The kitchen is, to me and everyone else who loves food as much as I do, the most important space in the house. People say you spend most of your breathing life in bed (assuming you sleep eight hours a night), but I spend 800 hours a day in the kitchen so to me its importance supersedes all other rooms in the house. Unless someone else cooks for you and your family, the kitchen is where you do the work that keeps yourself and everyone else alive. Literally. We have to eat to survive, so there you are. And while there isn’t much you can do to improve your functional kitchen – that is, the area with your sink and appliances – short of an actual remodel, you can optimize anywhere people sit to eat (whether within a combined kitchen and dining room or an adjacent ‘breakfast nook’) to meet your needs.
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Breakfast Area of Kitchen: Where People Eat the Most
The reason the breakfast area layout is important is because even if you have a separate dining room, it’s likely where you and your family spend the most time eating casually. If you and yours eat all of your meals in a formal dining room and nobody eats in your kitchen, the breakfast area might carry less weight and simply serve as a convenient locale for tables or shelving to store easily accessible food and other items. But if you only eat in your dining room on occasion or once a day, the breakfast area is where you want to craft a convenient yet attractive and welcoming space.
Not everyone has as many options, depending on the size of your space. Your kitchen and dining area may be a tiny galley with a small fold-out table for two at one end. Or maybe it’s an open layout with an adjacent dining space to accommodate a full-sized table. No matter the size of your eating spot, there are ways to minimize furniture footprint where heavy traffic is expected and where you want to reduce obstructions. Kitchens tend to be busy places so keeping things as efficiently organized as possible is important; yet you also want to make efforts to keep it beautiful and inviting. After all, nobody wants to cook in a mineshaft!
Dining Room: Where We Eat with Intention
Many people nowadays could care less about a dining room. They all eat at the ‘breakfast’ table and end up stacking junk on the poor dining room table. What’s the point then? Why not just get a bunch of shelves or other organization system to store things instead of dumping it all on a table meant for communal eating? Because it’s far too easy to misuse a dining table (and therefore thwart the point of a dining room at all, as it simply becomes storage at that point), I created systems and other places to place items that would have otherwise been carelessly tossed on any available surface. Our dining room table, therefore, stays bare.
Designate the Dining Room’s Purpose and Then Stick To It
This is how you love a space, including your kitchen and dining room: you keep it tidy and available for the purpose you designate for it. Our dining room remains chic and simply appointed and, most importantly, we can eat there any time we want to sit down for a meal together without having to clear off the kitchen table. (Despite how intentional I’ve been to find purposeful places to put things, paperwork and other items still end up accumulating on our kitchen table. It’s difficult, for sure. I try to frequently clear it off, and sometimes I’m better about that than other times.) This is where having both a kitchen and dining room can be super convenient (but don’t worry; even with one small eating space, we’ll cover ways to maximize its convenience).
So when we sit down to eat dinner as a family (it isn’t every day, but at least a few times a week), I don’t have to stress over clearing the kitchen table to make space. We can go sit at the immaculate dining room table. It’s probably the most sparse room in the house with just a couple of bookshelves with some decorations, a small table with a lamp, and another floor lamp. There are also a couple of extra chairs we don’t use which we’ll pull out when we have company. But rather than being a depressingly empty room, it’s furnished just enough to enjoy a pleasant meal with attractive but not overwhelming décor. And for that I’m grateful! If you want to create a similar black and white aesthetic in your own home, check out these ideas for more black and white striped décor.
Functional Kitchen: The Command Center
A word on the kitchen. You know someone who doesn’t cook designed a kitchen when you can’t open the dishwasher without blocking traffic flow because it opens right up to the edge of the island. And when you can’t open the refrigerator doors without completely blocking the traffic flow on the other side of the island. There is also something wrong when the oven is a newer ‘smart’ oven but it’s incredibly easy for a toddler to tap the ‘unlock’ icon and suddenly have access to all the controls (yes, he’s turned on the oven). And you can’t turn on a burner without using a lighter every time because the control knob won’t ignite the pilot light.
