CHAPTER
8

Kitchen Necessities

In This Chapter

• Getting clear on your cooking habits and needs
• Discovering the best appliances for your specific tiny house kitchen
• Knowing what layout is best for you
• Clever storage ideas

For some people, the kitchen is the focal point of the home and the priority of their tiny house design (it was for us!). On the other hand, some folks love nothing more than going out to eat or are simply atrocious cooks. Knowing what type of chef you are is the best information you can have when going into your design process.

In this chapter, we’ll cover all the factors you’ll need to consider when creating your dream tiny house kitchen. We’ll look at fun exercises to help you identify your needs, as well as a list of questions to ask yourself before you even begin the design process. We’ll go over the major necessary appliances and offer suggestions on how to find the right ones for you. We’ll even cover three tried-and-true tiny house kitchen layouts to help inspire you. Let’s get cooking!

How Important Is Your Kitchen?

We loved everything we saw when we first started looking at tiny houses except for one thing: the miniscule kitchens. We are an active family of four, both of our kids have Celiac Disease (an autoimmune disease aggravated by the ingestion of gluten), and we rarely eat out. Food is a centerpiece of our lives, so the prospect of having a dorm-size fridge and a two-burner stove wasn’t appealing in the least.

This was back in 2009 when tiny house kitchens were impossibly small for a family like ours. We knew we were going to have to break some design boundaries and find a way to create a custom kitchen even if it meant sacrificing space in our living area.

Not everyone needs a kitchen quite as large and well-stocked as ours, though. Many tiny housers work outside the home, are gone most of the day, and enjoy their meals at restaurants. Their kitchen serves as a place for breakfast food and storage for restaurant leftovers.

Perhaps you fall somewhere between these two extremes. What size kitchen you need is a question that only you can answer. It’s important to be crystal clear on what your priorities are when it comes to food and cooking. Following are some questions to ask in your initial design process.

How Often Do You Cook?

Do you record cooking shows on your DVR and subscribe to culinary magazines? If so, it’s safe to say that your love for cooking is a passion. A reasonably sized kitchen with ample storage for the freshest ingredients is key.

You’ll want to budget ample space for countertops as well as a four-burner range with a built-in oven. In lieu of that oven/range unit, you could purchase a high-quality convection oven/microwave unit. Your refrigerator should be large enough to store your fresh ingredients, but not so big that you can’t see what’s in the back. A lot of space isn’t a requirement for cooking a fantastic meal, but it helps to have enough so that you can perform all of the necessary tasks without feeling cramped.

How Many Live with You Full-Time?

How much food you need to store is largely based on how many people live in your household. Since there are four of us in hOMe and we are all athletic, we need quite a lot of space. Being omnivores, we utilize an equal amount of storage for dry goods, frozen foods, and refrigerated items.

TINY WARNING

According to the National Resources Defense Council, a family of four in America throws out about 25 percent of their food and beverages purchased, totaling anywhere from $1,365 to $2,275 per year. Protect yourself from doing the same by creating an appropriately sized kitchen that prevents the blind accumulation of excess food, especially those requiring refrigeration.

The best way to get a sense of how much space you’ll need is by taking stock of your current refrigerator and cabinets. Take out every food item from your cabinets and refrigerator/freezer. Remove all foods that have expired, not been used for at least two months, and realistically will never be eaten. Take your time with this exercise, especially in the condiment and spice shelves. We used to have at least a couple dozen condiments that we never consumed. Today, we have about seven and they are used regularly.

Be fearless in this exercise and keep in mind that the less food you need to store, the smaller your kitchen will need to be, leaving you more space in other areas of your home. Use a measuring tape and calculate how much space you’ll need to budget in your tiny house kitchen.

What Are Your Cooking Habits?

If you’re a bit of a tornado while preparing your culinary masterpieces, you might want to consider more counter space and a larger sink to handle the volume of dirty dishes. However, if you’re a clean-as-you-go kind of chef, a smaller sink will be ample as you prepare your food. You also won’t need quite as much counter space to store the stacks of dirty dishes.

