Make your kitchen a more inviting place to cook and live with these easy ideas to improve your kitchen without a full kitchen remodel.
Welcome to our October monthly challenge!
This month, Larisa and I will each be working on making our kitchens more enjoyable spaces for us and our guests to spend time in.
I will be working on making my kitchen more welcoming by focusing on decluttering my kitchen countertops, organizing my pantry, and improving the ways my plants are displayed in the kitchen.
And Larisa will be focusing on making her kitchen cozier by solving some organization and storage problems and refreshing her kitchen cabinet hardware, bar stool cushions, and roman shades.
We would love for you to join us! Projects are even more fun when you share them with your friends!
Table of Contents
- Join us for the Kitchen Projects Challenge!
- Make Your Kitchen a More Inviting Place
- Simple Tips for a More Enjoyable Kitchen Experience
- Jill’s Kitchen
- Adding Counter Space to Your Kitchen for Free
- Kitchen Pantry Cabinet
- Plants in the Kitchen
- Larisa’s kitchen: The search for order amongst the chaos
- Kitchen organization
- Kitchen design refresh
Join us for the Kitchen Projects Challenge!
It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!
- We publish a blog post with the details of the monthly challenge on the first Saturday of each month.
- You take part in the challenge and take a picture or video of what you are working on.
- Send the picture or video to us at [email protected] or DM us on Facebook or Instagram.
Make Your Kitchen a More Inviting Place
If you look at social media much, you’ll see a lot of beautiful pictures of kitchen makeovers.
But you don’t have to do a full kitchen remodel to make your kitchen a more enjoyable place to cook, live, and entertain.
There are a lot of simple ways to make your kitchen a place you enjoy spending time in.
That’s what we’ll be focusing on with our kitchen projects this month. Easy ways to make your kitchen feel more inviting.
The kitchens in both Larisa’s and mine homes truly are the heart of the home.
We both have open kitchens in the middle of our houses that are open to our living rooms and the entrances to our homes.
So, we spend a lot of time in our kitchens cooking, eating, living, and a lot of time observing them from the other rooms that are open to them.
Simple Tips for a More Enjoyable Kitchen Experience
- Remove extra stuff and clutter from kitchen counters and islands so that they can be easily used.
- Organize kitchen cabinets and storage so that each thing has its own spot and can be easily found and put away.
- Hide appliances, kitchen tools, and products that you don’t use daily or very frequently.
- Have attractive kitchen tools that are left out on the counters.
- Add a few decor pieces that you love that will make your kitchen feel cozier.
Jill’s Kitchen
This is what our kitchen looked like when we bought our home four years ago.
Like with the rest of the house, I removed the popcorn ceilings and painted the ceilings, trim, and walls. Oh yeah, and I did replace the 90’s brass light fixtures!
But other than that, it’s all the same.
Oh my gosh! That is so alarming to read in print!
So, I figured now is as good a time as any to work on making my kitchen more welcoming for Kevin and I to use and guests to enjoy.
Adding Counter Space to Your Kitchen for Free
Yes, you heard me right!
You can add countertop space to your kitchen easily and for free.
All you have to do is move the clutter and appliances that don’t have to be left on the counter.
One way to make your kitchen a more inviting place is to clean off the countertop clutter.
Organize Kitchen Products and Supplies
I’ve found that I have certain categories of products and tools that get left on my kitchen counters.
The counter above is famous for being covered with bread items and tea making supplies…not to mention the big ugly microwave that takes up at least a third of it.
I find that when things in my home don’t have a specific place that they belong they get left out as clutter.
I’m going to find a spot and/or possibly get a bread box to store my breads, and I would like to find an area where I can organize my tea making supplies.
Hide kitchen appliances
Small appliances take up precious kitchen counter space.
I’ve already hidden most of my kitchen appliances in my cabinets. There are only two left on my countertops: the coffee maker that my husband uses every day and the microwave.
There are many different ways to hide or get a microwave off a countertop these days. I’ll be buying a smaller microwave and hiding it on a shelf in my pantry.
Kitchen Pantry Cabinet
A kitchen pantry can help make your kitchen a more inviting place by increasing hidden storage space, and help organize tools, appliances, and food.
