Please welcome Sara Kay from Why I Sing, who you may know as our gluten-free Sourdough eCourse teacher. On the blog today, she’s wearing a different hat. She’s sharing really good advice for storing, serving and enjoying real food in a small kitchen. I hope she inspires you to do more with your space! –Wardee
An unexpected series of events this Spring landed me and my husband, three daughters, and dog and cat in a third floor, 1000 square foot apartment for the summer. Thankfully, for us this is just a temporary situation. But I’ve had to figure out a way to feed our family well from a very tiny kitchen. I find it funny that I rarely see anyone carry groceries into our apartment complex. Most people here must eat out for every meal!
A small kitchen is a long-term reality for many people, but it needn’t keep you from providing healthy, delicious meals for your family. Here are some tips I have discovered, to help make cooking real food possible in a small space.
1. Empty the dishwasher as soon as it finishes, and take care of dirty dishes as soon as possible. If the sink is full of dishes and the counter space is occupied, you’ll lack space, and therefore motivation, to cook.
2. Wipe off counters as you go. A clean kitchen is an inviting kitchen, even when it’s a small one.
3. Avoid letting paperwork pile up on the bar/counter space. Get a filing cabinet and use a few minutes each week to file away papers. Get a plastic vertical file folder holder or 3-ring binder for the counter top, to keep bills and important papers accessible, but organized. Go through the mail right when you bring it in, toss the trash, and file the rest.
4. Only keep appliances you use daily on the countertop. Others need their own dedicated space in the pantry or cabinet. If you don’t have space to store them, you need to simplify.
5. Cover bowls that are in use with plates so they can be stacked — in the fridge or on the counter.
6. Use a funnel to pour cooled broth, whey, etc., into narrow jars that take less space in the fridge than a bowl. I use jars that held juice.
7. If you have a pantry, keep a shelf space clear for longer ferments like water kefir and kombucha.
8. Don’t allow anything but kitchen stuff in the kitchen. Shoes, purses, mail, toys, all need to have a different place to live. Sometimes it’s easy to come home and unload in the kitchen, but that slows you down when you have to work in there often.
9. Use the middle of the stove, between the burners, for overnight soaking. It’s warm and safe. I sometimes stack bowls covered with plates three high!
10. Clean out, throw away, sell, and/or donate any dishes or appliances you no longer use. You can always replace these, but if they aren’t useful to you this month, they are keeping you from working efficiently.
11. Go easy on yourself. If you could see what my kitchen looks like as I type this, you would see that I don’t always take my own advice! The kitchen is a daily project, a constant effort, and everyone gets tired sometimes. Small spaces are especially unforgiving in this regard. Do the best you can, and take baby steps toward where you want to be. There’s always tomorrow!
Do you cook real food in a small space? What tips would you add? What helps you put good food on the table with a smile? Please share in the comments. And if you have questions for Sara, please ask!
And, hey — don’t forget! Tomorrow is the first Tuesday of the real food progressive dinner, Whole Foods for the Holidays. I’ll see you right back here for the first course: soups. Mmm… I’ve got a super good one to share. I hope you’ll link up your own soup posts, too! –Wardee
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I have a teeny tiny kitchen that I have had since I was married, and will probably continue to have for the rest of my life. That is not a complaint. I LOVE my kitchen. It is my favorite part of the house, and I spend much of my day in it. I do my best to make it look as beautiful as possible with a few favorite seasonal decorations, and then the rest of the space I carefully use to accomplish as much as possible. Keeping it clean is probably the best possible suggestion. Clean-as-you-go allows for much less irritation (not that I always follow that advice!).
I keep only appliances that are used daily in my kitchen. The rest are on some easy-to-access shelves in the basement. I find that keeping the basement storage area clean also helps me with motivation for real-food cooking. Since ferments, preserved foods, grains and beans, and all of my appliances are down there, I like to keep it all accessible, and pleasant to access. I really also only have just the dishes we need for one maybe two meals. I find with a small kitchen it is impossible to have more. I keep dishes clean continually so that they are always available.
Thanks for the article! Amy Clark
Amy, your basement storage reminds me of having an old-fashioned root cellar. I think it would be so fun to have one of those. 🙂
Fantastic.
