6 tips for cooking in a shared kitchen

They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, and I believe keeping that heart healthy is essential. But when you live with roommates — whether your best friends or total strangers — navigating a kitchen can be a challenge. It’s one of the most high-traffic rooms in the house, and finding the space and time to accommodate everyone and their cooking needs is no easy feat.

It’s a dynamic that chef, food writer and supper club host Rosie Kellett is more familiar with than most.

After years of living in London flat shares, she moved into a warehouse where the tenants practice communal living. All seven housemates contribute 25 pounds per week into one pot and share all the groceries, cleaning products and basic toiletries from the weekly shopping. Each housemate is responsible for cooking one meal a week, and mealtimes are usually social occasions.

The format is hardly the norm, especially in the United States, and Kellett says she has certainly found it instructive on the best ways to share a kitchen. I’ve also had quite a bit of experience with shared spaces: I’ve lived with best friends in shabby apartments during college, squeezed into cramped student accommodation when I studied in London, stayed in a big building block with an ever-rotating cast of roommates during a two-month stint in Dublin, crashed in my boyfriend and his brother’s two-bed, one-bath house during the beginning of the pandemic and now am the proud tenant of a quintessential D.C. rowhouse with two lovely roommates who have become good friends.

As time has gone on and food has played a bigger role in my life, my relationship with shared spaces — especially the kitchen — has evolved. One day, you’re the roommate with a few too many dishes in the sink (sorry!) making microwaveable noodles, and the next, you’re the one who’s cooking multicourse meals and hovering like a shadow with a damp rag and vacuum, cleaning up the messes as