As we enter into the holiday season, our kitchens will become full. Full of people, food, activity. It is that sense of abundance that makes kitchens such warm and lively spaces. And while that can happen quite naturally, one can also be sure to give their kitchen a feeling of abundance by design:
1: In Shelby and Joe's Fabulous Family Kitchen, their kitchen island is five feet wide by seven feet long. Such a large surface creates a sense of abundance by allowing a dozen guests to gather 'round or giving the family room to spread out over breakfast.
2: While a feeling of abundance doesn't have to mean big, it certainly can. The take-your-breath-away volume of Lilian's Sunlit Family Kitchen feels abundant because of the high ceilings and oodles of natural light flowing into the space. It's the visual equivalent of taking a deep breath. Ah!
3: Abundance can also come in small packages. Just look at Judith Jones Makes an Omelet for One (to Share). Her small kitchen wants for nothing. We love the open storage of cookware and spices in Judith's kitchen. It definitely gives the space a feeling of abundance, assuring the cook that anything that might possibly be needed is just a reach away.
How do you create a sense of abundance in your kitchen? Is it with something as simple as a large fruit bowl or something as integrated as lots and lots of built-in storage?
Related: Tip: Creating Well-Edited Open Storage
(Images: Leela Cyd Ross, Faith Durand, Sabra Krock)
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(Sigh.)
Judith's kitchen is awesome.
I'm probably on the wrong site for this, but ...
After posts and posts of photo-shoot worthy kitchens [hmm ... maybe the kitchens actually do look like people live in them when no one's there taking pictures! Like the electrons that change behavior when observed...?] I admit I sort of hoped this would celebrate visual clutter a little bit.
More than anything, I associate abundance with people -- family and friends coming and going out of my kitchen, doing baking projects together and dinners with so many dishes that we can't sit at the dining room table because there's no room for plates.
I guess some people show love by cleaning, but I clean my kitchen when I'm bored or need to feel productive. I leave my kitchen messy when I have games to play, children to comfort, or drinks to linger over until I'm too tired to do anything but flop into bed.
And when my kitchen is clean, I find myself wondering: what's the use of all this space if it's not filled with something? (I recently moved to a new house -- the cabinet space is paltry, but still more than I need.)
Abundance evokes having more than you know what to do with.