Windowsills are Wonderful

I currently have a small kitchen.  Well, okay in all honesty it has great cupboard space, despite the deep pantry shelves nearly driving me spare (you have to do the 'reach and grab' on quite a few shelves and hope you put that jar of chocolate chips or popcorn away in the right spot last time!).

I love the corner cupboard between kitchen and dining room, with it's glass door and glass shelves.  It fits our plates and glasses really well, and the cupboard beneath is a tight squeeze for our plastics.

But the bench space (or severe lack there-of) is insane!  Doesn't help that we are not 'do your dishes immediately and put them away' people.  Dishes get done once a day in our house.  After dinner.  As I am quite partial to hot meals during the day, to baking, to making homemade pasta sauce, hummus, dried kale chips, and more, and therefore the dishes do pile up somewhat.  I've tried (very briefly, I must be honest!) doing dishes after breakfast.  But that doesn't seem to help much.  It's the during-the-day dishes that are the problem.  This is the only house I've lived in that I've genuinely found myself wishing for a dishwasher.  Not to wash the dishes.  That would be great.  But more just to get everything off the bench.  Sigh.  But even if we have NO dishes on our bench, it is still rather small.  Two little patches, either side of the sink, squeezed between the stove on one side, and the dining room on the other. 

Hence I am VERY grateful for our windowsill.

It's a bit of a silly window really.  Rather deep.  So deep I can't reach the back without standing on a stool!  Grin.  I'd have personally chosen something not quite so deep, but wider instead.  But never mind.  VERY glad to have it.

And this is why:

You see?  If I had no windowsill, where would I put all that?!

I have concluded that a good kitchen windowsill needs to be on my house-hunting list.  As someone who likes to use fresh fruit, homegrown, and so on, I need space to ripen the sundry things that land in my kitchen when I am either not ready to eat them or they to be eaten.

Plus of course there's the various plants - I'd have way more herbs than just aloe vera if I had space and light for them!  And the kitchen is the best place to raise vegetable seedlings.  I'm in there every day, so what better place to ensure they get watered and watched properly?

These seedlings were soon transplanted into the garden and instead we currently have an almost ripe pineapple, a plate full of tomatoes, and some gold kiwifruit that are taking weeks to soften up (but are most deliciously delicious once they finally do!).

I am finding that as I get older, I am preferring a tidier house.  Not a bad thing!  But I think the kitchen is always going to look  a little chaotic.  It's a growing, cooking, developing kind of place.  Perfection is not required.  Good food is.

Amy