Home: The Kitchen

I've blogged a fair bit about our kitchen previously, but I thought it's time to bring you for a proper tour of the most colourful room in our home today!

When we first moved into our flat almost 10 years ago, we opted to change the cabinetry as those from the previous owner were warping and grimy from all the grease of everyday cooking. However, because we had just started working, we had a really tight budget, and opted to keep the original tiles. This was our kitchen then:

We loved the look of dark wood, and went dark-everything, which wasn't a good idea. The kitchen was long and narrow, and had only one window at one end, so the whole place looked dark and rather gloomy. (Here are some lessons we learnt from our old kitchen.) We then left SG for a year for hubby's overseas attachment, and came home to a roach infested kitchen, simply because our old chute was faulty! So we opted to do an overhaul of the kitchen and toilets, especially since the kitchen drawers were starting to jam, and the toilet tiles were really really old. (If you're interested to find out more about the tiles, you can read this post.)

Anyway, fast-forward to two years after our reno, and our kitchen is looking a whole lot more cheerful. I love cooking in here! The bright yellow backsplash and white counters and cabinetry really help to brighten up this dark room, and the enamel plates also add pops of colour around the kitchen.

I do love enamelware, because it works so hard and is easy to clean! (And they usually come in such happy colours too!) Here's one of my current favourite pots for cooking Baby J's porridge: the Kastrull saucepan. The enamel coating makes washing off burnt-on porridge alot easier compared to regular stainless steel pots.

Ever since the renovations, we've had ample storage space to store things away, so I like to keep my countertop as clear as possible, as I need space to work. I find drawers are a whole lot more efficient in storing stuff compared to shelves, and we store everything away except for the toaster, kettle and Thermomix. (If you look hard, you'll spot our dim sum bamboo baskets. We use these to store garlic and onions!) Hooks above the sink allow easy access to frequently used tools like our scissors and peelers (We use the Fintorp rail and hooks. The hooks are fixed onto the rail, so they won't fall off unlike regular S-hooks, which is a feature I like.)

A clear countertop makes food preparation go a lot faster. :) (These days, we use the Aptitlig chopping boards, which dry really fast and are not as heavy as some of the other wooden chopping boards. And those Elly tea towels are such a steal, and great to use!)



On the other side of the sink is our display wall, and our little breakfast corner.

The display wall is basically filled up with various things that I love: from tingkats (more enamelware!), a painting done by Junior J to postcards that we picked up overseas. (You can read more about the wall here.) The breakfast corner used to be a huge mess of extra Tupperware and random stuff, but now is a nice place for hubby and I to sit down to chat in the mornings, or for the boys to sit and doodle if they wish.

These postcards are framed using Ribba frames... and even our plants are from IKEA!

The breakfast corner holds a jug of water and cups, so that the boys can help themselves to water when they need it. The tingkat holds crayons for doodling, and the Skack serving bowl is perfect for holding fruit. The Barbar tray makes bringing stuff out of the kitchen a lot faster!

We bought these painted kopitiam chairs sometime ago, and I love their vintage and cheerful vibe.

The breakfast corner is also a nice place for a hot cup of tea. (I just had to get this Jamnt cup when I saw it, since we only have one large mug, which the hubby hogs for his tea. This is perfect for my buckwheat tea!)

And yes, our fridge is still plastered with magnets from all over the world. The collection is still growing!

While we had more storage after the renovations, our storage areas were quite a mess with random Tupperware containers and packets of food, and it was hard to find stuff. Recently, I did a clean-out for these areas and got it all sorted using various containers from IKEA. We got our "drinks cupboard" (for a lack of a better term!) sorted using Krus and IKEA 365+ dry food jars:

Some of our frequently used pastas also went into IKEA 365+ jars:

Finally, we shifted all our other dry goods like flour, rice and sugar into Tillsluta dry food jars. These jars seem the most air-tight, and I love how I can fit these neatly into my drawers, compared to the round containers that we used to have.

And just to prettify them up, I used Hemsmak labels for labelling the containers. I think it looks way nicer with the black labels, compared to using torn off bits of washi tape!

PS: You can read about our living room here, and take a tour of our dining room here.

PPS: This post is part of a series of collaborative posts with IKEA. We were given a gift card to purchase some of the aforementioned items in this post, and no monetary compensation was received. All opinions are my own.