So you think you need a big kitchen, huh? Maybe you’ve decided to gut your whole house to get the perfect kitchen, or you’ve told your real estate agent the house of your dreams has a kitchen Chef Emeril would envy. Hey, no judgement here. I’ve been there, and I even picked my RV simply for the kitchen. Now here are 5 reasons I think my RV kitchen is just plain awesome.
5. It’s in my living room
Okay does that sound weird? I promise it isn’t. Too many houses I looked at when I was house hunting last summer had kitchens blocked off away from the rest of the household. It made them feel cramped and tiny. My RV kitchen is kinda the centerpiece of our home and I absolutely love it. I can cook and watch Ed and Chelsea play at the same time. I can be Susie Homemaker and still be part of the fun, too.
And isn’t this the current trend? I know from hitting the treadmill at the gym everyday and watching all these house renovation shows that many people desire what I bought already built in, a kitchen that is the focal point of the family home, a kitchen that flows and connects each room.
Okay, so maybe my kitchen doesn’t “make the rooms flow”as there really is only one room, but you get what I’m saying.
4. It forces me to not complicate mealtime
My cabinet space limits the amount of dishes I can store and my pantry is only about 6 inches deep.
What? Did she just say 6 inches? Girl be trippin’…or starving. Either way, she cray.
Hear me out, people. Because I have limited space and storage in my RV kitchen, I am really forced to keep things simple. I plan meals ahead of time and can do so very easily because I can see with a quick glance ALL THE FOOD I HAVE IN THE ENTIRE HOUSE. Seriously, I can open the pantry door and see every single item I have, then without even so much as a step I can open my fridge to see what is in there.
If that isn’t luxury, I really don’t know what is.
I’ve saved so much money in grocery bills because I’m using every bit of food we have in the house. I’m not re-buying things that I can’t see and I’m certainly not buying stuff that isn’t going to fit in the limited space I have, (I’m talkin’ to you, industrial-sized peanut butter!). I know exactly what I’m making for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because it is all so visible.
Now back to the limited dishes. A lack of dishes makes it impossible to serve up some 5-star meal. Most dishes I make (or Ed…okay Ed does most of the cooking) are super simple and require the least amount of steps it takes to get to delicious. If a meal idea takes more than 2 or 3 pans, one cutting board, and a knife, fuhgeddaboudit. We’re going with spaghetti again.
3. Everything I need to prep, cook, and clean up is right there.
Picture it. Wednesday night dinner. You’re making spaghetti with sauteed veggies on the side and a salad. Your jams are going and your toddler is coloring within eye shot and your husband is telling you about his day at work. You are washing the dishes you used to prep as the noodles boil, turning every dish or two to stir the pot. Your salad is already chopped and ready and it took less than 20 seconds to set the table. You easily pull out the strainer (or colander for you fancy folks) and your husband hands you the spaghetti sauce right as you dump the noodles into the serving bowl. Voila! Dinner is served and half of your dishes are already washed.
Dreamy right, my house dwelling friends?
Okay, so maybe it doesn’t always go that seamlessly in the Wilcox household but most of what I say is true and totally possible in my RV kitchen! Everything I need is literally one or two steps away and I really do wash the dishes as I’m cooking. I mean, I can touch the sink and the stove at the same time, why not save some time? My dishes and my dining room table are next door neighbors so it truly only takes seconds to set the table. And like I’ve established earlier, my kitchen and living room are pretty much the same thing so I do have great conversation with my husband as Chelsea plays while cooking (okay, that’s the part that can vary if we’re being honest here.)
2. This RV kitchen ain’t big enough for the two of us.
Why is this awesome? Because no one can come in and invade your space and tell you how to spice your chicken! Need I say more? Didn’t think so. Moving on to number one.
1.Even at its messiest, I can clean it in less than 15 minutes
Liz, I just don’t believe you.
Think about it. I have no tile grout to scrub. I have no large kitchen sink to hold tons of dishes. Heck, I don’t even have the space for tons of dishes. This means I never even have the opportunity for Mount Dirty Dish. Everything is super accessible so it is easy to put things back where they belong. Even when I drop my water jug off the counter and water goes everywhere, “everywhere” is more than manageable.
I never get that feeling like “ugh, I’ll just leave this bag of cereal on the counter because I can’t bare to walk to the pantry.” Okay, that’s a stretch… Alright, it’s a straight up lie! I’m a real person suffering from real laziness!
