The Kitchen
28 Apr 2019
Next part on our flat tour is the kitchen! To see part 1, The Hallway, click here. Our kitchen is very small but not too small. There is plenty of storage for food, crockery and kitchen utensils. Unfortunately there is not enough room for Shin and I to cook at the same time so cooking together is something we haven't done much in the last 2 years. That is a bit sad, but we usually don't eat the same things anyway. To enter the kitchen you have to step under the noren curtain, this one I bought in Okinawa back in 2016.
When we first moved in I wasn't very excited about the antique pine colour on the kitchen cabinets and I was planning to ask the landlord for permission to paint it a different colour. Even so we decided to match the shelf and trolley units from IKEA with the same colour and then it kind of grew on me and now I rather like it.
We bought and painted this storage unit in our first week in the flat. It was the most urgent purchase since there was no room to put our plates and cups. I am very pleased with the result, especially the coffee cup rail and the plate stands. As it turns out, blue and white crockery really pops on an antique pine background!
All our windows face the back of the building so it is always really quiet and calm. It may only be a grass lawn and some garages but I've come to love this view! There are alot of squirells and birds hopping around, the neighbor and his dog out playing, and when it's warm outside you can see the city foxes sunbathing on top of the garages.
The plate, bowl and cup collection is representing a lot of different countries, most of them are Japanese, Swedish and English design but there are also Spanish and Portuguese pieces.
The matching blue and white potholders are handmade by my grandmother. The white tenugui on the right is from Japan and represents all of Nippon's (Japan's) specialties by region from north to south.
The knife stand is handmade by my dad. I have had these Global knives since I was 20 years old and not planning to replace them anytime soon.
Some Easter decorations. The colorful hen is handmade by me, it is a recreation of something similar I did in felt when I was in kindergarten. The trivet says "Lisboa" and is a cheap souvenir from Portugal. I don't care if something is cheap or "tacky" as long as I like it!
Lastly a sneak peak on the inside. The transparent storage boxes really helps as the cabinets came with a very limited number of shelves.
The drawer is so deep we could fit another storage box underneath the fitted cutlery tray. It maximizes the space and works great actually. In here we keep stuff that we don't use so often, like the plastic wrap and foil. Since we moved in I think I have bought a total of 1 roll of plastic wrap.
The spice drawer! I love using big amounts of spices when I cook so I don't really like the small jars they are usually sold in. Instead I recycled a few jars and spray painted the lids with black board paint. Each jar used to contain 280g of peanut butter. My husband doesn't eat peanut butter. Now you do the math....
The last of our 3 drawers houses our tupperware collection. I think the trick to have a neat and organised tupperware drawer is to have a lot of the same sizes and shapes. I dip into this drawer almost daily since I always bring my own lunch to work so it is important that I can get what I need quickly.
And that is it! I hope you liked that and maybe even picked up some tips for storage solutions for a small kitchen? Part 3 of this series will be posted in about a week or so. Until then!