My husband and I are planning to sell our house and travel the country (Australia) in a 40 foot bus. I have been wondering how I might manage sourdough and ferments in a very small space.
Great ideas… thank you.
That sounds like a fun adventure, Deb! I bet you’ll have some great tips after doing that for awhile!
http://www.fermentationonwheels.com Check out this website, the founder Tara would be able to give you lots of tips.
Your note was very encouraging. Thank you!
I have a 16 x 16 kitchen – hardly a small space! But that’s it. Sheetrock and Floors. No counter tops, no appliances, no shelves, just a card table when I need it. A turkey fryer, two crock pots, and a toaster oven for cooking. We keep our Food in our bedroom on a shelving system because it is more temperature controlled. And while it sounds like a temporary situation, two years since the house burned it is no longer feeling that way. Still – we eat!! All 14 of us. The best we can, every day. So much to be thankful for:-)
You’re an inspiration, Pat. You are very gracious and thankful in the midst of trying circumstances. A very good example to me! Thank you.
Amen!
What great advice! We are going to be moving out of our 3 story, 1300 sq ft house in town to a 600 sq ft basement apartment on a 12 acre farm. This is making us have to downsize incredibly of course, and I’ve been wondering how to make it all work. I will keep these practical tips in mind!
I was hoping to find hints for bulk food storage. We have a small kitchen and limited counter top space and I get by, but have nowhere to keep bulk foods to get MORE in to real foods. We’d like to buy whole wheat and grind our own flour, etc, but in our 1000 sq ft home the ONLY closet is in our bedroom and it is woefully inadequate for whole house storage. There are no corners left, no under bed area….got any other suggestions?
This is about the 3rd time in the last couple of days that I’ve read how important it is to keep the dishwasher emptied after running and keep the counters cleaned. Now to apply it! 🙂 I try. Thanks for the tips!
Kelly – We used to store wheat in a plastic trash bin in the garage when I was a kid. Certain cans seal tightly enough to keep out critters. I don’t know how safe/sanitary that is, but maybe wash out the can really well first? There may also be similar storage containers made specifically for food?
Here in CO, we have a regional health food store that buys and packages their own bulk foods, so it’s possible to buy a pound or two of wheat at near bulk prices. I found that I often had no choice but to buy small amounts of things, and shop often. I know that makes for a higher grocery bill unless you’re careful, but the lack of storage made it necessary.
Maybe others have ideas too?!
Forgot to mention-no garage either. We have goats and chickens too, so what little covered outdoor space we have holds their food.
We have a small health food store, but about the only bulk type items she has are teas and spices. I’ll try the ones in the next towns though.
Hopefully we’ll be moving by the end of the year, so that will change EVERYTHING. Just thought there might be some things I haven’t thought of, so I’ll keep checking back.
There are 4 inch and 6 inch lifters that you can put under your bed frame and then store totes of food, grains, can goods and paper goods under them. A friend of mine did this and it worked out wonderful for her family.
I found that candy stores often will sell you their 5 gallon buckets that held Corn Syrup. I got 10 for $15.00. I am lucky to have a small storage shed outside, but what about renting a small storage unit nearby? You can get them as small as 5X5 or 5X10 and store a LOT of things in there vertically.
We have a small kitchen and freezer 🙁 but what helps is the space above the cabinets – because it gets so dirty up there I just have a few “decorative” boxes that I can store things in. I also splurged and upgraded our wire cart on wheels to a tall and very narrow shelving stand with drawers where I store all my dried items – that has made the most difference. It was advertised for use in bathrooms to store towels – but I don’t care it works well.
I also repackage almost everything to make it fit in our space. Right now I am struggling with where to put our gallon of coconut oil because I am being lazy about putting it into a smaller container because I don’t know where I can put the big container.
I really liked the idea of using a “trash” container to store grains – I love tall skinny storage ideas because I don’t mind them sitting around so much because they seem to take up less space.
Our 5 gallon bucket of coconut oil sits in the corner of my bathroom. It is well sealed and I just refill a quart container at a time!
