A kitchen is, for many people, the heart of the home – even if that home is a Tiny House. When choosing or designing a kitchen for your Tiny House, there are ways to achieve maximum efficiency from minimal space. With a well-thought-out layout and smart choices in appliances and storage solutions, you’ll soon have a pleasant, compact kitchen where you can prepare the most delicious meals.
Consider your cooking style
First and foremost, it’s important to reflect on your cooking habits. Do you cook elaborate meals daily, or do you prefer quick dishes? Do you need ample workspace and a four-burner stove, or is a small pantry kitchen with a single hotplate or microwave sufficient for you? Do you want a large or small refrigerator, and do you require significant storage space for your supplies and kitchen equipment? The more you understand your own cooking style, the better you can tailor your kitchen to suit your needs.
Choose the layout that fits you and your Tiny House
In a Tiny House, you want to utilize every centimeter optimally. Therefore, you need a kitchen that is compact and user-friendly, but also aligns with your cooking style:
The straight kitchen: This is the most obvious choice if you have a long and narrow home, such as a Tiny House on Wheels. You can adjust its length as desired, utilizing only one wall. You can opt for upper cabinets or shelves to store jars, or a combination of both.
The L-shaped kitchen: This compact yet efficient layout typically offers more countertop space than the straight kitchen. Additionally, it allows you to look into your home while cooking and converse with your guests. If you enjoy cooking for others, this is an important consideration.
The U-shaped kitchen: Suitable for slightly larger Tiny Houses, offering ample storage and countertop space. Typically, the U-shaped kitchen is positioned so that a window is at the narrow section, allowing you to look outside. Upper cabinets and the refrigerator can be placed along the longer sections of the U. Corner cabinets can be equipped with handy carousel units, which are costly but very efficient.
The pantry kitchen: A mini-kitchen with exactly what you need and nothing more. In a well-organized pantry kitchen, everything is within reach without occupying much space.
Save space with smart solutions
In addition to carefully considering the layout, there are even more options to use the space in the kitchen as efficiently as possible. By using multifunctional and extendable elements you can add a lot of functionality to your small kitchen:
- Collapsible or extendable worktops provide extra worktop space when you need it, for example if you have extra vegetables to cut.
- Hanging racks and magnetic strips for knives, spice jars and cooking utensils make optimal use of wall space.
- A pull-out pharmacy cabinet provides space for storage jars and bottles without taking up much floor space.
Compact equipment
A large oven, dishwasher and a double-door refrigerator may not be the most logical choices for a Tiny House. You better choose:
- A combination microwave instead of a separate oven and microwave.
- A narrow or table-top refrigerator to save space.
- A two-burner stove instead of four or more, especially if you don’t cook much at once.
Keeping things tidy
A tidy kitchen looks bigger and works more pleasantly. Use baskets, drawers with inserts, and labeled jars to keep your items organized and in place. Pots of all sizes and colors are messy, choose one type and preferably not too many different sizes. Consider how much crockery you need: do you really often host dinner parties for eight people? And how often do you use the blender, can you perhaps share one with the neighbors? The fewer items there are on the counter, the more spacious and neat your kitchen will look and the easier it will be to clean.
With these tips and a little creativity, there is plenty of room in your Tiny House to create small and large dishes!
All images in this article come from the listings on TinyFindy.
Leave a Reply