Is Your Kitchen Family-Friendly?
The Kitchen is by far the most used and abused room in your home, but is yours family-friendly? Whether helping the kids with homework, making tomorrows lunches or having your morning coffee, your Kitchen is not just for making dinner. The kids run through constantly and the husband probably uses the counter space for room to do hobbies, pay bills or as a home office space. What can you do to make sure that your Kitchen is family-friendly? Here are some helpful tips to consider when looking at your Kitchen layout and functionality.
Combined Family Area and Kitchen Space Are Important
Today’s family time is often during the evening hours. Combining your Family Area with your Kitchen space provides mom the ability to cook dinner, while helping the children with their school work or even be involved in the family favorite television show. This also is more convenient for those families that do a lot of entertaining. Guests have the space to interact and mingle with the host/cook during meal preparation. Separated spaces can often cut off people from being included in this special time and give a closed off feeling to the home. This combination gives the area multi-purpose function 24/7 for the entire family.
The Addition of Message Boards
There are a lot of new trends when the topic of message boards comes up. From chalk board walls, white board doors to DIY cork boards made out of fabric or wine bottle corks, there are tons of options to help keep your family on task. These boards can be used for grocery lists, meal planners, children’s practice and sports game schedules, or even for help tracking bills and upcoming special events. You may even consider a magnetic wall, which is easily accomplished with magnetic paint, and then you can go over it with any normal wall paint to match your décor creating a “wall of fame” for your child’s drawings and report cards to hang. The possibilities are endless with the use of various types of message boards throughout your home. Are you going for more of a sophisticated look? Try going with the chalkboard wall and writing the words to your favorite love song or story; or an inspirational quote to get you going each day.
Items Within Children’s Reach
“Mom! Mom! Mom!” Is this a common outcall in your home? Most traditional Kitchens are not set up to accommodate to a child’s height, so your little one needs help with the simplest of tasks like reaching their juice box or their snacks. When you are considering where to store your child’s items or when thinking of changing the flow of your Kitchen, keep these things under consideration. Many families have elected to add in a small compact refrigerator into their Kitchen island to keep beverages within reach, a microwave installed in the lower cabinets in lieu of over the range, and adding lower shelving for storage of healthy snacks that your child can obtain themselves. Children love to help out in the Kitchen, so make things easy for them to be involved when possible. Those are the moments you will treasure!
Organization is Key
Organization is one of the most important things for a family-friendly Kitchen. If your husband or children typically use the Kitchen island for work, make sure there is plenty of seating and items are stored elsewhere to provide ample space. Pots can be stored on a hangar or on the wall by the stove making them more accessible, appliances are all stored on the wall countertops, and there are proper places for your other necessities such as bills, recipes, and knick knacks. Keeping such items out of the way will allow for more family time and less clean-up time, with hopes that bills and other important items are not shuffled to an unknown location by a child making room to help you with dinner.
There are many ways to help bring your family together. Keeping these helpful tips in mind when designing your next Kitchen remodel in Phoenix will not only help the functionality of your space, but let you focus on what is important, your family.
Do you need help designing the perfect flow for your Kitchen? The folks at Todd Whittaker Drywall Inc. are known as one of the Valleys best remodeling companies. They have built their reputation on customer service. Give them a call today to see what they can do for you. They have a full home remodeling showroom to take the stress out of your next remodeling project. Experience the TWD Difference.