How to create a minimalist small space family kitchen
What do you really need to cook from scratch for your family? In this blog I share how to create a minimalist family kitchen in a small space.
If you are wondering how to declutter your space jump over to my blog about how you can start loving your small space family kitchen. Today I will share everything we use in our minimalist small space family kitchen.
Download my small space family kitchen essentials checklist here:
What is a minimalist or small space family kitchen?
How many items still count as minimal is very personal. All around the world people live in very different environments, having very different habits, ressources and needs. When I scrolled through some blogs about a minimalist kitchen I was wondering how such a huge kitchen can be minimal while others might read this blog and think that there is nothing minimalist about our small space family kitchen.
My vision on minimalist living is that you have not more or less things that you actually use on a regular basis. I think rather than having as little as possible you should strive for an amount of stuff you actually can handle. That’s why I also like the term simple living. Because in my opinion it is not su much about the number of items in your kitchen cabinets but the simplicity they offer you (or not!). Therefore I think it is not only important how many things you have but also how much space you actually have to work with.
Assess your minimalist small space family kitchen
If you have a small space family kitchen you want to assess first how much space you have to store your things. In my minimalist small space family kitchen I only have 4 cabinets to store kitchen items. That’s all the space my things have to fit in.
One cabinet is for my pans, another for cups, glasses and small bowls, the third is my pantry and the fourth is for plates, tupper ware, baking utensils, large bowls and the rest. For my spices I do have another really shallow cabinet. I use one drawer for my cutlery and another small one for little items that I don’t know where else to put (we all have this stuff!). Read along as I share what exactly and how much of it I own in order to fit it in.
How many dishes for a minimalist small space kitchen?
My first category contains the four things every minimalist small space kitchen needs: plates, cutlery, small bowls and cups.
Let’s start small with the cutlery. I own about 15 pieces of knifes, forks, big spoons and small spoons each. At least that is what I aim for since my knifes disappear gradually and I probably only own 6 or 7 at the moment. I keep my small cutting knifes which I have about 7 of in the same space as my regular knifes. If we eat something you want to have a sharp knife for (as homemade pizza) we can always use those. No need of steak knifes etc. Having all uniform cutlery also helps to store the items more easily. So no fancy long coffee spoons or small desert forks for us.
Since we really only have very little space to store our dishes we use only one kind of plate. I find that everything except pizza actually goes really well with large deep plates. Breakfast, lunch, dinner even most deserts are presentable in this kind of plate and they pile up very easily. We own 15 of those deep plates but with a larger family I would advise 20 or even more. Since they pile up easily it doesn’t matter that much to have some more.
For cups or glasses I love to use our glass cups. They go perfect with hot and cold beverages and pile easily.
For small bowls we don’t have a nice or handy system but I figured that you don’t need that many and that they don’t need much space. I have about 15 small bowls.
Utensils you need (and don’t need) in a minimalist small space family kitchen
To store utensils I really can advise you a utensil holder. That way you only need one drawer for cutlery. Here are all the small utensils I own in my minimalist small space family kitchen:
- 1 Spagetti tong
- 1 Spagetti spoon
- 3 wooden cooking spoons
- 2 plastic ladles
- 3 whisks in different sizes including a mini whisk
- 2 differently shaped soup spoons
- 1 set of salad servers
- 2 large spatulas
- 1 rolling pin
- 2 little rubber spatulas
- 1 big knife
- 1 bread knife
- 3 metal cooking spoons
- 1 brush
- 1 can opener
- 1 garlic press
- 1 potato peeler
- 1 tea-egg
- 1 measure cup
Pans
Pans can be something using up very much space in a kitchen especially if you are a smaller family that has guest over more often and therefore need many differente sizes for pans. For me it worked fine to own 7 pans including my pressure cooker.
- 1 small steal pot
- 2 bigger pots (steal and enamel)
- 1 medium cast iron pan (I can use as a dutch oven)
- 2 different sizes frying pans (ceramic and steal)
- 1 steal pressure cooker
I used to own many more pots and pans and just recently discovered that I was simply not using them regularly enough to occupy my space.
Which baking utensils I use in my minimalist small space family kitchen
For baking I own two flat baking trays. They came with my oven and one of them is made from glass. I never had such a baking tray before but I simply love it! We have three differently sized bread baking trays. They all are stored in the oven which is not perfect but in my case my only option. My glass lasagne dish houses all of my small baking accessories as cookie cutters, my reusable muffin cups and my butter cream set.
I love my baking tin because it is easy to store away. You can repurpose the class bottom if you need one for other things as well.
Kitchen appliances
Since kitchen appliances take up much space I really keep those on a minimum. But again, I need my kitchen to be practical to cooking in there multiple times a day every day for my family and friends. These appliances I really don’t want to miss:
- Small fridge
- Regular dish washer
- Small freezer (we keep in the hallway not the kitchen)
- 4-burner cooktop
- Kettle
- Food processor
- Mixer
- Oven
Is there room for a pantry in a minimalist small space family kitchen?
Even though I only own four cabinets to store my kitchen items in I assigned one as a small pantry. I find it necessary that I can store my open packages of yeast, flour, pasta, legumes sugar etc. somewhere out of sight. I do have a beautiful open shelf for some of those items as well.
Bowls
We own 3 large bowls and two smaller bowls. That is enough to soak legumes and grains, bake bread, eat salads and present foods and snacks in a nice way when visiter come.
Even if I know methods to dry my salad without I really don’t want to miss my salad spinner. It hides away perfectly in my bowls and therefore doesn’t use up more space than necessary.
Tupper ware
When I was very young and didn’t have my own household yet I made myself a promise. I wanted to own only ONE form of tupperware. Actually all women I know the household from have many different sizes of containers and they would always end up being a huge mess. When I looked for a suitable container and finally found one with the correct size i couldn’t locate the fitting lit. Come on, we all know those problems!
From the very beginning of my household I invested in tupperware containers from IKEA. They all pile up nicely and most importantly: all lits fit on all containers! They have plastic and glass containers as well as bamboo and plastic lits. So you really can go everywhere with looking nice and being practical.
Rest
Obviously there are more items we own than the listed above. We have a very shallow pantry that is designed to store spices above our stove as well. Here is a complete list of everything not fitting into a category:
- 2 sieves
- 1 baby plate
- 2 bibs
- 1 glass cutting board
- 1 grater
- 1 funnel
- 1 lemon squeezer
- 1 reusable salad dressing bottle
- 1 jug (that works for tea as well as cold beverages)
What are your minimalist small space family kitchen essentials? What do you consider being minimal or having a small space? Please leave a comment down below I would love to read all about it!
