Space Saving Tips for Tiny Home Living: Kitchen Edition
Whether downsizing to a tiny home or starting from scratch in a small vacation home, now is the perfect time to make organization a top priority. Clearing your kitchen of needless clutter and developing strategies to deal with dinner parties and big meals before they come around will help you keep your space orderly and efficient throughout the year.
Go Vertical
As with any other room in your tiny home, discovering that there is more to the wall than meets eye-level opens up a revolutionary amount of space. Hanging a vertical spice rack inside a cabinet, installing several layers of open shelving, and even hanging pots and pans from hooks on a rack that runs the length of your counter can save you precious cupboard space. Adding a small shelf (the height of a shoe rack) just above the sink is another good way to add a window sill of space to the counter.
For an innovative trick, try using magnets or super glue to fix the tops of Mason jars to the underside of above-the-counter cabinets. Then, fill your jars with grains, noodles or other dry goods, screw them into the attached tops, and store them between cupboard and countertop to save counter space.
Worried about your favorite items being out of reach? With the purchase of a tiny one-step or two-step stool, which can fold and store inside a drawer or in the corner, everything can be within reach. So don’t stress, just look up!
Find a Multi-Purpose for Everything
Although it seems convenient to have just the right tool for the right occasion, having less space means you’ll have to think more carefully about what you put into it. Why have a full-sized blender when you can use a stick blender? Use food processor and coffee grinder attachments to complete your grinding with much less space. Another great kitchen multi-purpose tool, endorsed by members of the Caliente Springs’ Tiny Kitchen Cooking Club, is the Instant Pot, which can function as a pressure cooker, crock pot, steamer, rice cooker and yogurt maker, all in one convenient appliance.
But it’s not just multi-functional appliances that can save precious space. Storing utensils in a lemonade pitcher, drying pans directly on decorative hanging racks, and, of course, wherever there’s wood, you can always drive a screw-in hook to the end for a little more space.
Roll Away
Make use of anything that rolls or moves to optimize space and organization. A lazy susan in the corner cabinet? Perfect. A rolling counter block that belongs just where you need it? Ideal. A bookshelf on wheels to squeeze between the stove and wall, outfitted with cleaning supplies or pantry staples? Of course.
Make sure your equipment is fitted with stoppers as well as rollers, so that you can keep it perfectly in place when you want it to be. It makes so much sense simply to swap, switch, or roll to wherever life takes you. It simply proves that flexibility and function can come in the same tiny package.
Becoming Truly Minimal
Of course, the biggest tip to save space in a small kitchen is to truly consider what you need, and forgo all of the trappings that you rarely use, or can live without. This is “minimalism” in its purest form: the ability to live spare and simply, emphasizing quality over quantity, and function over fad.
Couples don’t need to cook for a dozen, so a smaller variety of pots and pans, mostly those that feed two to four people, may suit you well. And while a knife collection for the ultimate gourmet is attractive in theory, a basic set of pairing, chopping and serrated-edge knives will probably suit. While it may be hard to give up the perceived comfort of more-is-better, learning what it’s possible to live without is the best way to make a tiny kitchen work for you.