How to Work With the Kitchen You Have

I’ve always had a small kitchen, whether at home or at work. You could give me all the money in the world and I would still design a small kitchen for myself, one that gets to the point, saves steps, and has just enough space for at least one guest to perch on a chair while I oversee the cooking.

They all shared the difficulty of not having quite enough counter space/work surface, which naturally comes with a lack of square footage. One way around that was to plan the cooking process around prepping ingredients ahead of time: getting the veggies chopped, the sauces mixed, the dough or batter made well before baking, etc.  Another way around it was to stick to the simplest recipes. But sometimes it is fun to just let ‘er rip, as when I prepared an entire Thanksgiving dinner for eight in a 7 x 8 galley kitchen with a cooker made in 1926.

My current home kitchen is a sort of galley whose most useful feature is a 3 x 5 counter open to the dining room and at which guests can sit on stools  on the dining room side while I prep ingredients on the counter. I can turn and do the actual stovetop and oven work without worrying about getting them with steam or splatters. The downside is the 24″ electric range, which is not quite big enough to handle more than two pans on the stove or anything wider than 16″ in the oven. The self-cleaning function on the oven also does not work. Bummer. It came with the house and I adapted to cooking with it faster than I ever got around to replacing it.

The trend for so long has been to upgrade regular kitchens into showplaces, with cabinetry, countertops, flooring, appliances, and details designed to awe and inspire, but which don’t necessarily facilitate good cooking.  So let’s cut to the chase: what’s the purpose of cooking food? And what kitchen setup directly addresses the purpose of cooking food?

Cook to eat. Cook to share. Cook to nurture. Cook to conserve. This kind of cooking is hands-on, direct, done on anything from a campfire to a Viking range. Most often, though, it is done in a basic home kitchen, nothing fancy needed. It’s the kitchen most of us have: a refrigerator, a cookstove, a sink, a work surface, and places to store what we use in the process.

Food as fashion, whether in trendy ingredients or trendy kitchens, couldn’t be more irrelevant to the purpose of cooking food. As a minimalist, I am most comfortable with only what I really need to use, and conscious of waste, unhealthy concoctions, and budgetary concerns. Aesthetic surroundings are wonderful and conducive to a minimalist approach, but form must follow function above all else: can you set a hot pan on top of your counter without damaging it? Does your light fixture cast more shadows than light? Are your mixing bowls deep enough to mix batters without splashing all over the place?  Can you really see what you’re doing on those dark countertops? Is your kitchen conducive to the way you cook?

Another question to consider: how do you really want to cook? Food, cooking, and nutrition have contributed to a lot of information overload. Most of us do not have the time or energy to make cooking an avocation. We’d like to have it in our lives, but we cannot shape our lives around it. That, too, benefits from a simple, minimal approach.  You might discover that the kitchen you already have is more than sufficient, requiring only minor changes, such as moving spices into a drawer or reducing your collection of plates, cups, and bowls to a number you actually use.

Minimalism, simple living, and uncluttering are lifestyle choices which help people get their belongings, budgets, and workload down to essentials. It’s an approach which works especially well with kitchens and cooking.  The result is less stress and so much more appreciation for what is important: time for our loved ones, time for ourselves, time to smell the coffee and taste the fresh-baked bread.