How we make a tiny condo kitchen functional and aesthetic

205

Free Style
Condo
~700 sqft
2 br
Couple Living with Kids

Welcome to our entire kitchen captured in a frame - this is how tiny our kitchen (and laundry area) is! 📷 As we did not do any renovation to the original condo layout, we had to make do with the shelvings/cabinets and electrical points that is fixed in the kitchen. While this is challenging as we were not able to design this area according to our needs, we have learnt to be creative and flexible over the years as we change things around the kitchen to suit our needs 😌 We hope to bring you through how we make this tiny space a functional and aesthetic kitchen! ✨
To keep the countertop clear and clutter-free for ease of food prep and cleaning, we moved in and lived in for 3 years with only an air fryer and electric kettle. We contemplated buying a rice cooker because of space constraints and wanted to see if we can live with cooking rice on the stove.. somehow it became 3 years of doing so! 😬 We eventually bought one and changed out the kettle to a water dispenser when we are becoming a family of 3! 🫢 One of the lessons of living in a small home - learning to live with less 🤍
If you don’t already know, we love decorating corners of our space with bits and pieces of what we love 🥹 However, with limited counter space and open shelves + the need to keep the counter space clutter-free, we style the decor pieces above the kitchen hood and it instantly adds character and coziness to our little kitchen! ✨
Flowers in a vintage teapot to suit the kitchen theme 🌸
This open shelf is at a very awkward corner of the kitchen and is not very easily accessible. We left it empty for a while before we found the best way to make use of this space. Thankfully the husband and I are quite tall so we could still reach out for the condiments placed here but the ones placed further in are still hard to reach so a turntable saves the day! ✨ To save space on the countertop, we use a hanging rack to hold our chopping boards and kitchen towel.
A vintage milk jug thrifted from Melbourne turned into a utensils holder
We love this small window at the corner of the kitchen 🥹 It not only helps with airflow and light, it allows 👵🏻 G to cook with a view!
We use quite a few tea towels for different uses - to cover appliances, drying of hands, laying on the countertop for food prep, etc. We love them mismatch and the designs add to the overall decor of the space too! ✨
This is our dry pantry area for bread, spreads, snacks, milo, tea, etc. With a really tight space, we were so happy when we found this vintage shelf off Carousell in such fitting measurements, such that we can still open the drawer at the side and have enough working space while cooking. It’s one of the best thrift buys! ✨
Making use of the vertical space to hang anything that we can hang 🫢
The rubbish bin too! We love that this can be removed easily and hung on the cabinet door nearer to the countertop if needed.
Our simple sink area | We used to have a dish drainer over the sink to save space but our dishes have since grew a lot so we invested in an additional dish drainer tray recently.
It’s always a love-hate relationship with this covered overhead dish drying rack. As it is positioned not above the sink, water drips on the countertop when we place the dishes on it after washing. The door is mostly left opened for ventilation hence the opened door takes up excess space and collects more dusts as well. However, on days that we don’t cook or when guests are here, we do close the door so the kitchen looks neater.
Our washing machine is also in our kitchen. It may be mild inconvenience to have the washing machine a distance away from the balcony where we hang out laundry and the storage shelf where we place our detergent/laundry nets (in the bathroom), but we learnt to live with it! 😌
Decorated the fridge with postcards that we keep ✨
While there are things that we wish we can have in our kitchen if we could renovate it, we have learnt to make the best use of the original space, think of ways to fit our needs and live with less over the years. We love our well-used tiny and mighty kitchen! 🥹