Shelving is your friend. We moved from a 4100 sq ft house to a 1250 sq ft house – no basement or attic, and in the South, the shed gets too hot for food storage. We have stuff on every wall now – shelves, dressers, built in cabinets. I’ve just started canning fresh strawberries, and realized I’m going to have to cull out some more stuff for the spring/summer canning (we moved in Jan). Also, as another commenter said, risers for the beds, and extra shelf in the top of the closet, and if you have stairs, go under them. (We have storage under the first few steps to the turn, then another on the triangle “turn” stair – just cut up the top of the stair, hinge it, then put the carpet back down. You can’t even see it!) You could mount a shelf 1′ or so all along your upper walls, too. I have stuff on top of my kitchen cabinets, which I don’t like from an aesthetic POV, but need for the space. That’s where our lanterns, jars of extra homemade cleaners/laundry soap, large mixing bowls, etc are. Good luck!
Elizabeth, your issues sound a lot like mine! Though I do have the benefit of a full size freezer at my husband’s shop. Even that can be a challenge though, if I’m not planning ahead for meals, then nothing gets taken out of the freezer!
I like the over the cabinet area idea-I’ve got some things there right now, but bulk could go there too, thanks!
My kitchen is 10×10, and I have a 36″ Viking stove crammed into it. Not much counter space, very little useable storage, and my dishwasher is my husband (:D) and yes, I cook real food in my “one-butt” kitchen.
Thanks for the tips! The dishwasher tip really helps me too! We live in Singapore, so the kitchen in our flat is tiny like most others’, but almost noone else has a dishwasher. We have a household shelter (a small closet meant to be a safety room) right off of our kitchen, so when the contractors were redoing our kitchen to be a smart kitchen, I had them make a drop-down countertop to lay right in front of that shelter door. I also use every inch of wall space that I can. I hang my often used utensils, cooking oils, herbs, and my onion & garlic basket from kitchen rails. I have a narrow pull-out flat drawer/counter right under my wall oven to let hot dishes cool without using countertop space. That flat drawer stays pulled out more often than it’s pushed back in! We don’t have a large fridge or freezer, so I try to look at it positively and try to grocery shop for fewer items more frequently, which keeps my food fresher and my grocery bags light (we can’t afford a car here, so we walk and take public transit).
You also might consider selling your dishwasher in a tiny kitchen. You’ll free up valuable space, make a little cash, and save a little on utility bills. 🙂
A dishwasher can be used for drying dishes, even if you hand wash them, thus getting them OFF the counter, a must in a small kitchen.
We definitely have a tiny kitchen. There was one drawer in the entire kitchen until we bought a little island cart…Ikea is our friend! It all works out though, thanks to hooks on the wall for pots and pans, bowls that nest, and careful editing of what we really need…and organization is huge. I always have the dishwasher empty before beginning dinner so that clean up is easier. If possible I get a head start on dinner during the day so cleaning the kitchen afterwards seems easier. We no longer have a “junk” drawer, and instead have a “utility” basket in the laundry room. I can say I actually love my small kitchen now.
My glasses are set up like a display in my dining room on a decorative shelf that comes with the apt.
My kitchen is tiny! And its the laundry room! But 3 of us baked 6 pies last Friday. Cozy n fun!
These are great! I cook in a fairly small space, and I do most of these. I’m a stickler for keeping non-kitchen stuff out of the kitchen.
