Tiny House Kitchen Pare Down

Our kitchen is small by "normal" standards, but in the world of tiny houses, it's fairly large, so we actually have space for quite a few kitchen "luxuries." We have found this to be something of a blessing as well as a curse since it enables us to collect a lot of items that we don't need or use often enough to justify owning.

As part of our Tiny House KonMari, we culled a number of items, though we still need to finish that effort. Our KonMari journey got placed on hold for a while during our busy summer.

We did sort through our crazy number of cups and water bottles earlier this year. Why we ever accumulated so many is beyond me.

Recently, as we were wandering around our house looking for items to sell at our big family garage sale, it occurred to us that our flatware drawer was a very stressful spot in our house. Between constantly stacking forks and spoons and knives back in their overflowing compartments and having to dig for the item we were looking for, it was just a pain to deal with on a daily basis.

When we got married fourteen years ago, we, like most engaged couples, registered for the standard home and kitchen items, including a lovely set of Oneida flatware. In the end, we were gifted two sets. My mother, who has always kept a double set of flatware in her drawer, suggested that we keep both, and it made sense at the time, so we did.

It didn't make much sense lately, though. We never run out of clean forks or spoons or knives. Not once that I can remember. (Sunshine often goes through multiple forks during the course of one meal, and it still has never been a problem.)

Dare we break up our flatware set?

Chris's parents recently culled their utensil drawer, and while we've had a good laugh about their new lack of spoons (they may have overdone it!), we thought maybe they really were onto something.

So we gave some thought to what utensils we really use, leaving enough for a few extras, and removed the rest from the drawer to try to sell.

I still feel a little sad sometimes just thinking about having an incomplete set now since we didn't just split it straight into two equal sets. (We kept what we actually use, which includes unequal numbers of individual items.) But I actually don't cringe when I look in the drawer these days, and that does make me happy.

And today was the first time we even came close to running out of anything after our girls decided to use most of the teaspoons to decorate our kitchen stools. I think we made the right choice.

Other kitchen items ended up in the garage sale as well, including a few really nice skillets that we haven't used since we fell in love with cast iron. I also finally decided to let go of my rice cooker. It's big and hard to store, and while it was a blessing when I was struggling to learn how to cook rice (don't laugh!), I have since discovered that rice is actually really easy to cook. (Who knew?) I hated how much space the rice cooker required on the small counter, and I don't miss it one bit.

My slow cookers, though...you'll have to wrench them from my arms. We're keeping the slow cookers.

For now.

This post was written for inclusion in the November 2018 collection of the Small Family Homes Blog Community. Read below for more writings on living small from our community of writers. Check back next month for a new topic and posts in the series. And if there is a topic you'd like to see us write about, let us know! 

Little Bungalow -- "Drawers Open: Kitchen Edition" : There’s no time like your eighth month of pregnancy to show off your spice cupboard! Moving clockwise around our (weirdly sizeable) kitchen and taking a look in all our drawers and cabinets plus some tips for paring down to kitchen essentials.

Deeper Meaning Travels -- "Living Small: In the Kitchen" : Ever wonder how families living in a small space, manage their homes? Living in a small space requires less "stuff." See how our family of 4 lives 'small', in the kitchen.  

Fourth & West-- "Our Essentials: The Kitchen" : A look at our not quite minimalist kitchen inventory 

Tiny Ass Camper-- "Bare Necessities: Kitchen" : A peek into our cabin kitchen & what we did differently in our Casita kitchen when we hit the road again this last spring.