Making The Most Of The Kitchen You Have

Just because your kitchen isn’t some massive conglomeration of devices and storage like something in The Waldorf Hotel doesn’t mean it isn’t stylish, usable, and efficient. The smallest kitchen can have the biggest heart. Contrarily, industrial kitchens are often drab and heartless stainless steel affairs.

In any home, a kitchen is very much like the heart of the space. Well, you want a healthy heart, don’t you? Following we’ll explore a few key ideas you may want to explore to make the heart of your home as vibrant as possible. Granted, these are only a few tips; maybe you’ve even incorporated them already. If so, use the following as a launching point for further renovations.

1. Vertical Storage: Pot And Pan Chandeliers

You don’t have to store pots and pans in cubbies, in drawers, or on the countertops. You can hang them from the walls, or, better yet, hang them from the roof using a bevy of hooks that turn hangable pans into something that almost looks like a chandelier. It’s best to position such hanging solutions near where you’ll do cooking, rather than in “traffic” areas.

You don’t want people moving through your kitchen to bang their head on a frying pan every time they come through! Accordingly, be sure if you do hang anything for storage purposes, that you hang it somewhere it’s not going to inhibit free movement.

2. New Cabinetry Designed To Specifically Fit Your Space

Cabinets are fundamental for space maximization, but sometimes you’ve got such a small kitchen, you either can’t find cabinets that fit, or the ones that are already there aren’t quite of the quality you need. That’s where RTA cabinetry comes in.

RTA stands for Ready To Assemble. Essentially, you go online, pick which styles match your sensibilities and property, then enter varying dimensions to get the right size. From there, the RTA cabinets are shipped to your home location, and you do the installation yourself. Said installation is relatively straightforward, but contractors can be wise for some.

Regardless of which way you swing on this one, you can explore some RTA cabinet reviews at the hyperlink to get an idea of what is popular, associated costs, and which options will work best for your own compact kitchen.

3. Skinnier Fridges, Stacker Burners, Ovens, And Microwaves

If you’re already in a small kitchen, you can free up space by upgrading appliances. If your fridge is three or four feet wide, see what you can find in the two-foot range; that’ll free up twenty cubical feet or more. If you’ve got a stovetop, burner, and microwave, look into compact stackers that combine appliances into one tight vertical option.

The trend of this writing involves vertical space, and there’s a reason for that.

Most residences have headroom up to nine feet, but actual used space usually encompasses half the total volume of such rooms. If you’re in a small kitchen, simply finding ways of utilizing vertical space will make it so you can get the fullest utility from the area.

4. Optimizing Space Through Stylish Hideaway Tables

Hideaway tables are really neat, and especially as the tiny home movement becomes a staple of modern American society, you can expect to see more furniture items of this variety. You can even find hideaway seating that simply folds against the walls. Remember the tables in the gym at your elementary school?

Maybe you don’t. For many elementary schools through the nineties, the tables students sat on could be folded up and stored in the walls, allowing the gym to do double duty as a cafeteria, saving the school lots of money. Well, you can do just the same with a hideaway table in your kitchen. It can do double duty as the dining room without losing utility.

Tiny homes utilize this tactic, and if you’ve got a smaller kitchen, it’s certainly considerable. Though, to be sure, the level of style you’re able to imbue within a hideaway table may vary; so keep that in mind if the aesthetic is especially important to how your kitchen fits together. Even so, there are a lot of hideaway table options out there. Maybe explore a little.

Utility And Style Aren’t Dependent On Size
Storing things vertically takes full advantage of available space, allowing you to do more with less. Think about vertical storage, and think about supplementing that storage with RTA cabinetry that can be designed to order.

Also, stackable appliances and skinnier fridges can help you do more with less, as can option like hideaway tables.

When you outfit your kitchen with strategic renovations like these, you’re likely going to get more use out of it, and it may not even feel small. Think about the moves you make when cooking, and clean up after yourself with every meal you prep. You’ll have a tidy, clean, compact kitchen with high levels of utility and a low spatial footprint.