Excellent tips for our small space! I plan to clear a few things out today. 🙂
Good tips! 🙂 I live in a 330 square foot house with my husband, our 4 kids (and one on the way! 🙂 ) and dog (who had to be inside most of the winter due to the extreme cold in North Dakota!) My kitchen is very tiny, and is actually a kitchen, dining room, living room, entry-way… basically you walk in the door and you’re in the middle of the house and it’s everything. 🙂 This has been challenging for me, as a soaker/sprouter/bone-broth-maker/kombucha-maker/from-scratch-cooker. I definitely use the bowl-stacking tip! Also, we don’t have a dishwasher but I don’t want to take up valuable counter space for a dish drying rack. Our solution is to use a drying mat that hangs up to dry between uses, leaving to counter free for other things. Also, we shop through Azure (once a month bulk co-op) and fitting a months’ worth of food in here is another challenge! (But do love that feeling of knowing that my house is packed with food. 😉 ) We use little tricks like: Instead of chairs at the table, we use benches with storage space. Also, our 5-gallon bucket of honey fits nicely under the table and is used as a seat. We have hooks under our upper cupboards where we hang our mugs, a magnetic strip on the wall above the stove where we stick our knives, cheese grater, spatula… My spices are all in those cute little magnetic metal jars so they stick on my fridge. Also with a lack of wall space, the insides of cupboard doors work nicely for hanging things like schedules, school charts (we homeschool), maps, etc! I also use my oven (just a little countertop oven) to store my stack of glass bowls… I just have to shift things when it’s time to use the oven! Anyhow, those are a few of the things we’ve figured out that have worked for us! 🙂 We love our little cabin and the coziness and togetherness is provides. 🙂
Sometimes when I run out of counter space I’ll pull out a drawer or two and top them with a cutting board for temporary ‘counters’ — but first eyeball the drawer to be sure you’ve taken anything which might be specifically needed from it! This is handy when I have a bunch of salad plates to compose, just before serving. Salad plates get served, drawers get closed.
I’ve cooked thanksgiving dinner for family w less room than this lol don’t know how I did it !
i was a chef for many years (from the military to supper clubs to feeding a family of 10 on a regular basis.) i found a few simple things that really helped.
1. CLEAN AS YOU GO. you’ll be surprised how much easier this makes cooking in a small space.
2. ORGANIZE. in my pantry, fruits, vegetables, grains and bulk foods all have their own space. i recycle big glass jars to use for storage.
3. CEILING SPACE. can you hang your pots and pans from a rack that raises and lowers from the ceiling? that might give you more cupboard space.
4. FIFO. first in, first out. this helps cut down on waste, and also keeps your pantry stocked and organized.
5. DEDICATE SPACE. my refrig and freezer have the same motif as my pantry. a place for everything, and everything in it’s place. lets me know when i’m out of something, or about to run out.
just a few off the top of my head. love your blog!
I live in an RV, lol… definitely a small space 🙂
I’ll be moving to a very small kitchen SOON. Perfect timing 🙂
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Very small space.. But it works
I have counter on either side of my sink. That’s it. Lots of cooking (and frustration) in this kitchen but I’ve learned to roll with it. Oh…… I dream of a ginormous island and pantry *sigh*
That is all the space I have, too! Just 2-3 feet of counter top on each side of the sink. Honestly, the picture of the kitchen in the promo pic for this piece looked like a dream compared to what I have right now!
#12: when not using burners, cover them w/extra cutting board to increase (in my case almost double) your counter space. Same goes for 1/2 of the sink. I also store infrequently used items in the garage (e.g. Juicer, vacuum sealer, canning stuff, mason jars, dehydrator, etc.)
So glad I’m not the only foodie cooking in a closet!
Yes! #1 survival tip from my closet kitchen: open a drawer and place a cutting board or cookie sheet over it = counterspace! 🙂
Lola
Shelby-Susannah Rewis
I use my dining room table as extra counter space and use a huge cutting board that covers the sink to increase space when doing cooking prep.
Becky Graver and Jamie Fiene for my favorite small kitchen ladies:)
I cooked in my sister’s tiny apartment kitchen (she and her fam have since moved into a house) it was like a crazy ballet she and I working together in there. 🙂 And sometimes my brother-in-law would come in and try to clean up (he is a clean-a-holic). 🙂
Melissa Crisler
Working together in our small kitchen has reecently been named by our 15yod, “The Kitchen Dance”!!
I love this! I have definitely found that cleaning as I go (especially with no dishwasher!) helps keep counters clear for food prep. And creating storage on the inside of cabinet/pantry doors.
What does it matter what size the kitchen is?! If you can cook, you can cook! Ah Americans! Why don’t you post step by step instructions on how to boil water too?
This looks like my kitchen. Down to all the refrigerator magnets!