What Is the Power Source in Your Tiny House?

Appliance options for tiny houses are largely dependent on the source of power available. Because it takes so much electricity for an appliance to generate heat, those of us living off the power grid use propane for our cooking and space-heating needs. Those connected to grid-tied power, though, can choose between standard electric appliances and gas.

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Natural gas is only available for houses on fixed foundations connected to a municipal system, so if you plan on being on a trailer, your option is propane. Filling those containers can be a bit tedious, so you’ll want to factor how often you’ll need to do that.

If you are lucky enough to have both propane and grid-tied power options available, your appliance choices come down to preference. We know avid cooks that refuse to cook on electric, while others wouldn’t dream of cooking on gas. Make sure to factor the initial costs of the appliances as well as any long-term operating expenses.

What Is Your Budget?

Though tiny house kitchens are small, they can get expensive quickly. Knowing how much money you have available to invest will help when deciding which appliances and cabinets to install. If saving money is a priority, look for lightly used appliances, cabinets, and countertops.

Search for resell stores such as Habitat for Humanity, and always check Craigslist and FreeCycle. With time and effort, you can save a lot and outfit your entire kitchen with reclaimed materials for $1,000 or less.

What Are Your Culinary Needs?

Striking the right balance between dry goods storage and refrigerated space depends on the types of food you eat. Omnivores generally need a balanced combination of storage for dry and refrigerated goods. Raw foodists tend to need proportionally more refrigerator space and less cabinet storage. Factor this piece in so that you don’t end up with a kitchen larger than what you actually need.

Getting Ready to Design Your Kitchen

If you’ve been gadget heavy in your cooking habits for some time, it may be hard to remember which utensils and appliances are vital and which you can do without. We used to own about a dozen wooden spoons and for some reason we really believed that each one had a necessity. We are now a one wooden spoon family and we’ve had no need to get another one even after three years of cooking large meals for friends and guests.

Before you sit down to design your kitchen, we highly recommend you pare down all of your unnecessary gadgets, appliances, pots, and pans. If you can go into your design process with a clear idea of what you’ll be moving into your new kitchen and how much space those things take up, you’ll have a much easier time.

To help determine what’s vital, we recommend you move all items that aren’t 100-percent necessary into separate drawers and cabinets, preferably away from the main kitchen area. Keep the doors shut and access to the contents limited by adhering blue tape (a nonmarring, gentle, painter’s tape) to their fronts. This applies to utensils, small appliances, gadgets, and also spices and canned/dried/refrigerated foods.

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Typical clutter-prone areas in kitchens to watch out for:

• Herb/spice drawer
• Refrigerated condiments
• Utensil drawer
• Dry goods cabinets
• Freezer
• Plastic/paper bag storage
• Baking pan drawer
• Glassware/plate cabinets
• Pots/pans cabinets
• Plastic containers cabinet
• Junk drawer

For as long as practically possible (minimum of two weeks), use only the items that you didn’t store. Challenge yourself to thin things out even more and see if you miss them when they’re gone. You’ll likely be surprised at how unnecessary the majority of those gadgets really are. Your goals are to end this challenge with:

• A detailed list of all the items you’ll be bringing into your new tiny house kitchen
• A clear understanding of how much space those items require

Appliances and Equipment

Even though appliances are some of the last components to be installed in a build, you’ll need to know which ones you’re going to use way before you start the construction process. The dimensions and weights of your units will play a significant role in your design, so it’s important you start your research early.

The RV industry is a fantastic place to shop for space-efficient and lightweight appliances. There are a wide variety of options when it comes to aesthetics, size, and price in RV units, and you can also find just about everything in either propane or electric.

Another fun place to search for tiny house appliances is in the marine industry. Most live-aboard boats are superbly designed and super space efficient, so they know a thing or two about compact, high-performance appliances. The downside to marine specific units is the premium costs charged for most items.

