by Silva Payne

Created on: November 03, 2009   Last Updated: July 27, 2010

Small kitchens are common in modern housing units. The drive to provide more housing for single people and couples without children has increased the range of single bedroom, kitchen/diner type accommodation available to rent and buy. Many older houses also have surprisingly small kitchen areas, so the need to organize the space in your kitchen can be important no matter what size your family.

Kitchens come in several basic layouts, and for small kitchens the most common is the galley-style kitchen. This is a kitchen that is little more than a narrow corridor, with the appliances, cupboards and worktops mainly on opposite long sides. Often the width of the space between worktops is only around 3 or 4 feet (1 to 1.5m). This is not enough room to fit somewhere to sit and eat as well unless you can make some clever adjustments.

If you have no dining room or area elsewhere to eat, installing a folding table top may be the answer. These fix to a wall with hinges that allow the table top to be laid flat against the wall when not in use. For seating, a bistro or bar stool that will fit underneath a work top is a simple solution.

Work surfaces are premium space in a small kitchen and it can feel like there is never enough room to prepare and serve food. Often this is because the equipment used to prepare food is also housed on the worktops. If this sounds like a familiar scenario to you, take a good look at the equipment that you have.

Do you really use everything to its fullest potential, or is it time to put that yoghurt maker on eBay? Clearing out things that you rarely use will almost certainly give you extra space for your daily tasks in the kitchen. If you cannot bear to part with your once a year yoghurt maker, then give it a thorough wash and put it away in a store cupboard, preferably in its original box with all the fittings it came with. Any equipment which has broken or missing attachments should be consigned to the trash.

The next stage in clearing your work surfaces is to see what equipment you can lift above them. Suspending items from the ceiling or from the underneath of wall units is a great space-saving idea. You can either purchase a purpose-made hanging unit, or make use of an old clothes airer, or just add some decorative hooks. Most utensils have a hole in the handle specifically for hanging them somewhere, and many pots and pans do too. Getting them all off the work tops will create more space for you to cook and assemble meals.

Even if your kitchen is of a reasonable size, chances are you are wasting a lot of your cupboard space simply because you cannot reach or see far enough into them. Units that sit in corners often have blind spots, and deep shelves often have items near to the doors only because reaching back further is difficult. This is not a good way to make the most of the space you have.

Corner units can be fitted with rotating shelves or carousels that are pulled forwards on a mechanism as you open the door. These are great for storing smaller items in awkward spaces. Alternatively, you can make your own movable system by using shallow plastic trays or crates placed onto the shelves, which you can pull out when you want to retrieve an item. These trays and crates are also a great way to store foods that come in thin packets such as soups or powdered dessert mixes, to stop them sliding all over your shelves.

Living with a small kitchen for many people is not ideal. However with a bit of organisation, and by making full use of the walls, ceiling and difficult corners, you may find that your kitchen is bigger than you first thought!

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