Mirela Zg, sometimes extenuating circumstances get in the way of good intentions. My husband and I do seasonal, out-of-province road construction, and spend our summers in a 24ft travel trailer, while working 12hr days. Not only is our kitchen and living space small, but we often have to stagger energy use, to avoid tripping a breaker! These hints were very helpful, to me, even as a reminder of things that I have allowed to slip.
I would love to hear about people who continue to incorporate real food while RVing…
Wow, 3 whole kids to cook for! Come on!
Store unused appliances in pantry space? Pantry space would be nice.
Marianne, I have struggled a lot with being able to maintain a real food (vegan) diet for my family of three in our RV too. We have been full timing for a bit over two months now and it’s tough. A lot of these, I feel, didn’t apply. I would like to “meet” other RVers that only eat real food to know how they do it!! …if it exists! 😉
I bake bread and pie’s in my toaster oven…it lives in the range oven.
My kitchen is not much larger than this. I have had 5 school age & younger children since 2002, and 4 school age since 1996. And we homeschool. That means 7 people who are eating real food full time.
I have had very small kitchens in each house we had. My current house is 3000sqft yet still has a similar set up as above. And NO PANTRY. I have buckets and boxes and various methods of storing food all over (we do have a basement at least). I have a dedicated meat freezer, dry goods freezer, chicken freezer (we butcher our own) and a dedicated produce fridge and leftover fridge. I can’t even cook a meal with what I can keep in my kitchen fridge and cabinets! My counters are covered with my various machines because they don’t fit in the cabinets either. So you can’t see any counter surface. Oh and we have a Berkey for fresh water in the counter too. I have a steel cart in the middle to hold more buckets and tools that don’t fit anywhere else. Which means only one person can stand in the kitchen at a time. The sink is almost never empty, neither is the dishwasher. I have crockpots and dutch ovens that are too heavy to carry far (for me) and need to go to the basement for storage, on moveable steel storage shelves.
The only way my kitchen would look like the above is if we were moving out!
I’m assuming the writer’s 3 kids are in school during the day. Because if they weren’t there’d be picture and notes and calendars tacked everywhere on every surface!
And yeah, when my kids were 3 they ate half a hot dog or some Mac n cheese. Now we eat 5lbs of potatoes or 4 cups of rice AT ONE MEAL. Need at least 2 heads of brocoli for everyone. At least 5 lbs of meat for protein. We all eat fresh veggies. Then there’s salads and dessert.
If I could get everything cleaned up and put away BEFORE the next round of cooking, it only means no one’s home to cook for at the next meal.
C’est la vie!!
11 TIPS for preparing food in a small place.
I had an alley kitchen in a 1 BR apartment. Thinking back, it was very convenient to cook in. Everything was within reach and I could turn around from the sink to the stove and vice versa. It was perfect for me then but now, with two toddlers, I’d likely go insane trying to cook in such a small space.
Lots of great tips, and I use most of them already. (I call our kitchen a one-butt kitchen, too, but it’s not as small as the one pictured here, and I do have some storage space, just not much counter space, and it’s a narrow U shaped area). I would kill for a dishwasher to get dirty dishes and the dish drainer off the counter.
Anyway, I hadn’t heard the plate on the bowl idea, which is great for me when I’m preparing for guests and have 3 types of salad in the fridge and some of the serving bowls don’t have lids.
I totally agree with the clean as you go idea. It keeps me sane.
Claudia Tomas has this nailed…she has a very small kitchen.. but cooks and presents like a PRO!!!!! she is a PRO!!!!!
I cook in an EXTREMELY small space. I persevere tho. I have to store half of my tools in my bedroom. Plus, I have thing stacked almost to the ceiling.
That is not a small kitchen try working with one shelf a mini fridge, no dishwasher, an one small counter in a 4ft by 6ft space
Yeah, cooking for 6 in an RV is my challenge!
If you have a small kitchen why would you have a dish washer and a sink? A dish washer is a luxury item IMO .
In small spaces I try to use ceiling space for storage. I install small hooks from the ceiling and use hanging baskets. I also hung a ladder from the ceiling and the steps allow me to use s hooks and hang things. I have created a she-shed for canning, dehydrating and have the walls shelves from top to bottom. The back deck or balcony can also hold a door on 2 horses and provide counter space.