Our home seems to be filling up with kitchen equipment. Fancy, wonderful, (but mostly bulky) kitchen equipment. Since last Christmas we have acquired;
We’re super grateful for all of these things, but they come on top of all the usual kitchen things, like food and plates and pots and pans and implements – that sort of stuff. And of course all of things are essential to our lives, but the problem is, our home, especially the kitchen, was pretty small, and full, to start with – it hasn’t got any bigger and we don’t seem to have thrown much away, so we’re facing a bit of a storage crisis.
In the autumn, I enlisted my dad to put me some shelves up in the kitchen to clear some more space on the sides, and I have temporarily relocated all our books from the dining room to clear space on the shelving in there, but it’s all starting to look a bit cluttered, and I am not sure how to cope with it. A must do’s is to clear out and charity shop some of our old stuff, but I am not sure that’s going to be enough. And one of the plans for 2013 is to find a new house, with part of the criteria that we need to get a bigger kitchen (the other is a larger garden) but until then I need to sort our kitchen equipment situation. I have been scouring Pinterest and Apartment Therapy for ideas, but I think it’s going to have to be a hack job looking at my budget!
Have any of you got a small kitchen? How do you cope with a growing mound of stuff in it?
Hi! We have a really small kitchen but a growing family. I suggest two things: one is be ruthless with stuff to get rid of. The second, perhaps more useful, is to move some 'display worthy' kitchen items to other rooms until you need them. I am thinking, cake stands, maybe scales, that white pot you've got in the top right of your photo above? I have stuff like that on display shelves in the living room and it really freed up space in my tiny kitchen!
My kitchen is TINY. Like Anon above, I keep a fair few of the more presentable things either out on top of my dining room cabinet or inside my tall cabinet.
Helen, Anon, thats what we have done – i've emptied the shelving in the dining room of books and it now houses the cake stands/kitchen aid/tagine/moules serving pot/meat slicer and all our cookbooks. I think the only solution is for the boy to stop getting silly kitchen equipment (i.e a meat slicer) to make more room for my stuff! x
I feel for you! We're quite lucky with the size of our kitchen (medium, I'd say, but we have a utility room) but still our cupboards are overflowing! My husband is making me get rid of our ice cream maker (used precisely twice).
I don't really understand the mysteries of clever storage yet but I'm keen to learn!
Me either – I thought we'd have enough space for everything but clearly not. The boy tried to get me to get rid of my icecream maker, but he's not got a chance!
Although my kitchen is quite big, it's useless when it comes to storage space (either that or I just have too much stuff?)
I haven't quite figured out how to store everything yet. I guess I'm going to have to just chuck things out? *sigh* but you never know when that 12 piece dinner set is going to come in handy?!
That is so my thought too. Of course the two of us need 2 different dinner sets! The boy on the other hand is more of a 'when will we ever need 4 different types of wine glasses' kind of guy. Such a heathen!
I have chalkboard labelled kilner jars exactly the same! I bought some wooden shelves from Wilkos for about £8 and they are the perfect size….
pinterest.com/pin/71635450292924693/
I love those shelves – i might get some just like it for my craft room!
And your jars are just perfect. x