My neighbor is pregnant. She asked me if I had an idea how to redesign the kitchen. She wants everything to be fixed before the baby comes. I have designed a lot of interiors, Cafés, apartments, offices, lounges, booths and showrooms. This is actually my expertise and passion. And of course you can ask experts for advice. And there is nothing wrong about planning the perfect kitchen. But here is the issue: Life is not perfect, the future is not perfect, so why do we always want things to be organized and planned in a perfect way? How many assurances do you have? How many memberships (ADAC, McFit)?
Finally these What-If-constructions don’t make your life safer. They make you more noncreative. And they evoke expectations in a life, that evidently must be somehow secure and in a way perfectly planned. The same happens when you start to plan your kitchen with a designer: you don’t create garantuees by planning the perfect kitchen, you create expectations. And wrong expectations are the source of bad mood and can lead to exploitation (I have seen so many small companies and carpenters getting bankrupt, because they could not fulfill the expectations of their clients who were asking for a redesign and redesign again).
So here are three game changers, that help you to get your new kitchen worked out, without stress and money:
1. Do the MacGyver method
This means, look around. What are the things you find in 20 meters radius around your issue? Tools, material, unused items such as Bottle boxes, card boxes, wood from an unused bed, broken toys, unused picture frames, wire, metal things, screws, broken furniture, unused lamps, unused clothes and so on. How can these unused things can trigger you to build your kitchen?
2. Build prototypes
Don’t think or plan to much, you want to know how a bench would look like in the new kitchen. Alright then, let’s stack bottle boxes to a height of 45 centimetres (that is a good bench seat height) and put a plank on top. How would a pendant lamp above the diner table look like? Don’t plan, do it! Get an unused lamp from the sleeping room and fix it to a shelf with a clamp to make it hang in the middle of the table. How does a white table cover look like? Get a white bed blanket and put it over the table. So these are the things that we probably did. It’s trying things out without judging. Getting creative and solving problems when they occur (not before). Actually this is playing.
3. Do it with your hands
As long as the things are not too heavy, do it with your own hands. my neighbor was pregnant so we made sure, not to move heavy edgy wooden planks in a dangerous way. But as long as you can push boxes from A to B and clean and tidy up lost corners to make space for new things (such as the new bench), you should do it on your own and not let others do it for you. Why? Because it makes you feel more independent and you will feel encouraged to change the arrangement again whenever you are in a mood to play.
Actually I tried not to help too much. I had a good excuse, my son was in a baby sling in front of my chest so I was handicapped more than the pregnant woman anyway.
Moving things with your hand also moves thoughts in your head.
Actually after 2 hours of playing, we had an idea of the kitchen that would fit the wishes of my neighbor. I mean it was not perfect, the bench was not 100 percently plan, and the backseat improvised with wooden timbers from the terrace was not solid, but you could already feel the new vibe. And we stopped planning. Because the new kitchen was already there. You can make the kitchen be what you want it to be without too much planning and money. And here is the good news: What you just did with your kitchen, you can do with almost everything in your life.