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When you’re a homeowner, a kitchen remodel may be one of the most significant investments you make to upgrade your current living situation. However, if you have a growing family, designing a family-friendly kitchen may be one of the best home investments you can make.
Kitchens are often one of the most important “family gathering” spaces in a home. Ideally, your family can all come together at the start or end (or both!) of a busy day and spend quality time together while sharing a meal.
If you’re wondering how you might best upgrade your current kitchen to accommodate your growing family, here’s a guide that our team RTA Wood Cabinets team has put together to help:
1. Plan for Family Spaces
Is your baby learning to walk? Toddlers are well-known for needing constant attention because you never know what they’ll get themselves into–and that’s especially true in the kitchen!
As it’s filled with knives and glass and other objects that may prove dangerous to young prying hands, your kitchen needs to be made child-proof. If you need to babyproof your cabinets, check out these helpful tips from Parent Guide.
Make sure there are safe spaces where your toddler can freely wander and explore. You may even want to give them access to “their own” low drawer filled with plastic, child-safe containers, so they can spend time in the kitchen with you in a way that’s fun and safe.
As your children grow, you want to continue to ensure that the kitchen is a welcome space for them. Children as young as three or four can start to learn valuable skills such as helping add ingredients to a favorite recipe or learning how to set their own place at the table.
Think about all the ways you can organize your kitchen so that it’s easy for your children to be active participants in your day-to-day food preparation and cleanup rituals.
2. Plan for Storage
Your life is busy enough being a parent – you don’t need to make things harder with a disorganized, chaotic kitchen. You can save yourself time, energy, and sanity by keeping your kitchen well-organized–and the key to good organization is a storage plan.
For example, consider your kitchen cabinets. Do you have “a place for everything and everything in its place”? Are the kitchen items you use most frequently easy to access?
The layout of your kitchen and the storage options you have in place will determine your kitchen “flow.” You want to make sure you’re maximizing the space you have available to make your kitchen prep and cleanup as easy as possible.
3. Plan for Mess
We all know it – kids are messy. Rather than trying to change a timeless fact of nature, it’s better to embrace it and be prepared to handle and contain the messes you can expect your kids will create.
One great strategy is to get your kids involved in putting things away as young as possible. Try to set limits on where and how long they can make their messes – for example, maybe they can play with coloring books and spread their crayons out everywhere, but only on the kitchen table, and only until it’s time to clean up and get ready for dinner.
You can help make clean up time easier for both your kids and you by ensuring that there is a designated go-to spot for all their toys, games, and other prized possessions.
Are you ready to improve your home and family life by transforming your kitchen?
We can get you started on creating the perfect family-friendly kitchen with a FREE Kitchen Design. Just give us a call at 800-788-7575.