If your kitchen is only very small then this can make working in there highly frustrating: sometimes it can feel as though you’re being tested as you have to try and juggle your limited work surfaces while keeping your dirty crockery to an absolute minimum.
But while you would probably much rather you just had a larger kitchen, there are nevertheless plenty of things you can do to make the most of your smaller space and thereby enjoy working there as though it were much larger. Here we will look at some clever ways you can change the layout of a small kitchen or use small hacks to make your space seem much greater…
Use Sliding Cabinets
One quick change that anyone can use is to utilize sliding doors on their cabinets. These will open long ways and thereby require much less of an ‘arch’ as they swing open. This is particularly useful if you want to have multiple cabinets together in a small space as it means you don’t have to space them a long way apart. You can also get custom kitchen cabinetry designed specifically to fit in your kitchen and maximize your use of space.
Put a Shelf Across the Window
Another smart trick you can use is to put up shelves across your window. If you just use a single plank of wood, then this won’t block out much light, but nevertheless it will give you one more place to keep your things that won’t mean you have to put them on your countertops where you’re going to want to be chopping and otherwise working in the room.
Have the Oven Off the Floor
Most people will keep their oven at ground level which seems like the obvious place to put it. In reality though, having the oven at this level means you need lots of space in front of it in order to put things in and this can sometimes make it hard to access if there’s more than one of you in the kitchen.
The solution is to try keeping it higher up – so that the door is at countertop level. This also makes it much easier to keep an eye on everything.
A Larder
A larder is a room where you can keep your foods cool and this is where a lot of people used to store their cans and their packaged food. Today larders are a lot less common, but this is a shame as they can still be just as useful and especially if you have a small kitchen. That’s because you won’t need to keep so many cans and other foods in your cabinets any more, meaning in turn that you can keep more appliances in your cupboards and off of your countertops. If your larder is just a cupboard in your porch by the kitchen then you’ll find it’s not too much of a hassle to go and fetch food, but it will still help you greatly to save space.
Fold-Out Draws
If you have a cabinet in the corner of your kitchen, then you risk wasting a lot of space. You can fix this though by using cabinets that fold out as you open the door in order to reveal the shelves of items. This is a great way to maximize your use of space and it has the added benefit of meaning that you don’t need to reach deep inside the cupboard to search around for things that have fallen to the back.
Sink Chopping Board
If you get a chopping board that is wide enough to straddle the sides of your sink, then you can use this to create a new work surface/countertop right where your sink is. Thus you can chop and prepare more food without having to worry about dirty crockery etc. that might have gotten in the way.