Kitchen Design Trends

Tiny Kitchens Think Big

The Pint-Sized Kitchen That Delivers Big Meals

For close to seven years now, I’ve lived in an apartment with a teeny kitchen and no countertops. Mine is a standard galley: a straight line of sink, stove, and fridge facing a hodgepodge of overstuffed shelves. The narrow strip in between mostly refuses to fit more than one person. The kitchen nearly kept me from taking the place — I am something of a hoarder and also a food writer — but the good light, the claw-foot tub, and the little half-bedroom off the actual bedroom tipped the scales, so I decided instead to retrofit my often messy cooking life into its narrow 35 square feet.

Now, I ping through the space like a pinball, choreographing my desires in the few feet between cutting board and stove and sink and shelf, rehearsing a dance performed for and by one. My kitchen, which means my kitchen and the parts of my living room I have annexed as an extension of the kitchen, is light on work space and heavy on storage. It survives on a balance of scarcity and abundance: While building out the space I had to decide what I absolutely needed to get absolutely everything I wanted.

On the wall facing the stove is a pair of yellow peg boards that hold three cast-iron pans, a colander, two small and one medium-size pots, and an assortment of potholders, strainers, and lids. These pots and pans boil pasta, simmer tomato sauce, fry pork chops or thick slices of bread. In the smallest ones I’ve developed a habit of blanching greens, then boiling a packet of instant noodles, then afterward sloppily poaching an egg, a meal that requires zero chopping. The knives live on a magnetic strip on the stove, for a bit of quotidian danger.

My cabinets (three doors’ worth) hold mugs, bowls, plates, and wine cups. In the space between them and the ceiling lives my grandmother’s Dutch oven, a blue stockpot, and a stand mixer. (The latter I got for free, from an old job, which means I can’t give it away even though I so rarely use it.) Because I lack actual countertops, my prep space is an inherited antique cabinet (a commode, if you want to be specific) repurposed as a butcher block that’s been foisted into the corner of my living room just outside the kitchen. Half of it is taken up by a big honker of a cutting board, and I should probably get rid of the small radio that sits on a back corner, but it’s too pleasant to turn on WBGO in the morning while making one to three cups of tea, and pragmatism can only get you so far.

Next to the radio is a tall narrow ceramic vessel where I deposit my compost each day. Things like onion, garlic, bananas, and winter squash live on the dining table within arm’s reach of the commode. (When company arrives, they move to the nearest stack of books.) The only piece more important than the commode, in terms of sheer functionality, is the old high-school lunch tray that covers half of my stove. (When I was a senior, my high school threatened to remove lunch trays from the cafeteria in an effort to minimize food waste, and being the brats we were, we stole them in protest.) Here go condiment bottles ready to be poured, or spices ready to be pinched, bowls of chopped garlic or ginger or carrot, lined up like synchronized swimmers poised to dive.

Mise en place — the practice of chopping, portioning, and peeling your ingredients and setting them out before you begin cooking — is particularly important in a small kitchen. If the kitchen isn’t elegant, your movements inside it must be. I chop some long eggplants on the cutting board, I transfer them to a bowl, I slide over to the stove, and the bowl goes on the tray. I pull five bottles of stuff to be measured into sauce, cluttering and then decluttering the commode after a dark thick mixture appears in a bowl, whisked with a fork and then whisked off to the tray. The tray becomes crowded now, with its beer stein of wooden spoons, my eggplant and stir-fry sauce, and little bowls of ginger and garlic and shattered dried chile.

Clean as you go becomes less of a rule than a threat. I often think of the kitchen as a pair of lungs, expanding with mess, contracting with tidying, and the cleaning, like breathing, is constant. The sink fills, then empties. (I was recently gifted an over-the-sink drying rack, which is particularly efficient. Before that, I used a metal slab, painted white, that came with the apartment.) The commode fills, then empties. The tray fills, then empties. Sometimes everything is full, and that is when things get scary — the only answer is putting things away. But this constant flux is the pleasure of cooking, of kitchen-having. It is creating and knowing your own space, tracking its growth, tending to it, cleaning it when you must.

Once a month or so, I stretch my kitchen to its limits. I’ll invite three or four people for dinner, the most my table can hold without relegating people to the floor, and I’ll plan a big meal, three or four recipes. I’ll block out an afternoon and let my prep spill out onto the dining table, sometimes even the coffee table, bowls of chopped vegetables or marinating tofu or a reluctantly stirred dough. This work always takes longer than I expect, and it always drives me a little insane, makes me wish I weren’t this sort of person. But I think it’s important to show yourself what your kitchen can do. Endless space in the kitchen can be mistaken as the room necessary for something like mastery.

Designing For (Lack of) Space

If I had a large kitchen, we think, I’d be the sort of person to make a feast. The Nancy Meyers kitchen — spacious, double islands, all that marble — has become the aspirational shorthand for domestic luxury and culinary seriousness in the past decade. But it’s actually the kitchen in Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman that I dream of. The film begins with one of cinema’s greatest cooking scenes as a father in Taipei prepares Sunday dinner for his daughters: He guts and fillets a live fish, slices pork belly and radish, fills and steams endless dumplings, washes bushels of greens, boils a chicken that was so recently living in his back alley. The kitchen is simple but so clearly his own. His body flits seamlessly from task to task, a kind of muscle memory, constantly returning to a round butcher block whose belly has bowed from years of chopping and smashing.