When I mused how anyone could tolerate over 30 years of this poorly designed space, I learned from neighbours that the former owners never cooked (shocker). So we work with what we have. Despite any inconveniences, we can do whatever we need to both maximize our food prep routines and other tasks to make the most of our space and its functionality. For those of us who won’t be renovating, that’s our only option!
Aesthetics vs Function: Why Function Always Matters More in a Kitchen for God’s Sake
Without trying to actually do anything in it, ours is an attractive kitchen. It’s also completely impractical. With 9’ high ceilings, the cabinets reach so high that I can’t reach the top shelf at all, much less the next from top with any ease. I therefore have less cabinet space than we did at our old house, and that’s proven a challenge because I do in fact cook. Some would say to ‘just use a stool.’ Seeing as my toddler already pulls down every dangerous and/or messy thing he can reach from up on the counter, it doesn’t leave much to the imagination what happens if I leave a stool somewhere convenient for everyday use. (At least when he’s pushing a chair on the hardwood I can hear it screeching loud and clear so I may have time to intervene if I’m not in the bathroom or otherwise preoccupied.)
Yes, it’s a beautiful kitchen…and very cramped for such a huge house. A couple of drawers don’t open right – you have to forcefully yank from one side; otherwise they catch and cause a big hassle. The drawers aren’t as deep as at our old house, so serving utensils often ‘catch’ the top and cause a jam. For someone so passionate about food and nutrition (and, well, eating), these are all major inconveniences. They seem minor, but when you deal with them all day every day (along with a toddler who always wants to ‘help’ and get into everything and repeatedly open the too-easy-to-pull frig and freezer doors), it is inefficient at best and maddening at worst. But hey, it’s a pretty kitchen!
How to Optimize the Breakfast Area
As I mentioned, there’s little you can do to change the functional kitchen but the space you can optimize is the eating area that’s often designated as the breakfast area. If you have a kitchen and dining room that’s separate, you’ll have more space and therefore more options in general for needs like meal seating, clandestinely storing regularly used items, and showcasing décor. But if that isn’t an option, whether because you don’t have a separate formal dining room, you are using it as a home office, or its layout is too small or awkward for anything other than a dining table, then the breakfast area is where to focus your organization magic.
For how cramped my functional kitchen is, the commonly called ‘breakfast nook’ (more like a breakfast hall, in our house) is huge. It’s larger than we need. That’s another way I know a non-cooking person designed this house. It’s completely impractical. We do not need such a vast amount of open space to walk from the functional kitchen area (or anywhere else) to the living room. It’s nice, and as with all areas of the house I appreciate that it isn’t too little space, but it’s completely unnecessary. What I’d have rather preferred is more pantry space. I’m always playing tetras with dry goods yet a parade of collies could easily glide though the room without so much as a tail swoosh to the furniture.
Console Table: Minimum Furniture Footprint and Organization
The table in our breakfast area is where we eat casually and is basically the nexus of our home. Just across the table against the opposite wall is the toddler table (this exact table is no longer available, but there are so many similar toddler tables perfect for a child-friendly nook!). Above it is a high and narrow console table that conveniently shelves paperwork in an organized manner (though it gets a little cluttered if I don’t sort it).
This console table prevents more things from accruing on the kitchen table. Though the best way to keep clutter at bay is to deal with it on a daily basis – that is, make quick and informed decisions for what to do with it and to then do something with it rather than let it linger for an indefinite amount of time. Meanwhile, having designated places to put things at least supports a tidy area that isn’t messy and overwhelming. The console table is brilliant because it’s tall (out of toddler reach), narrow (you don’t have to consciously walk around it), and long (more tabletop). It’s not an attractive statement piece. It’s a cheap console table; its purpose is solely functional. But neither is it unattractive.
If you have a small kitchen and need space or organization solutions, look into console tables. They basically serve as shelving when you can’t install free-hanging shelves on the wall. Depending on your layout, you may find one that fits under an overhanging countertop. Or, depending on the size of your table, you could find one that’s tall, long, and narrow enough to situate over one end of the table against a wall. At a window, it’s an optimal spot for plants. Choose from many available styles, sizes and crafters, like these handsome wooden console tables.
