Preparing meals for 13 people in an rv isn’t always (maybe never) easy. But, while cooking in an rv, whether you have 11 kids or 2, isn’t a cake walk, finding room for all the groceries can be much more challenging than preparing them! We have found a few ways to save on space, and I am sharing them hoping that this post may give you some good ideas if you find yourself stretched for kitchen space also!
Spice racks – another item that my DH installed for me is a spice rack. Just a simple, coated, two-tiered rack that I picked up at Lowes. He installed in on the inside of the cupboard near the stove-top, and it unclutters the cabinet a lot; also uses vertical space that is otherwise unusable.
Repackage – so many of the groceries that we purchase for the rv are ‘convienience’ foods, or include a lot of packaging. While this has changed somewhat now that we full-time, we do still get some items individually packaged. For instance, we regularly purchase those little packets of Gatorade or Crystal Light water-bottle flavoring. Several boxes of these take up a considerable amount of room (in relation to how much room there is in an rv kitchen!), so we take the packets out of the boxes and put them in a gallon ziploc bag. With the air removed, this bag takes up much less room and can be tucked in just about anywhere. Other items, like bagged popcorn, pancake mix, and sugar for kettle corn, we often repackage in small Tupperware or Rubbermaid containers that stack neatly with little wasted space. When choosing plastic containers to use in the TH, I always get square ones as opposed to round, which leaves a lot of wasted space.
Multi-use items – In the rv, I keep my cleaners in the kitchen, just as I did at home, but minus the space for them! In the rv, I don’t have room for a bunch of different spray bottles, so I make do with 2 cleaners (and those are in ‘pre-moistened wipes’ form -and I prefer the soft packages of wipes instead of the bulky tubes). Ziploc bags work for everything from leftovers to hair barrettes.
Multi-use can even be applied to appliances and gadgets – my favorite multi-use item in my kitchen is my VitaMix (and this is a shameless plug for them! 🙂 – we use it to do everything from grinding grains, to chopping fruit for jam, to making the yummiest breakfast smoothies and ice creams! We can even make piping hot soup in it, just not enough for a family of 13! LOL!
Baskets – we use plastic baskets in the kitchen cupboards for small items that might otherwise be vying for room in my 6 small drawers – items that don’t stack neatly, or we don’t use often but often enough that I want them readily available, like the cheese grater and the sippy cup lids. Baskets also work great to keep items like seasoning packets,
Look for unused pockets of space – because of the layout of our toy hauler, the top of the cupboards are about 2 feet below the ceiling. I suppose most people would put some potted plants or other decorative items up there, but for us it meant valuable storage space; I keep light groceries up there such as cereal, bags of potato chips, and loaves of bread.
Prioritize! – this may seem like an obvious way to come up with some extra kitchen storage, but going through your kitchen and finding items that you seldom use and stashing them out of the way can yield a lot of room for more important items. We realized that our ‘junk drawer’ does not have to be in the kitchen – we can more readily make room for those extras in one of the bathroom drawers!
Constant purging – If you don’t use it, get rid of it (remember, we are talking about kitchen items, not the spare tire!). Just because that cute spoon rest came from Myrtle Beach, or that super hot habanera sauce holds fond memories of Quartzsite, doesn’t mean that I NEED to keep them in my rv! I am much more relaxed with a little extra space than being crowded out by knick-knacks and memorabilia.
Many of these little tips can be applied to any area in your rv, not just the kitchen! These have helped us to more comfortably full-time in our rv. I hope that they give you some ideas on how to free up room in your rv kitchen too!