Mini kitchen - how do you cope

[LPBC]

Hi,
We have recently moved from a medium size UK kitchen to a mini size Swiss kitchen with a family of 4 kids. We are in a rental apartment for now and will eventually move again, but I do not want to compromise on our nutrition, so any ideas on how to do my stuff would be welcome.

I have 1 small piece of kitchen counter which is about 1,5 yards long.
I have one small sink, one 2 drawer freezer and 1 3 shelve fridge. No cold cellar but we will put a freezer in our heated cellar / storage room. We are considering to put another fridge on the balcony, which is large. We have put up some shelving on one wall in the kitchen, but still it remains small. I have trouble having the stuff in there that needs to soak / ferment and definitely have trouble storing stuff.

Anyone with a mini kitchen, please let me know how you are doing it.

[tinybutterfly]

I am not familiar with mini-kitchens, but we did live in an apartment once that had a very small kitchen and we got a little wooden cupboard that we could use to hold canned good/dry goods and it had two flat surfaces, one on top and one at the height of our waist, and below it had two doors that opened with shelves inside. It wasn't very big, it had to be small to fit in the area between the kitchen and the dining area, but it worked well for us.

I do remember it was like juggling trying to make dinner...we just had no counter space! It did help that our table was so close to the cooking area, so often it was used as a place to set things or to do kitchen work.

Good luck!

[tinybutterfly]

I know this is the dreaded Walmart, but here are some pictures of things that might work if you want to buy a small piece of furniture to use. Also if you click on the link that says hutches, there are several more.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catal...PageCatId=4037

I LOVED ours and would still have it, but we had to get rid of it when I got MCS and the fiberboard in it bothered my breathing.

They range in price from $39.00 to $400.00.

Target, Ikea here in the States would carry this sort of thing, but I don't know where you would shop for similiar items in Switzerland.

Ours was similar to this one, but ours was taller.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...uct_id=9730113

[cristeen]

With much difficulty, TBH.

Mine is not as small as yours sounds, thankfully, but it is still pretty small by US standards. I only have about 3 ft of counter, and limited cabinet space.

What we did is carve space out of other parts of the house. Next to the kitchen is the mud room, and we got a "pie cabinet" for in there, which is a shallow tall cabinet, perfect for a pantry. It's only 3 quart jars deep, but that's an improvement. Also in the mud room we have utility shelving that has a worktop where I store my appliances (stand mixer, food processor, blender), and it functions as extra workspace. Then I found a narrow little bookcase, about 12 inches wide that we were able to squeeze in next to the fridge. It's great for storing those odds and ends - lunchboxes, winter squash, compost bucket, napkins, ferments. We also have a free-standing dishwasher, the kind on wheels. It's in the middle of everything, but it's on wheels so I can just move it out of the way, and it's top is extra work space. I have a large cutting board on it so I can just chop up whatever I need whenever I need without trying to find counter space.

We only get produce every other week, so I need somewhere to store it in between. So we have a shelf in the dining room where I keep 2 bowls, 1 for fruit, 1 for veg. The kitchen cabinets are almost entirely devoted to dishes and pots/pans, since I was able to move out most of the food. I do have one piece of shelf in the kitchen that I devoted to the stuff I use the most, like vanilla extract, hot sauce, vinegar, etc., but the rest is in the pantry.

HTH

[vioburn]

You can get something from Ikea that would work.

http://www.ikea.com/ch/de/catalog/ca...kitchen/10471/

This is the Swiss page, so it would be no problem getting something from them.

[LPBC]

Love the thingies in the links, unfortunately totally no room to put it. The moving space is already difficult for 2 to move around in. Generally only 1 of us is in there.
Another downside now is that its freezing 24/7 : here at the moment, which means that the veggies I put on the balcony in a cooling box - figured it would isolate against frost - didn't do it, so the veggies are frozen. The chicory for last night did work out even with the frozen veggies, no clue about the endive for tonight yet though.

Its pretty frustrating.
At the moment 2 things out here drive me crazy, my tiny kitchen and wanting and needing TF and the homeschooling situation here, little to no freedom and we are real unschoolers who will now have to resort to school at home :

[tinybutterfly]

Okay, since you have no room to put a cabinet sort of thing in your apartment, can you use your table to set things on? Or a chair? How old are your children and are they old enough to not get into whatever is setting out?

Sorry to hear about it being so cold and the schooling situation.

Wondering if you could insulate the veggies you put outside in the cooling box ( never heard of one of those!) and if that would help keep the cold out? Maybe use...what, some butcher paper? Or a loosely wrapped blanket? A towel? I don't know.

I loved out tiny apartment, but it WAS challenging. My husband hated it.