Back Door Shoe Rack
Not everyone’s back door exits from their kitchen, but in our case it does so there’s a small shoe rack next to it. This is also a convenient place for the paper towel roll. I noticed at our old house how dusty the counter was where I kept paper towels. I then realized this was from the paper towels, as all paper products create a disturbing amount of dust (you need only examine the vicinity around your tissue box for evidence). So rather than keep the paper towels on our counter by the dish drying rack and boys’ toothbrushes, I moved it atop the shoe rack where the only things it can cover in dust are shoes and the magazines I keep there (this is also how I keep literature from cluttering up the table). Again, even if you don’t have a shoes-off practice, shoe racks make very practical shelves!
Lighting (for Both Kitchen and Dining Room)
Most modern homes’ eating areas feature a chandelier or other hanging fixture. These could be anything from gaudy gold baroque-inspired ‘candelabras’ popular in the 80s and 90s to the microbrewery era’s trendy Edison bulb-inspired centerpieces. How much you love your light fixture and the amount and direction of light it casts drives how likely you’ll want alternative light sources, such as floor lamps or table lamps. And the amount of available surface area, whether from countertop or console table or eating table, will determine the size and likelihood of a table lamp. Unless you prefer using your overhead lighting, whether from a hanging fixture or less decorative built-in fluorescent overhead light, your kitchen and dining room will benefit from a lamp or two.
Our breakfast area’s (slightly tacky but tolerable) hanging candelabra fixture conveniently has a dimmer switch, so we can adjust how bright or dim the light is for any time of day. But candelabra light bulbs only illuminate so much. A basic floor lamp in the corner of the room, while nothing to look at, perfectly supplements the lighting (its switch also has three brightness settings). It also provides more indirect light for the toddler table, which is good because no one should have to eat in insufficient light.
For what it lacks in function, the chandelier makes up in décor possibilities. I strung a mini strand of tiny lights through it to cast a pretty glow at night. During winter, I stuck in some evergreen branches I snipped out back for a natural touch. Chinese New Year provided a perfect opportunity to hang red paper lanterns from it as well as the similar chandelier that hangs over the dining room table. It isn’t always immediately obvious, but sometimes bland fixtures provide a perfect avenue for better décor!
Décor
Remember that décor has everything to do with optimizing, and that aesthetics play just as important a role as functional efficiency. A visually pleasing space (as well as other sensory considerations like sounds, smells, textures, etc.) elevates moods, inspires, and motivates. And if it’s hard to find ways to enhance a room’s appearance where there’s little space for decorative furniture and other items, always decorate the walls. In our kitchen area, there isn’t room for auxiliary furniture aside from said shoe rack and console table. So I’ve hung a gallery of seashell art on the walls flanking the kitchen table. This both breaks up the monotony of the dark gray paint (not our colour choice) and brightens the space with colourful, textured art.
When there isn’t room for much else in your kitchen and dining room, add decorative touches where you can. I lined the vertical edge of the console table with a strip of glittery orange peel-and-stick wallpaper leftover from the pantry. Sure, it doesn’t ‘match’ anything, but it looks better than before. Below the console table I hung a small mirror on the wall where my toddler sits at his table so that he can look at himself instead of the gray wall when he eats (this serves a dual purpose since mirrors also amplify light).
Above the console table, I hung a standard bulletin board so we have a place to pin up my boys’ drawings and other accomplishments from school. (This decision was primarily based on the fact that our refrigerator doors are not magnetic, an inconvenient feature surely designed by someone without kids). The bulletin board collage serves as a visually busy and happy space to celebrate our children and perfectly complements the kitchen’s loving and communal theme of family and coming together to eat.
Kitchen and Dining Room Storage Spaces: Pantry and Cupboards
Along with the many lessons I’ve learnt from buying this house, an important one I’ll reiterate throughout this series is that you can never judge a home’s functional space nor storage space by its size alone. Yes, we have ample closets – one of the features I wanted and something for which I’m grateful. However, they’re strewn about upstairs and the only one in our giant breakfast area (and quite a distance from the functional kitchen, by the way) is actually too small. There are too few shelves for our dry groceries, and I don’t even bulk-shop. I’ve had to store many dry goods in our functional kitchen cupboards, taking up space I’d otherwise use for crowding dishes. So I have to be very intentional about where things go in the pantry, and that gets tricky every shopping trip. Keep your pantry as organized as you can. It reduces mealtime stress!