Ranges, Cooktops, and Ovens

Ranges typically come in two sizes: 30" standard and 20" to 27" for apartment units. What size you choose will depend on how much space you’ve budgeted and how many pots and pans you’ll use simultaneously while cooking. Also consider how large those pots and pans are and how much space they take up when in use.

Here at hOMe, we have a standard 30" combination range/oven with four top burners and a center grill between them. Despite us cooking as much and as frequently as we do, we have never used the center grill, so this full-size range is overkill. In looking back, we would have preferred a smaller unit, which would have given us more counter space and a smaller oven chamber to heat.

Our hOMe kitchen has a standard 30" range/oven combo with a center grill that has never once been used.

Apartment-size oven/range combinations are perfect for those that want more of a traditional cooking appliance but don’t want the wasted space. You can find them as narrow as 20" and with four burners, which is large enough for full-time cooking for two to three people. If you’re a Thanksgiving meal fan, you’ll be pleased to know that their ovens are even spacious enough for a small turkey.

Rather than installing a combination range/oven, a lot of tiny housers opt for a countertop-cooking surface. This is only an option for those with grid-tied power since they come only in electric, placing too great a burden on an alternative energy system. Unless you are a true gourmand, a three-burner cooktop should do the trick.

Induction countertop units are small, lightweight, and plug into a standard wall outlet. They are the sophisticated cousins to traditional coil-top electric burners. They provide a source of steady heat and are highly coveted for their performance by even the most discerning chefs.

Induction countertop units are easy to wipe down and keep clean. When cooking is done, they can be stored out of view, opening up coveted countertop space. One potential disadvantage is that they only work with cookware containing iron so if you have an aluminum set, you’ll need to invest in new pots and pans.

The need for an oven is often solved in a tiny house with a convection/microwave combination unit. Again, this option is only available for those with grid-tied electricity. Convection ovens do a superb job of distributing heat evenly and efficiently in the baking process. They come in various sizes and are small enough to be stored out of sight when not in use. No special electrical wiring is required and the plug simply inserts into a standard wall receptacle.

No matter how small your tiny house is going to be, we highly recommend a venting hood over your cooktop to push excess vapor to the outside. This is true even if your bathroom and kitchen will be next to each other and your bathroom will have its own fan. If you have just one and it’s over your cooking surface, it will pull the vapor and smells from your bathroom into the kitchen each time you turn it on. Be sure to install a unit that vents to the outside rather than one that just circulates air through a filter.

If you plan on using gas appliances, a kitchen vent is not optional, but rather, required. This is because carbon monoxide is produced during the combustion process and must be removed from the home.

Refrigerators

Refrigerator options are just as numerous as cooktops, ranges, and ovens, so knowing what to consider in a tiny house application helps. Once again, you’ll need to establish if you’ll be getting your electricity from the sun (or another alternative source) or from the grid. Though refrigerators have become much more efficient, they still represent a significant power draw in an off-grid set up. An 18-cubic-foot unit demands about 1kWh of electricity daily, which is not easy for a smaller solar set up.

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Average weights of typical tiny house refrigerator sizes:

• 4-cubic-foot electric: 60 pounds
• 7-cubic-foot electric: 90 pounds
• 10-cubic-foot electric: 130 pounds
• 15-cubic-foot electric: 150 pounds
• 18-cubic-foot electric: 200 pounds
• 14-cubic-foot RV propane: 240 pounds
• 15-cubic-foot residential propane: 260 pounds
• 16-cubic-foot Sun Frost electric: 300 pounds

If you can’t spare that amount of power, you can look into residential propane units. They work well in areas where freezing temperatures are rare and propane costs are low (an 18-cubic-foot unit uses .35 gallons per 24 hours). Propane refrigerators are among the heavyweights of the tiny house appliance world (300+ pounds) and aren’t for the budget conscious ($1,500 and up).

