Let’s face it. You can never have a kitchen big enough to your satisfaction. But, what if you have a really small one? Well, small kitchens are not unheard of. Most people have small kitchens. Only a few select have the luxury of big ones. And let’s not get into the kitchens of tiny homes – the Tiny Home Revolution takes the definition of ‘small’ to another level.
It’s not that my kitchen is extremely small, but it is the smallest one I have ever had. With the counter, a fridge and a door leading to a small balcony – we are left with a 4 ft x 4ft space to move around.
The small size of a kitchen may frustrate some people as it can be problematic to cook in such a small place. Or it can be a reason of relief as it hardly takes 10 minutes to clean the entire kitchen.
For me, it has been the latter and also a source of learning some life skills. Weird as it may sound, my ‘small’ kitchen taught me some valuable lessons.
And here is the list.
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Concentrating on one task at a time
In this era when people are going gaga over multi-tasking, we sometimes fail to notice or rather ignore the benefits of NOT multi-tasking. Unless you have ever been caught in a situation where you got yourself into so many things at one time and ended being sloppy in each one of them, you will not understand this. So you ask how my kitchen taught me this? Simple – it is small. There is no place to do more than one thing at a time.
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Everything that you take out should be put back in.
Not everyone cleans up after themselves. Everybody should, some do and most abhor it. I anyways used to clean up after myself. But I never really understood how much other people appreciate it when you leave something clean after using it. So you ask how my kitchen taught me this? Simple – it is small 😛 . By the time you take out 5th item there is no place to keep it. So you have to start putting things back.
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Living in harmony and synchronisation with people around you.
Having a small kitchen is something, but having to share it with others is something else. I share the kitchen with my husband. It may not seem such a big problem, as we generally stereotype husbands as the ‘non-cooks’. But before you make such an assumption, I must tell you, my husband is an excellent cook. And he cooks every day – some days or most days more than me. And I am his humble assistant :P. Hence, getting around each other is not always easy. But after a few days, you start to pick up patterns and moves of the other and learn to work with it. So, do you really need to ask how my kitchen taught me this? Ha ha. It’s small dude!
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Patience
Cooking is definitely an art. But how about having to move every few minutes while cooking so that someone else can take out something from the cupboard under the gas stove? Will you still pour all your love into the cooking? Maybe not. But this is what you have to do in a small kitchen. And a big shout out to my husband for being a master of this virtue. While I, am only still learning it.
Life has a way of teaching us in subtle unexpected ways. It is only a matter of being open to it.
Life And Me 