don’t think I will ever get a Lazy Susan table for my own house. But I will definitely use one (or more) as home organizer – be it the kitchen supplies, cleaning products, or maybe my toy collection? Lazy Susan is surely loved by organizing gurus, and I do love how neat and clean it looks. I have just found this TikTok video and I love the layout so much I took a screenshot.
Download Chinese New Year at Home Desktop Organized Set here ♡