Propane units require venting to the exterior, so be sure your wall framing can accommodate said opening requirements. Propane refrigerators can also be found in the RV industry, which might be a better solution for a tiny house since they are designed to take up as little space as possible.

Hyper-efficient electric models, such as the Sun Frost, are an option as well. They require only half the power of a conventional unit, but they come at a premium price and at an exceptional weight. If these models appeal to you, search for one of the smaller ones, as they are a better fit for a tiny house.

Knowing what size refrigerator to invest in can be confusing. We are bombarded with commercials of people drooling over gargantuan units but in reality, large refrigerators are often plagued with rotten food hidden in the back corners. Our favorite refrigerator ever was the dorm-size one in our pop-up tent trailer. During the five months we spent living on the beaches of Baja, we never had a single food item spoil because we always knew what was in it. Granted, this wasn’t a long-term solution for a family of four living 30 minutes from town, but it was great to see that bigger is not necessarily better.

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It can be hard to know what size refrigerator to get. For reference, we personally use an 18-cubic-foot unit and it stores more than enough food for four often hungry people. If anything, it’s actually a tad bit too large and if we’re not careful, we can easily miss eating foods before they go bad. If we were to remodel our kitchen at some point, we would downsize into a 15-cubic-foot model and not miss the extra space.

Finding the appropriately sized unit for you is a function of how many people will use it, how often you’ll be willing to restock it, and how often you’ll eat at home. For a family of four, a 15- to 18-cubic-foot model will easily do the job. If you’re single and don’t eat at home much, something in the 4- to 7-cubic-foot range will suffice and allow you to save hundreds of dollars and a significant amount of space.

Deciding to use a conventional electric refrigerator was a tough choice for us since we produce our electricity with the sun. We knew we were going to add a significant burden to our power load, so we decided to invest in a larger solar system to handle the extra burden rather than to pay $1,000 more for a propane refrigerator as well as a year-round $50 monthly propane bill to run it.

Sinks

When we consider how often a kitchen sink is used day to day, we realize that they deserve our undivided attention when making tiny house design decisions. There might be a temptation to save space with your sink, but we highly encourage you splurge in this arena. Choose one that is about 6 inches larger than your largest pot or pan and you should have a pleasant experience doing your daily dishwashing. If you don’t cook very much and don’t produce a lot of dishes, look for the smallest sink that you can get away with and save yourself extra counter space.

Look to the RV industry for options as well. They have sinks of all sizes and shapes and even white lightweight ones that are made to look like ceramic units. Whichever one you choose, make sure it’s sized for your long-term needs.

Laundry

Most tiny houses aren’t large enough for a traditional side-by-side washer/dryer combination set, so the tiny house community has gotten creative in solving their laundry needs. In deciding the best option for you, you’ll once again need to consider your power source as well as the abundance of water you have access to. Furthermore, you’ll need to ensure you can install both electrical and plumbing lines where you plan to install the washer and dryer.

TINY WARNING

When selecting a washer and dryer for your tiny house, never get one without looking at RV and tiny house forums for honest reviews. Both of these communities have very active online presences and people there are happy to share what units you should never purchase.

One of the most popular laundry solutions for tiny houses is a washer/dryer combination unit. Their effectiveness has improved over time as has their efficiency, and many are now using them with good results. One of their great advantages is that you can toss your laundry into the machine and not need to pull anything out until everything is dry.

Combination washer/dryer sets come available in vented or nonvented options (sometimes even both). The vented units work by pushing waste moisture to the exterior through a vent line, while nonvented ones use an internal condenser, preventing excess vapor from escaping into your tiny house, which can cause moisture issues down the road.

Generally, vented dryers cost less, dry faster, and are more energy efficient. Unless you truly can’t vent your dryer to the exterior, we recommend vented units over nonvented ones. One important consideration when choosing a vented unit is that a venting cap may protrude from your exterior siding, adding width to your THOWs, which may push you over the 8'6" standard width limit. If this is the case, consider not permanently attaching the vent cap and removing it while towing your home.

