Find out how to design a kitchen for your busy family. Incorporate these ideas to make your kitchen durable, safe, functional and beautiful for you and your children.
Especially for busy families with children, the kitchen is the nerve center of the house. You may have children of different ages with different needs: toddlers who are apt to run their tricycles into cabinets or touch the refrigerator with sticky hands, school age kids who prepare their own lunches or snacks and teenagers who may need to grab a quick meal before heading out to after school activities. And let’s not forget the parents, who want a durable, safe, beautiful and functional Family kitchen.
No matter what the ages of your kids now, your kitchen will need to last at least ten years, so keep that in mind. Here are some things to think about when designing your new kitchen.
Easy to maintain and clean
As any parent knows, keeping your home clean when you have children can be a challenge since being neat and clean is usually a low priority for kids, especially little ones. Make your life easier by using easy to clean surfaces like quartz countertops, which give you a similar look to granite but are less likely to stain. Laminate countertops are also easy to wipe down and have the advantage of being more budget friendly.
Consider cabinet door styles with a simple design so they can be easily wiped down when your 7 year old decides to bake a cake on her own.
Similarly, choose flooring that is easy to mop and tough to damage like porcelain tiles. Think carefully about using stainless steel appliances because they show fingerprints easily.
Good lines of visibility
An open floor plan will give you visibility into other areas of the house so you can keep an eye on kids while you’re in the kitchen. It also allows for easy conversation and traffic flow between rooms that can make your home feel bigger.
Eat-in area
With today’s fast-paced lifestyle and multiple people with their own schedules going if different directions, it can be helpful to have an additional, casual eating area that can double as a homework area.
You can add this to an island or peninsula or put a freestanding table in a breakfast nook or bay window.
Easy access to food
Rather than constantly having to get snacks for children, give them access to their own snacks. Pantries with pullout shelves put food within easy reach, as do designated snack drawers in lower cabinets.
Refrigerator drawers can also gives kids easy access to approved snack foods.
Get organized
Mornings go much easier when kids’ stuff is easy to grab, so think about how you can incorporate dedicated spaces for homework, hooks for backpacks and lunches into your new kitchen.
You can also set aside space for a family calendar where you can coordinate schedules, or a bulletin board or chalkboard for reminders. You can even use chalkboard paint to turn one of the surfaces of a pantry, cabinet or wall into a handy chalkboard.
Kid height counters
A trend in kitchen designs is to have a section of counter that is a lower height, which is perfect for little kitchen helpers. Add shorter barstools to eliminate falls when children climb into their seats to do homework.
Safety first
Choose ovens, stoves and cooktops with controls towards the back so they can’t be easily turned on by little hands. Consider using a magnetic strip for your knives on your backsplash so they are out of reach.
Talk to your kitchen professional about how to design your kitchen for your whole family to use and enjoy safely. Don’t have a kitchen professional? Upgrade to Plan Right™ free plan, and in addition to the enhanced budgeting tool and full access to our video tutorials and article library, we will connect you with up to three kitchen professionals in your area who have met or exceeded our strict qualifications.
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