the kitchen is the heart of the home
Updated: Oct 12, 2022
Deciding to live in a van means DOWNSIZING. But downsizing doesn't mean you have to forgo every luxury. Since the van is less than 80 square feet of living space, we had to be smart and intentional about every usable inch.
Today I want to share our KITCHEN with you! I want to share with you our appliances, where they are stored, and how we use them.
A fridge/freezer is an important part of any kitchen. If you are building a no frills, no electric build you could get away with a cooler. But purchasing ice all the time, and having minimal storage was not what we were looking for in food storage. We ended up buying the Dometic CFX-75DZW. Basically, it's 75L gross volume (2.65 cubic ft). One side is the fridge, the other is the freezer. We can generally get 2 weeks of cold/frozen food storage. The freezer even gets cold enough for ice cream! SCORE!!!!!
Check out our YouTube video that shows you more about it.
Since we don't have a built-in stove/oven. We opted to for a portable option of a Single Burner Induction Cook Top. We store this in a drawer, and pull it out to use whenever needed. This allows us to keep our counterspace available for when we aren't cooking. We actually don't use it as much as I thought we would. But we are glad to have it for when we want a grilled cheese sandwich. We purchased this from Costoco. It came with it's own pan, but it was so large we never used. We just dropped it off at Goodwill and purchased a Cooper Chef skillet from Walmart. It works and cleans perfectly!
When we built the van we decided not to include a microwave. So many fulltimers were saying that they never used it and took them out. So, we decided to listen to the pros and did not incorporate a microwave into our build. BIG MISTAKE for us! We really missed a microwave. Ray likes to heat up his coffee throughout the day, and we always make more food than we consume in a meal - so reheating is actually important to us. Last year, during Black Friday, we were in Utah and decided to make the purchase. We are so glad we did! We use it DAILY! This is another one of those times where you have to decide what is important to you as an individual. We've met so many van/RVers that don't have one and don't miss it one bit!!!
If you follow us on Instagram or YouTube, you know that I LOVE MY INSTANTPOT. I used to absolutely hate cooking before my InstantPot. As you will see in the photo, Ray built the perfect drawer for this little (actually kinda big) guy to travel in without getting bumped around. I use the InstantPot probably 4-5x a week. One of our favorite go-to recipes is BEEF and NOODLES. Check out this video for how to make it. And check out the description for the recipe.
Finally, Ray built lots of drawers and cabinets for all our utensils and dry goods. We have multiple spatulas, a can opener, ladles, forks and knives. Everything we need to cook and eat! We actually have some utensils that need to find their way to Goodwill because we never use them. We are huge fan of OXO brand utensils and are very happy that they have been holding up very well.
To wrap it up. If cooking is important to you, then you need to put a lot of thought into your build. We made sure to have as much counterspace as possible. Lots of storage and a decent sized fridge. If cooking isn't important to you, then your build will look completely different.
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