Sometimes I get that feeling, but when I do finally snap out of it, I can easily walk my two steps to the pantry and put the cereal away. Even when the kitchen is disgusting and just about every dish was used from a day’s worth of sloth-like behavior, I can still manage to do dishes, wipe counters, scrub the sink and stove, and sweep in 15 minutes or less. To me, this is one of the greatest blessing of my life!
Do you have a kitchen you just love? Tell me about it! Have I convinced you to move into an RV yet? If so, sign up for one-on-one coaching to RV living here!
This is a huge part of what draws me to the RV lifestyle! Our house’s open floor plan allows me to not feel completely ostracized when making dinner however, I still feel like I have way too much space and that space makes it easy for dirty dishes to gather if I am not super careful.
EeLaina, I feel that way in the fifth wheel. We will eventually go smaller and I’ll be forced to do dishes more often. With this big ole kitchen, I can sometimes go a whole day without doing them (and then be filled with regret). I hope you get into an RV sooner rather than later!!!
I really like our kitchen, even though it is separated from the living room. It is, however, right across from the dining table and we always have the tv off when eating our meals and try to eat at the table so that we can have some great face to face time. Another reason I love our kitchen is because we have an island where we can set up a buffet line when entertaining and people can easily get around it while not invading the cook’s space! Plus, it sits on an exterior wall to our back porch, so we can watch the kids play out back while preparing our meal as well as entertain out back very easily! I do like the idea of having the living room connected to the kitchen, but it’s not a deal breaker to us!
Oh wow! It sounds like you have a nice kitchen, too. I love that you can watch your kids play while being inside. My friend has that in her kitchen as well and she loves it. She says it really helps her get stuff done in the most important and used part of the house while the kids are doing their own thang.
We lived the rv life for a year and a half before needing to go sticks and bricks again because of an adoption. I miss my perfectly clean little house on wheels – scrubbed to perfection everyday because it took me 30 minutes….tops. I miss the cozy conversations too. 🙁
Awww! I would love to adopt but obviously can’t right now. I know one day we will “settle down” and that opportunity will arise, but until then YES! I am enjoying my tiny clean home.
We went from a small kitchen to a smaller kitchen when we moved, but yours takes the cake! I need more space than that. My husband and I both love to cook, so I don’t mind going gourmet. I just wish we had a dishwasher again!
My husband LOVES to cook. I’d say it’s alright. haha
That is an amazing RV kitchen! Btw, I think you might have more counter space in there than I have in my kitchen. LOL
Love it!
Thanks Kristin! I love love love my kitchen!
I totally agree with 1&2! I hate people invading
Too many chefs in the kitchen is definitely a problem!
I have my eye on a class B RV, so my kitchen will be in my living room AND bedroom, lol! Those 6 inches of cabinet space made me do a double take… wow.
haha Class Bs are quite tiny! But RV life is awesome!
The common theme in all this seems to be that an RV kitchen makes it a pain to do the stupidly complicated and/or fancy things many of us are tired of anyway 😀 Amiright?
I have a tendency to overthink & overcomplicate. I hate it. And sad, but I do better with fewer options. I get really imaginative with what’s in the cupboard/fridge when I haven’t been to the grocery store in a while, and those are some of our best meals. I think an RV kitchen will mostly make me less of a crazy woman. But —
For many reasons we’ve decided a Class A is right for us. However it isn’t until you get wayyyy outside our price range that you see the kinds of island kitchen in a Class A that you have, and that are commonplace in travel trailers and 5th wheels. These things have like NO prep space 🙁
I do realize I’ll have to seriously pare down what I have in the way of kitchen toys, and I’m totally *not* talking about wanting room to set crap out all over the kitchen counters. So let me ask you this: If you had no island, what would you do to cope? #WWLD
(You get to have a sink…just no island.)
I think as long as I had one of those board thingys that cover the sink while I’m working, I’d be okay with no island. Or a board that is collapsible on the side of the counter, you know what I’m talking about?
Great article and yeap you can totally clean up an rv kitchen even at its messiest in about 15mins. Unless of course you have one gigantic sink like I do in my rv and a kid that dirtiest all the dishes in the house at every meal, then it may take a little longer.
I’ve got a pretty big double sink and sometimes when I’m lazy it gets pretty full, but it still doesn’t take as long as my “regular house” clean up!