Most compact laundry units need 220-volt power, which requires a special wiring circuit in your tiny house. If that is not possible because of electrical service limitations, look into drying with propane or a 110-volt unit.

Some combination units are pretty small (24" wide × 22" deep) and can be stored underneath a standard height countertop. Choose a model with higher speed spin cycles—the more water you squeeze out during the wash cycle, the quicker your laundry will dry, saving time, power, and money.

Stackable washers and dryers (available in electric or gas) are sometimes used in tiny houses and are most often placed in the bathroom. You can find units that measure about 24" wide × 26" deep × 70" tall. Given that head height underneath most lofts is at least 6'2" (72"), they generally fit nicely in a THOWs bathroom. They do require venting, so consideration must be given to its placement.

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Let’s not forget about good old hand-washing and low-tech options, too. A Wonder Wash is 100 percent human powered, costs just $40, and provides washing room for two to three pairs of pants, several undergarments, and a few shirts. The best part is that when you’re done with it, the small unit gets stored out of sight.

Lastly, there’s always laundromats. We have certainly put in our fair share of laundromat years and to this day, when we have a lot of laundry after a camping trip, we prefer to go there. Everything gets put in at the same time, which makes quick work out of what would be hours and hours of loading and unloading.

Countertops

Countertop space should be a top priority in your tiny house design because when you don’t have enough of it, chances are high that you won’t be super excited about cooking. You can start figuring out how much space you’ll need by experimenting with your current set up. For at least two weeks, play with how much counter space you need, blocking off the areas not to be used. See at what point the space starts to feel like too little and at what point it’s more than needed.

If you’re limited in how much counter space you can spare for your kitchen, you can install an extra fold down countertop that hinges off the main one. Open it when needed and fold it out of the way when not. You can also create some extra counter space by cutting a custom top that sits flush atop your sink and is easily removed when it’s time to do dishes. In fact, some sinks come with this option “off the shelf.”

Various countertop materials exist and which one you select will be largely dictated by your budget, functionality, weight, and aesthetics. A primary factor you should consider carefully is weight if you plan on hitting the road with your tiny house. Some options are beautiful, but much too heavy for a mobile house.

Cabinetry

Cabinetry can make or break the aesthetics of a space, so take your time when making a selection. Fortunately, there are nearly endless options out there, so you won’t struggle to find something that makes your heart go a-flutter.

Weight is probably the biggest consideration when choosing cabinets for a Tiny House On Wheels (THOWs). Prefabricated ones are often made out of heavy pressboard material and can add more weight to a load than the trailer can bear, so it’s important to know their weight before ordering a trailer.

You can save a lot of weight by looking at RV cabinets or having them custom made out of lighter materials. If you are pretty handy, you can even make them yourself and save a lot of money in the process.

Tiny House Kitchen Layouts and Shapes

Options in tiny house kitchen layouts are more limited than in conventionally sized houses, but with good creative design, you can make all your culinary dreams come true. The following are several tried-and-true tiny house layouts that can serve as great springboards for your own design.

U-Shape Kitchens

Gourmands rejoice, a highly functioning kitchen with full-size appliances is possible in a tiny house, but it comes at a cost—a loss of square footage in other parts of the abode. Because of this, you might want to consider a tiny house 28' or longer. Though a 24' length can work, your living space will be greatly impacted.

Placing a full-size kitchen at either end of your house will allow you to create a super versatile U-shaped cooking area. This configuration is often touted as the most efficient layout as it naturally creates a work triangle, allowing for easy flow between the sink, range, and refrigerator. It’s ideal for those that cook daily and need a good amount of counter space.

U-shape kitchens create a highly functional space with an ideal work triangle.

