Play (Kitchen) for Keeps
Executive summary: After holding out for years, I’ve decided that the time was right to get my daughter a play kitchen for her third birthday. I am very specific about the things that I bring into my home, so this toy has to earn its keep, proportional to the square footage it takes up in our place (2.9 ft² to be exact).
As a minimalist, I am in a constant battle with the stuff that threatens to invade my home. Most of it hitches a ride home with my children, and I am always performing a balancing act between letting them have all the crap that their hearts could desire and playing gatekeeper at the front door. It takes time and effort to maintain a minimalist home, I won’t deny it! I treat it like a hobby, much as golf or crocheting or ham radio might be someone else’s hobby. I do a mental calculation and cringe whenever something new crosses the threshold, but sometimes I just have to let it go (through the door). The most recent example is a play kitchen for my daughter’s third birthday. She doesn’t necessarily fully understand them (like, cooking on the stove seems to be beyond her imagination), but she clearly likes the toy kitchens at school and children’s play areas. I’ve been holding off on getting our own for a long time, because I didn’t want more stuff or to give up more space in our home, but I’ve finally caved. It’s not the first time either — we got a mini play kitchen for my son when he was about a year old (pictured below), but he definitely did not understand/appreciate it. He just wanted to chew on the wooden pot lids and utensils and open/close the drawers (which we had to tie shut so he wouldn’t hurt himself by pinching his fingers). He was clearly too young for a play kitchen at 1yo, so that was my bad. We ended up bequeathing it to a friend down the street when we moved across the country.
Throwback Thursday photo. I’m not sure my son ever knew what this play kitchen was. Everything was just one giant chew toy to him.
But now that my daughter was turning three, it seemed that acquiring a play kitchen would not be a ridiculous idea, especially because she clearly enjoys playing with them when we go out. She also has had a collection of play food and a tea set since last Xmas, which gets a fair bit of use, so I thought it might be nice to kick things up a notch and offer her a more full-fledged play experience. I’ve known for a while that IKEA sells a nice kids kitchen at a nice price, the popular DUKTIG (currently $109). They more recently introduced a second kitchen that is 2” narrower and 2” shorter, the SILLTRUT (currently $89). We opted for the smaller model, because, well, minimalist here, plus I like that the controls are manual (i.e., the stove “turns on” with a physical knob, vs. the DUKTIG uses a button and a battery). It was straightforward to assemble — only 1.5 hours even with my 6yo slowing my husband down 50% with his “help.”
When we first assembled the play kitchen, we set it up in the living room, lined up with the kids’ desks under the pony wall. But I didn’t like so many of the kids’ things encroaching into our living space, so I decided that I’d find a spot for it in the kids’ bedroom. I had been reluctant to squeeze more toys into their room, as I’m trying to preserve as much floor play area as possible, but I was able to make a couple of adjustments to increase the efficiency of the layout. The space under their towel hooks was not being used — it’s too small and awkward for the kids to play squished between the wall and the chair, so I decided to move a basket of toys there. That freed up the foot of my daughter’s bed for the play kitchen. I tried it parallel to the footboard rail, but felt it visually loomed over the bedroom that way, because it’s relatively tall. So I turned the kitchen parallel to the wall instead, to keep it more out of the way. The only annoyance is that there’s this notch in the wall so a couple inches of the play kitchen hangs out into thin air, but I’ve decided to become selectively blind to that flaw. It also helped to put up a “backsplash” (just plain butcher paper taped to the back of the kitchen) that serves double duty of making the wall notch less noticeable (from the front, anyway) and protecting the wall from being scratched by the hanging/swaying pots and utensils. With this layout, I feel like we haven’t lost any square footage in the bedroom and the kids have just as much open space as before.
I found a spot for the birthday present in the kids’ bedroom, which I initially didn’t want to crowd with more toys, but was fine after I figured out a more efficient arrangement for the space.
I stocked the kitchen with all the food-related items in our toy bin: play food, plates, cups, teapot, utensils, etc. I also acquired a cooking set on our IKEA trip (which I whittled down, much as I would in my own real kitchen), as well as a couple of $1 bins to keep the food neatly corralled. Then, to round out the accessories, I asked my parents to buy a cutting board set as their birthday gift to my daughter (from the ever-solid Melissa & Doug), so now this kitchen feels fully supplied! I know there are so many other accessories we could add on, like a toaster, blender, stand mixer, pasta maker, grill, ice cream or popsicle set, pizza set, baking set, truly the list is endless. But no way am I diving into the deep end — we’re going to start here and see how the reception is. So far, the kitchen has been a draw for both my 3yo and 6yo, and that’s what makes it worthwhile for me to accept it into my home. And the bigger it is, the more play it had better see, or out it goes! I’m not trying to deprive my children of toys and fun, but I’m all about intention and moderation. That’s not how kids are programmed (I want it! Now! All of it! More, more, more!) but it’s something we can try to slowly teach them in a world in which it’s so easy buy, buy, buy!
The toy basket that used to sit at the foot of my daughter’s bed is now under the hanging towels, which was an underutilized spot in the bedroom. I actually designed the room this way when we moved in to give my future self (why, hello there) options for filling the space when we needed more storage later. Good thinking, past self!