A well-designed kitchen can look stunning in the showroom and they can make us excited about designing for ourselves. Yet, once you’ve moved in and filled it with all the appliances you need for daily life, it often ends up feeling cluttered and chaotic! With toasters and crockpots, coffee machines and mixers. . . and don’t get me started on all of the items you need for kids or a baby! Sometimes it feels like there’s just not enough space to store what you need to store.
These items are necessary, yes, but they all take up counter space and make your kitchen feel messier than it is. Even if you have beautiful worktops and lovely cabinets, when every surface is covered in appliances and trailing cables, the overall effect gets completely lost and you’re left with a space that feels disorganized.
However, there are solutions! You can design a kitchen without the appliance chaos. And the first step is to simplify! Here are some easy suggestions, whether you’ve been living in your space for years or are just moving in.
Invest In Built-In Appliances
In a typical kitchen, you have a fair amount of room for integrating your fridge, dishwasher, and oven into your cabinetry. It also gives you a pretty refined look that immediately makes the kitchen feel more cohesive and not solely a collection of random boxes sitting against the walls.
When these big appliances are hidden behind cabinet doors that match the rest of your kitchen, the whole space can feel a little more purposeful and you remove some of the noise we mentioned above.
It’s true that integrated appliances cost a bit more upfront as they need to be fitted right, but the visual payoff is huge, and you get back all that counter space that would otherwise be taken up by standalone additions and the wiring isn’t laid all over the counter either.
Focus On Streamlined Design
Companies like J.S. Geddes Luxury Kitchens have nailed this! If you can opt for the built-in designs, great! If you can’t, trying to streamline the aesthetic through material, color, or style, can be a gamechanger.
Streamlining simply means opting for pieces that fit into your space design-wise (ex: everything being stainless steel or black, etc.) to help make everything feel cohesive.
Appliance Garages For Counter Items
Now, you may still need extra appliances that simply don’t fit your counters. So, this is where you can put those counter-height cupboard spaces to use, or invest in roll-up or bi-fold doors that sit on your counters. With the ‘hidden’ doors, you can keep your appliances plugged in and ready to use without having them out in the open. If those options don’t work, utilize your under cabinet space to ‘hide’ items and simply pull them out when you need them.
Some of the better designs when it comes to kitchen storage will also include power sockets in walls or cabinets you can use appliances without even pulling them all the way out. (Just be mindful if they steam or give out heat from the top!)
Use Drawer Storage For Small Gadgets
Drawers for any of your smaller appliances and gadgets that you don’t use every single day are fine! Just create ‘homes’ for those items so you know where they are. These items can end up creating the most clutter if they’re just sitting out on display. Some examples of these could include hand mixers, blenders, food processors, scales, and more, as all of that can easily be dried on the rack and then placed back in its area.
Overall, it’s not hard to design a kitchen without appliance chaos—it just takes a little effort, a little reworking, and the desire to make things work within the space and design you have!
Featured Image Credit: Dmitry Zvolskiy