When I say proper knives, I don't mean name brand. My knives were bought from either Target or Wal-Mart, honestly. What I mean is using vegetable knives for vegetables, meat cleavers for meat, bread knives for bread, that sort of thing. Something that caught me off guard was a friend of mine buying one of those knife blocks that come with the knives in their individual slots already for about $20. She honestly didn't know what they were all for, she mainly bought them for the steak knives.