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Take a look at your kitchen. Is it a streamlined space that enables you to go about your business like a well-oiled machine, or is it a hodge-podge of a room where the plastic wrap is on the opposite side of the room from the food preparation area, and the glasses are kept nowhere near the sink? If it’s the latter, you may want to take steps to make your kitchen that bit more convenient. Here’s how:

Use Less Steps

It is possible to design your kitchen in such a way that you can cook, clean and get snacks without having to take more steps than necessary. You can do this simply by storing items close to the areas they are used and with the things they tend to be used in conjunction with. For example, keeping the kettle, tea caddy and teacups in the same area of your kitchen will save you from moving about the kitchen like a headless kitchen.

Wide Aisles

It’s not always possible, but if you happen to have a big, spacious kitchen, make the most of it by creating wide, spacious paths, which will enable you and your family to move around safely and do your own thing, without the prospect of scolding, dropped cups, slips, trips and falls.

Keep the Cooker Away

If you have young children, you need to keep them safe in the kitchen, and by far the easiest way to do this is by keeping the cooker, kettle and other dangerous appliances in an area that is removed from high-traffic parts of the kitchen, such as the route to the fridge or sink.

Expand Your Sink

There is now a mind-bogglingly huge range of kitchen sinks available for purchase. You should take advantage of this fact by upgrading to a larger sink, which will hold more of your dirty dishes so that you don’t have to stack them as if you were playing Jenga.

Add Appliances

There are a number of kitchen appliances that can make the room more convenient than ever before. From KitchenAid’s to rice cookers and even the humble microwave, there are numerous things that can cut your cooking time and enable you to relax and enjoy the room. Utilise the ones that will help you the most, and you won’t regret it. Just be wary of buying every kitchen gadget you see – most of them won’t be used, and you’ll have wasted a lot of money if you do!

Counter Space

You should always aim to maximise the amount of counter space you need. So, If you cook a lot, often have more than one person cooking at the same time and use the counter space for other things, plan your kitchen design in such a way that you have more than enough counter space.

If on the other hand, you rarely do a lot of cooking and you prefer to relax, dine and throw parties in the kitchen, you might want to cut counter space to make room for a dining table, an easy-chair or other things that make the kitchen work for you. There is no one size fits all solution.