Smaller on the Inside

For the most part, I love the little rowhouse we are renting. We have two bedrooms, a small office/closet and a basement. On the first floor we have a nice-size living and dining room. Then there is the kitchen. It is about the size of a small hallway, countertops included. The counter on the left side is about half the width of a normal counter top and underneath the cabinets. It also has no electrical outlets so it is really only useful for housing the spice rack and occasionally some dirty dishes. The counter on the right is a normal width but half of its length is taken up by the sink which is usually full with dishes since we have no dishwasher. Of the remaining half of that counter, two-thirds is occupied by the dish drying rack which is almost always full. If I push the drying rack partway over the sink, I have just enough room to fit my Kitchenaid mixer.
This weekend I made a lemon cheesecake for a party and decided to put candied lemon peel on top. I also made blueberry basil lemonade inspired by Sweetgreen. All this in a miniature kitchen was a recipe for disaster, especially when persistent fruit flies decided to join the party. But somehow, bothe the lemonade and cheesecake turned out great and there were no casualties. I did have to use the overflow space of my dining room table to juice lemons and roll out cheesecake crust. I also had to put the candied lemons in front of the fan all day since the humidity inside was killing them (old house = no ac). The biggest secret to making a small space work is staying on top of the dishes. It would be really easy to just keep piling dishes in the sink and go on baking and try to deal with the dishes later. But that usually results in an unusable sink and dirty dishes taking up chunks of that precious counter space. I also try to clear away anything I'm not working on at the moment. It either goes in the fridge or on the dining table. I've had a tiny kitchen for so long now, I'm kind of used to it.
I still dream of having a big kitchen. If I could, I would just turn our dining room into a kitchen expansion. This dream kitchen has a marble island for rolling doughs and a butcher-block counter I can chop directly on. It has a five-burner gas stove and an electric oven. If I'm really luck it also has a separate brick oven for pizza and bread but I try not to get carried away. A dishwasher (other than myself) would be nice, too. My last kitchen was the size of a closet, this one's a hallway. Maybe next time I'll get lucky and have something kitchen-sized. A girl can dream, right? I have now realized that the kitchen is probably the most important room in the house to me so next time we look for a place to live, that will be priority number one. Air Conditioning would be nice too.

Just so we end on a happy note, here are some things I love about our house: cute, brick, nice front porch and back deck, sizable yard for the city, lots of storage space in the basement, really nice neighbors, radiators are more efficient and less expensive for heating in winter.