Groceries in a Small Kitchen

A reader suggested that we do the similar crowd sourcing technique that we did for my laundry conundrum. What a great idea! I think we manage groceries in a small kitchen pretty well but i’m sure I will learn alot from all of you! Let me start by sharing how we do it and hopefully we can all help each other.

Weekly Grocery Shop

We do a weekly grocery shop and by “we” I mean Trevor does the weekly grocery shop. I do the cooking and he makes the kids’ lunches. That’s been our system for the past few years after I had a meltdown when I was doing all the groceries and the cooking. The weekly shop helps keep our budget in check as long as we have a general meal plan in mind for the week. We have lots of nearby shops so we often pop out during the week if we forgot an item or want something special. But we found we can get carried away if we do small shops everyday.

About every two months, we also do a costco run instead of the weekly shop which always costs more and we stock up on some pantry essentials and larger items.

With any of the grocery shopping we always keep the size of our cabinets and fridge/freezer in mind. We generally don’t buy multiples. We just buy what we need for 1 week. And we try to keep in mind the meals we are having for the week so we have what we need for those meals but not tons more. We don’t keep a super large supply of dried goods or pantry items. As I’m typing this…I was going to say we don’t really bake but I have dedicated one entire shelf in our small kitchen to baking materials for the 3-4 times a year I bake something. I’m going to think some more about this….

To give some context to what I mean about not buying multiples; we know we can fit 2 bags of chips lying down in our drawer which also houses other kitchen items like cutting boards and lunch boxes. If we buy more than two bags, it would have to go up in the high shelf which has other food items. So we generally don’t buy more than 2 bags of chips at any time. I will not share how often we buy two bags of chips haha.

Cupboard organization

We don’t have a pantry in our small galley kitchen so we have dedicated a number of the cupboards to food storage. We have a bit of a system: Snacks and regularly used foods are kept low and within reach.

On the highest shelves are multiples and overflows. Ok ok, so I do buy multiples of my barista soy milk, please don’t @ me if this is not healthy, coffee is one of my life’s great joys. We are often reconfiguring our storage and making it more efficient. But buying less and going shopping more often is our first line of defence.

Step Stool - I also keep a step stool in the kitchen at all times so I can access the higher up food easily.

Under-utilized shelves- I am analyzing our kitchen as I write this and another cupboard shelf that is under-utilized is the one that stores paper plates and cups which get used a couple times a year and we often buy more when we have an event that requires disposable plates. That precious shelf could be used for more food! I’m really glad we are having this conversation.

Freezer

With our tiny freezer at the bottom of our 24” counterdepth fridge, we have to go through our freezer often and use what is there. We can have one kind of veggie burgers, burgers, frozen fruit and some pizza crusts and one bag of dumplings and our freezer is maxed out. If there is one thing I would change about our kitchen, it would be more freezer space. We have considered putting a small freezer on our covered patio so we could possibly save some money on bigger bulk items and freeze more leftovers but we haven’t made that leap. I wish we could sometimes buy extra berries and freeze them or fit an ice cream cake or buy a large fish or join one of those meat co-ops where you share meat. But none of those things are an option for us. We can’t even fit a larger frozen pizza.

A Few Tricks

lazy susan - we recently got a lazy susan in our fridge to house most of our sauces. This has been super helpful even though our fridge is very shallow. And now I am realizing another lazy susan in the cupboard would help with oils and vinegars.

Move it along - If we don’t go through something quickly, it has to go. We can’t keep an ingredient that we used one time for a year in our fridge (AND of course we have done this before and make this mistake often. but I try to stay on top of it now in our smaller fridge and kitchen). Or alternatively we keep a number of small jars and reusable lids and move things into smaller jars as they empty.

Baskets - I use these kind of baskets to coral like snacks. I am not a decanter. Admire those that do.

This talk of grocery shopping is making me think about counterspace in the kitchen too but i will save that post for another day. After you get a chance to share your space-saving-small-kitchen-grocery ideas below please…

Previous posts about our small kitchen reno here and here. Some more kitchen sources here.

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