A pantry can also add some counter space to a kitchen.
I built this kitchen pantry several months ago…but as you can see, it’s not quite finished.
I’ll be finishing my pantry by painting it white and installing the cabinet doors.
And I’ll be putting some shelves in the top of the cabinet. So, I can store all my stuff.
I’ll be moving my microwave off of the countertop and onto a fixed shelf I’ll be building in the top of the cabinet.
I’ll also be adding some adjustable shelves while keeping the shelf that is currently covered in clutter as an additional “countertop” area for the kitchen.
Plants in the Kitchen
Another easy way to make your kitchen a more inviting place is to add pretty things and things you love!
If you’ve been reading this blog for very long, you know that I love growing house plants and using them as decor in each room of my home.
So having plants in my kitchen makes it feel cozier to me.
This month I’ll be taking a look at how I can best display my plants in the kitchen.
Most of the plants that I have in my kitchen currently are on windowsills which isn’t always the most convenient place when I want to open/close windows or blinds.
I also have quite a few plants on the top of my pantry cabinet.
I’m definitely going to upgrade the trash bag that I currently have on top of the cabinet to protect it from plant moisture. I’m going to get a piece of glass or plastic cut to fit.
I also want to build a simple plant shelf to add a second level of plants on top of my cabinet so the ones in back can be seen better.
Larisa’s kitchen: The search for order amongst the chaos
Like the entryway refresh that I finished last month, the biggest challenge in my kitchen is organization. Simply put, I just have too much stuff for the space.
I have too many countertop appliances
I have too many utensils in my 2 dedicated utensil drawers
The counters are always cluttered
Kitchen organization
I don’t know yet exactly how I’m going to address these issues, but I have a few ideas:
- I want to find a space in my pantry for onions, potatoes, squash, bananas, etc. that usually sit on my island counter
- I need to address some storage issues in the basement, where I have an overflow kitchen area. It’s a mess, and I’d like to get that organized so I can move a few things down there (like the coffee maker that we use sporadically).
- I want to assess each item and see what I really need upstairs, and what I really need at all. I’m a shopper and I buy too much stuff, and I’m starting to realize that all that stuff has to end up somewhere.
- I need to find a way to better organize drawers and cabinets, because they all seem to be bursting at the seams.
Kitchen design refresh
Beyond organization, I have a few aesthetic things to work on – nothing major.
Replacing cabinet hardware
I’ll be replacing all the hardware. I had originally had brushed nickel cabinet hardware but at some point I painted it oil rubbed bronze but it just hasn’t held. I’ve redone it once already and I’m tired of futzing with it (sometimes I have a DIY fail… it’s ok). I’m thinking of something fairly modern looking in black or bronze. It’s a pretty easy (though not cheap) way to refresh the look.
Perhaps something like this:
My appliances and my countertops are a dark gray, so I think black might be the safest color.
Recovering kitchen bar stools
“Reupholster” seems a bit of a big word for what I’ll be doing so I’ll just call it “recovering.” I’ve switched out the fabric before and it’s never quite fit with my vibe. It’s funny because these stools (from Target a million years ago) originally had black fabric, then I switched to a beige floral, and now I think I’m going back to black. We eat on the stools and they always get dirty. Plus, I happen to have a ton of black linen fabric to use. I’m going to give it a try and see if I like it.
Recovering roman shades
Speaking of linen, I also have a ton of white linen. I’ve been toying with this idea for a while, and this refresh is giving me an excuse to dip my toes in. I bought some cheap roman shades from JC Penney years ago, for my kitchen, dining room, and living room (basically all one big room). They really were ridiculously cheap but they’ve served a purpose. In the winter, I can’t stand the dark night staring in at me, so they keep the darkness away! They actually look ok, but I’ve seen some videos on YouTube where people have refaced them and it seems pretty easy (besides the hand sewing, which I hate). So I’m going to give it a try and see how it turns out. If I like it, then I’ll see if I want to recover the three in the dining room, and the three in the living room as well (winter project!)
That’s basically it. I’m sure I’ll find some other decorative things that I want to add, or something I want to change. We’ll just have to see how the project evolves. Be sure to follow along and see how it all turns out.
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