Our kitchen is 8' wide × 9'6" deep and is large enough for a U-shape layout, full-size appliances, food storage for four adults (plus one-month supply of emergency dried goods), place settings for eight people, and plenty of counter surface area for three people to simultaneously prepare a meal. It’s amazing how often we’ve heard visitors share that our kitchen is larger than the ones in their conventionally sized homes.

Be sure to consider the weight of the kitchen when placed at either end of the trailer, as it will impact the overall balance of the home. This effect on balance can impact the drivability of the trailer and the maneuverability of the tow vehicle as a result.

This layout in a 28' tiny house is large enough to accommodate a downstairs bedroom with a queen-size bed and a standard bathtub in the bathroom. It also creates three sleeping areas between two lofts and a downstairs bedroom.

Galley kitchens installed toward the center of a tiny house keep both ends of the home open for a downstairs bedroom and a comfortable bathroom.

You can leave the wall opposite your kitchen cabinets either open for a dining room table and chairs, or line it with more cabinets for a larger cooking area. This layout is large enough for two adults living full-time in a tiny house and perhaps one or two children.

If you leave the side of the house opposite your kitchen empty, relative to the kitchen itself, there might be effects on the weight balance within the home that affect towing. Be sure to consider this when choosing your design.

The most efficient use of space in a tiny house is a shared kitchen and bathroom/entry vestibule layout.

In this configuration, there’s enough space for a reasonably sized refrigerator, a two-burner cooktop, microwave, small pantry, sink, and counter space. The key to making all of this fit is to use custom 20" deep cabinets and countertops. Because standard cabinets are so deep and things in the back are often hidden from sight, you might not miss the extra depth anyway.

We’ve heard concerns from people that odors from the bathroom may be noticed in the kitchen. However, if you have a good toilet, a strong bathroom fan, and a sliding door to divide the two spaces, you shouldn’t have any issues at all.

These smaller kitchens are ideal for one or two people who plan on moving their tiny house quite a bit. They’re also a great configuration in a larger tiny house where the dweller rarely cooks, allowing for more square footage in the living areas.

Fun Storage Ideas

The key to a successful tiny house kitchen is ample storage for the things you really need. This sometimes requires clever solutions and unique design features. By providing a place for each of your belongings, you’ll minimize clutter and have the best functioning kitchen possible. Let’s look at some creative solutions for space-lean kitchens.

Toe kicks (the recessed area between the bottom of a base cabinet and the floor) can work double duty in a tiny house by not only providing comfort for everyone who uses the kitchen, but also creating enough space for slide-out drawers. Normally that space would remain empty but with custom drawers, you can create enough storage for canned goods, baking trays, spices, and so on.

A lot of tiny houses have exposed framing underneath the loft above the kitchen. Consider sheathing off the surface and installing recessed drop-down storage bins to store your spices, canned goods, and other small items. You can create just one or several of these, potentially adding quite a lot of extra square footage in storage to your kitchen.

The mini wall pantry found in the Toybox Tiny Home of Paul Schultz from Healthy Humble Homes illustrates a great use of space. (Photo Credit: Mieke Zuiderweg.)

One great food storage solution for tiny houses is a mini wall pantry. It creates a lot of extra storage for dried food products without competing for space with upper cabinets or counter space. This wall pantry can be custom built to fit into any tiny house kitchen configuration.

Lastly, we want to touch on the idea of a junk drawer. The concept of a place specifically designed to be filled with nonessentials is totally contrary to living an efficient and organized life. We invite you to avoid the temptation of creating a junk drawer and to instead create a highly organized place to store important items such as small hand tools, rubber bands, extra pens, and the like.

The Least You Need to Know

• A clear picture of your cooking habits and needs is vital when starting your tiny house kitchen design.
• Knowing what to look for while appliance shopping for a tiny house kitchen will save you time and money.
• Some kitchen layouts are better than others for tiny houses, so learn the tried and true ones first.
• Numerous inexpensive and clever storage solutions exist for tiny house kitchens.