While there aren’t many great solutions for increasing our dry goods storage, I gave the pantry a makeover that vastly improved my morale every time I opened the door. Along with most other closets in the house, the pantry was originally filthy. In fact, it was the filthiest. The rubber-coated wire shelving was not only dusty and dirty but sticky. Very, very sticky. When we first moved and I realized how difficult they were to clean, I covered them in carboard and waited until I had enough time to really tackle them. After I finally gave the pantry a deep clean, I had to do something about the gross, scuffed-up walls.
Peel-and-Stick Wallpaper for a Closet Makeover
Like all of the other closets’ walls (save those in the bedrooms), the pantry walls were filthy and covered in stains and marks. (I am still confused about this. What did they do, chuck ketchup bottles on the shelves like a ring toss carnival game?) Since painting isn’t an option any time soon, I purchased loads of peel-and-stick wallpaper to cover the interior closet walls. This was a lot more complicated than it would be in a normal room because I had to cut all sorts of odd-sized pieces to fit in between the shelving. The upside of wallpapering closets is that no one will stand in a closet and stare at the walls, scrutinizing minor mistakes. The downside is the shelving. That took a while.
But once I finished the walls and re-loaded the dry goods neatly on the shelves, that pantry looked amazing. The sparkly orange wallpaper gave it just the optimistic energy it needed. I left the pantry door open for weeks afterwards, just because I liked looking at it. You see, even though we don’t hang out in closets (most of us, at least), we frequent them enough to make them worth beautifying. Yes, closets are solely functional, but even functional spaces should be pleasant (or at the very least, inoffensive). There’s something to be said for opening a closet door and getting a tiny dopamine boost from simply looking inside. Behind (ideally) neatly organized contents can be a pretty wall, whether covered in eccentric wallpaper you wouldn’t normally put up in a room, or fun posters/art. It also motivates you to keep the closet organized (so you can see it)!
Cupboards
Cupboards, where we store clean dishes, should always be thoroughly cleaned when you move house. I cleaned out our cupboards when we moved in (that was actually the first thing I did), but they were thankfully not as filthy as all of the other shelves in the house. Still, there were some stains and inexplicable marks inside that I preferred not to see. So after wallpapering the pantry, I used some leftover paper to cover the back wall of a couple of the cupboards. Ideally, I would cover all of them. But that desire fizzled out after I got ‘house improvement exhaustion,’ especially in light of likely upcoming move. The ones that do have a splash of sparkly orange wallpaper, though, are super fun to look at. It also gives me peace of mind to know my dishes aren’t touching strangers’ decades-old food stains.
Kitchen and Dining Room: Your Cooking and Eating Spaces Are Worth All Efforts
When you move house (unless it’s literally a brand-new place that was just built), the kitchen will probably be the hardest place to clean. Airborne cooking oil particles settle on rubber shelving and atop cupboards and years of grime shows up in the most unlikely places. You may find some pretty disgusting things, depending on the habits of those who lived there before you. Don’t even get me started on the cupboard below our kitchen sink; it was evident that it leaked and had literally never been cleaned – that isn’t an exaggeration. It also took me many hours to scrub the very top of the cupboards, which I thought were brown but were actually as white as the front of the cupboards – just covered in a very thick, sticky layer of grime. (Dawn dish detergent was the only thing that cut through the grease, by the way).
The point is, it’s worth giving extra effort for such an important part of your home. Even if you’re alone in a studio apartment, your cooking and eating area is where you nourish your body. It needs to be clean and sanitary, at the very least, but also organized and aesthetically pleasing. This is both important for function (who has time to search everywhere for that baking dish?) and for morale. So when you’re hours into a deep clean and lamenting the filthy habits of the home’s predecessors, know that you’ll reap the reward of a sparkling clean space at the end of your efforts. And once you decorate your kitchen and dining room – in whatever way, however simply – these spaces will feel happy and complete, ready to share many loving mealtimes. Especially if you and yours spend as much time in the kitchen area as me: make it count!