Another story about this old house that we purchased! When we bought the house we knew a lot of work needed to be put into it. One of the things we absolutely hated was the kitchen. One of my friends called it a ‘One Butt Kitchen’ because only one person could be in it at a time. That is so true! We are finally able to take on the major kitchen remodel that we had dreamed of three years ago when we bought this place!
Our girls are thirteen and fifteen. They are involved in so many activities for both academics and sports – we are constantly on the go! I honestly thought that we could survive a kitchen remodel with a family fairly easily. I mean, I had plans for meals, for cooking, for cleaning and for hanging out. Until we started the remodel. As with any remodel, there are surprises. And there is scope creep. There are delays. There were blizzards
A Nice Basement Helps
We are incredibly fortunate to have a finished basement and space to move our lives into it while the construction was happening. If we didn’t, I don’t think I would have survived. Especially since in addition to the kitchen, we are having all the main level flooring changed (it was four different types and levels of surfaces) and our master bathroom remodeled. So, we have two teenage girls and two functioning bathrooms. We might actually survive this.
We also have a small utility sink in the laundry room that we will be using to wash dishes that result from cooking. It is a SMALL sink, so I need to minimize what has to be washed because some items just won’t fit!
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How We Set Up
We set up a temporary kitchen in the basement. I used a simple white plastic folding six foot table as the main cooking area. This holds the following appliances:
Slow Cooker
Instant Pot
Air Fryer
Coffee Maker
Toaster/Smart Oven
We also brought our microwave to the basement and set it on another table. And we used some IKEA shelving to hold our dry goods. We already had an extra refrigerator in the unfinished part of the basement, so we moved most of our refrigerated goods to that fridge. Please note: we did not buy any new appliances to make this basement kitchen work. I just used what we already had and tried to make the best of it.
We pulled out all the paper plates we had stored in various places in the house, all the paper napkins (even Christmas ones) and plastic silverware. I even took out all the plastic table covers we had and covered the tables we set up in the basement, knowing that they would provide better protection than relying on us to run to a room with running water to get a wash cloth to wipe up spills or spoon drips! I will throw them out when we are done, so it doesn’t matter what happens to them!
Each of us have a pretty nice water bottle that will hold at least 32 oz of water, so that is our primary way of drinking. We also have a Britta water pitcher that we keep in the fridge and try to keep full of cold fresh water for anyone to use.
Eating
So that’s the setup. The execution is a little more difficult, but not impossible. Finding recipes that are simple dump and go type recipes is the key. For anything we cooked in the slow cooker, we used the slow cooker liners. They saved my sanity!! My slow cooker is wide, so there is no way I could wash it in my tiny utility sink. How awesome to be able to lift the bag out, throw it away and just wipe down the inside of the slow cooker??? Best invention ever.
Breakfasts we made easy. There is always yogurt in the fridge. Bananas and apples are also always available. Add to that hard boiled eggs (from the Instant Pot), frozen microwavable breakfast sandwiches and sometimes store bought muffins. Easy peasy.
Lunches were mostly sandwiches or leftovers from dinner the night before.
Dinners were a lot more difficult and require a lot more planning. Choose the dump and go meals that include a protein, a vegetable and possibly a starch. It sure makes meals easier. I have several meal recipes that fit the bill in my blog. You can see some of them here.
We also occasionally bought frozen meals (aka TV dinners) but our girls are not big fans of them, so it wasn’t often. Bagged salads are a life saver for kitchen renovations! We ate our way through lots of those! Instant mashed potatoes and minute rice provide great sides and they can be microwaved while the rest of the meal is in the slow cooker or Instant Pot. Our family actually didn’t do that a lot because it meant another dish to be carried up to the utility sink to be washed. There were lots of soups and stews made in the slow cooker or Instant Pot and then we added some salad and some fresh french bread or corn bread from the store.
One time we made some cookies out of refrigerated cookie dough in the toaster oven. That was awesome to have hot gooey cookies fresh out of the oven!!
The End is Near
It doesn’t take long for the novelty of only using small kitchen appliances to cook with wears off. Same with the paper plates, the plastic silverware and not eating at a real table. Our goal was to eat out twice a week since a major kitchen remodel is expensive and eating out is too!! We did pretty well meeting our goal, so far. But, we are one the 7th week without a kitchen and some days I feel like throwing in the towel and eating out everyday until is it done! Since I don’t know when it will be done, I guess I can’t do that just yet!
I hope this helps you survive your kitchen remodel with your family!
If you have not seen it yet – we finished the remodel and have the big kitchen remodel reveal here!!