Kitchen
Executive summary: We cook almost daily in our kitchen, so I made clean up as easy as possible by keeping the counters and floor relatively bare so that sticky little handprints and far-flung crumbs are easily spotted and wiped up.
We have a galley-style kitchen that sits between the front door and the dining area. It’s not large, but it’s (more than) plenty for us. I always find it funny on shows like HGTV’s House Hunters where they show people bumping into each other in kitchens that are 3x this size, using it as justification for maxing out their budget to buy the biggest house possible. In fact, this kitchen is absolutely cavernous compared to what I had as a grad student living in MIT campus housing – that “kitchen” was more of an indent in the wall. My husband literally couldn’t fit both shoulders in it at the same time, unless he turned sideways. And our studio kitchen in our Berkeley undergrad days wasn’t much better. Sorry, I’ve totally gone off on a tangent, but the point is that we have everything we need in this kitchen, with room to spare.
White bowl: HomeGoods | Gold wire bowl: HomeGoods | Dish drying rack: Yamazaki Home | Marble paper towel stand: Crate & Barrel
Since we can see the kitchen from the living and dining areas, it’s important to me to keep the surfaces uncluttered. Plus, I hate having to wipe around things (or worse yet, pick them up to wipe underneath), so my smart and simple solution is to keep as much off the counters as possible. Perhaps one day I’ll give you a tour of our drawers and cupboards, but we have lots of room in there for all our dinnerware, pots, gadgets, etc. Our “pantry” even lives in the upper cabinets to the left of the stove, and we’ve never considered it too small for our needs. No walk-in pantries here!
When my parents/relatives see this kitchen, they always exclaim, “you must eat out every meal, because clearly no one cooks in here.” That is untrue, if you define cooking as transforming ingredients over a heat source (other than a microwave – that’s where I draw the line). On most days, I cook in here at least once. Am I making five-course gourmet meals that require 35 ingredients, a blender, air fryer, toaster, Dutch oven, and pressure cooker simultaneously? No, that would be anathema to my minimalist ways. My recipes are simple and quick, but they absolutely count as cooking. I suppose I just got off on another tangent … I did not realize I had so many emotions tied up in the kitchen. @_@
Looking through the kitchen from the front door toward the dining area.
Ok, let’s get back to the design elements. Some people might think this galley-style kitchen is crying for a rug. Preferably some sort of vintage Persian runner, I would think. While that might look nice, I don’t understand how a rug in a kitchen is practical. (Nor under a dining table, especially with kids who drop approximately 2,000 crumbs per meal). And I’ve never found the floor hard or cold, so I can’t come up with a practical reason to add another item to our space. If I’m totally missing something in this rug debate, I’m all ears!
Going against typical design aesthetics, the fridge holds a collection of arguably kitschy magnets from our travels. I’ve become rather obsessed with finding the perfect magnet(s) on each trip to represent the international (and non-contiguous US) destinations my husband and I have been to, so they’re a meaningful addition to our home. And here’s the thing – I only show photos of our place as seen IRL. And our real life includes these magnets that remind me of my travel experiences and keep my travel dreams alive while I wipe the floor for the fifth time in a day or make food for a preschooler who only eats seven things (it’s just a phase, right??)
Well, that was quite a kitchen tour that ended up taking a detour through my life. I swear, these posts just take on a life of their own. But they do say the kitchen is the heart of the home, so this is where the stories would form. Hope you enjoyed the trip through my kitchen and my head!