My own meals are smaller, but this is the industrious energy I try to cultivate in my own space: a dense site of possibility, cluttered with utility. Each pot is hung not to look beautiful but because that is just where it needs to be. It is a kitchen built not in anticipation of cooking but through a life of cooking. It is filled with practical things and built for bounty.

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Making the Most of Minimal Space

Smitten Kitchen, another website I frequent, offers some great advice for maximizing a tiny kitchen:

“Apparently, there are kitchens with more than one counter. There are ovens that fit entire half-sheet pans in them–and still close! There are kitchens with not one oven, but two. Some have not just two counters and two ovens, but more than six cabinets. Some kitchens have not just two counters, two ovens and a dozen cabinets but room for an entire set of tables and chairs… just for eating!”

Excuse me, but I have to sit down for a minute. …Not in the kitchen, mind you. We have no room for a chair. Alas, for the rest of us, those that may sympathize with our 80-square foot kitchen with a mini-oven, six cabinets and a single built-in counter, I have been asked enough times what advice I’d give to people trying to cook in a tiny kitchen that I thought I’d sum up some of the advice I give them today.

Here are five ways to max out your tiny kitchen:

Learn to cook neatly: The constant flux of mess and cleaning in my kitchen is the pleasure of cooking, of kitchen-having. It is creating and knowing your own space, tracking its growth, tending to it, cleaning it when you must. Mise en place — the practice of chopping, portioning, and peeling your ingredients and setting them out before you begin cooking — is particularly important in a small kitchen. If the kitchen isn’t elegant, your movements inside it must be.
Maximize vertical space: In my kitchen, the space between the cabinets and the ceiling holds my grandmother’s Dutch oven, a blue stockpot, and a stand mixer. I also utilize the walls, hanging pots, pans, and utensils to free up counter and cabinet space.
Repurpose furniture: My prep space is an inherited antique cabinet (a commode, if you want to be specific) repurposed as a butcher block that’s been foisted into the corner of my living room just outside the kitchen. Half of it is taken up by a big honker of a cutting board.
Invest in multifunctional tools: My old high-school lunch tray that covers half of my stove serves as a convenient surface for mise en place. I also use a metal slab, painted white, that came with the apartment as an additional drying rack.
Declutter and organize: I’m constantly editing what I keep in my kitchen, only holding onto the essential tools and ingredients. Keeping my space tidy and organized is key to maximizing the limited square footage.

smitten kitchen Reading comments, emails and blogs everyday from people who like to cook all over the country, and all over the world, I have learned that not all kitchens are the same. And some of them are less the same than others. Some are downright shocking. Apparently, there are kitchens with more than one counter. There are ovens that fit entire half-sheet pans in them–and still close! There are kitchens with not one oven, but two. Some have not just two counters and two ovens, but more than six cabinets. Some kitchens have not just two counters, two ovens and a dozen cabinets but room for an entire set of tables and chairs… just for eating!

Maximizing Your Tiny Kitchen

Five things that have helped us max out ours:

Learn to cook neatly: The constant flux of mess and cleaning in my kitchen is the pleasure of cooking, of kitchen-having. It is creating and knowing your own space, tracking its growth, tending to it, cleaning it when you must. Mise en place — the practice of chopping, portioning, and peeling your ingredients and setting them out before you begin cooking — is particularly important in a small kitchen. If the kitchen isn’t elegant, your movements inside it must be.
Maximize vertical space: In my kitchen, the space between the cabinets and the ceiling holds my grandmother’s Dutch oven, a blue stockpot, and a stand mixer. I also utilize the walls, hanging pots, pans, and utensils to free up counter and cabinet space.
Repurpose furniture: My prep space is an inherited antique cabinet (a commode, if you want to be specific) repurposed as a butcher block that’s been foisted into the corner of my living room just outside the kitchen. Half of it is taken up by a big honker of a cutting board.
Invest in multifunctional tools: My old high-school lunch tray that covers half of my stove serves as a convenient surface for mise en place. I also use a metal slab, painted white, that came with the apartment as an additional drying rack.
Declutter and organize: I’m constantly editing what I keep in my kitchen, only holding onto the essential tools and ingredients. Keeping my space tidy and organized is key to maximizing the limited square footage.

I Made This

Small Kitchen, Big Ideas

The key to making the most of a tiny kitchen is to be creative and resourceful. Whether it’s utilizing vertical space, repurposing furniture, or investing in multipurpose tools, there are countless ways to transform a pint-sized cooking area into a highly efficient workspace.

My personal approach focuses on keeping things clean, organized, and streamlined. Mise en place is my mantra, allowing me to work quickly and efficiently in the limited square footage. And by constantly editing my kitchen inventory, I ensure that every item serves a purpose and has its place.

Of course, the kitchen in my home is far from the sprawling, Martha Stewart-esque dream spaces we often see in magazines. But that’s precisely what makes maximizing this small space so rewarding. It’s a constant exercise in creativity, problem-solving, and celebrating the simple pleasures of cooking.

So if you find yourself facing the challenge of a tiny kitchen, don’t despair. With a little ingenuity and a lot of elbow grease, you can transform even the most pint-sized cooking nook into a highly functional, thoroughly enjoyable space. The key is to embrace the constraints and let them fuel your culinary imagination. After all, sometimes the best meals come from the most unexpected places.