Dump the clutter in the kitchen
It’s easy to ignore the mess around your kitchen sink, but it doesn’t have to become a dumping ground for grotty sponges and junk. Jura Koncius reports.
It’s easy to ignore the clutter around the kitchen sink as you’re rinsing kale or scrubbing a frying pan. But if you stop to take a critical eye to your sink and the counters around it, you might get a bit of a jolt. These spaces often become repositories of drippy bottles, grungy sponges and assorted junk. This can be especially true if your kitchen is small and lacking bench space or storage.
‘‘Simplicity is what you want around your sink,’’ says Henhurst’s Phyllis Trevor Higgerson, a New England designer and photo stylist.
‘‘As a workspace, you want it to be functional.’’ In her own small kitchen, she uses a Simon Pearce dinner plate beside the sink to keep her products neat: a wooden dish brush in a bowl, refillable Italian glass bottles holding soap and hand lotion, and a white crock of eucalyptus. Dishwasher tablets are stashed in a stoneware canister. She will sometimes light a candle when she’s doing dishes.
‘‘It’s important to elevate the things and places we use every day,’’ she says. ‘‘It doesn’t have to be a stage set, but why not use beautiful things?’’
We checked in with some design professionals to get some tricks on how to make our kitchen sink areas more functional, organised and attractive.
1. Master your bottles
Dish soap, hand soap, hand lotion: How many of these bulky plastic bottles do you really need at your sink? ‘‘If you can possibly limit the distractions and focus on what you need to do, it will make the job go faster,’’ says designer Betsy Barmat Stires of Frog Hill Designs in Alexandria, Virginia. ‘‘Piles of kitchen cleaning supplies are not what I like to see.’’
She often installs built-in soap pumps into her counters, but if that’s not an option, a popular idea is to decant soap into smaller, more attractive containers that pump or pour.
2. Corral the products you use the most
Shazalynn Cavin-Winfrey of SCW Interiors in Alexandria likes to use a small tray or platter that can hold dish soap, a sponge and a brush.
You often already have something like this in your kitchen, she says, and it’s nice if it’s ceramic so you can pop it into your dishwasher.
She likes to have a small dish near the sink for rings and watches; a simple dip or sauce bowl in olivewood, brass or blue-and-white china are nice choices, she says.
3. Rethink your dish-drying method
If you keep a dish rack out all the time, make sure it’s not looking shabby.
Christopher Peacock, president and chief executive of the high-end kitchen company that bears his name, integrates dish drying into some of his custom kitchens from the start.
‘‘Sometimes, we take a piece of marble or wood next to the sink and cut grooves in it – sort of like the draining board is integrated into the countertop, and it drains directly into the sink.’’ Then there’s no need for a dish rack.
4. Give yourself a green focal point
Peacock always tries to install a kitchen sink below a window, ‘‘looking out onto something green and pretty,’’ he says. If you don’t have a great view from the kitchen sink, a houseplant can help.
Interior designer Liz Caan likes to put a potted topiary or herbs in little vases next to the sink.
‘‘I’m not really a houseplant person, but in the kitchen, you don’t forget to water plants, as they are right in front of you,’’ she says.
5. Do a frequent clutter check