Kitchen
Retire your kettle Perhaps the most desirable kitchen innovation of all is the boiling-water tap (some dispense boiling water and some nearly boiling, so do your research). It means no more waiting around for the kettle. A boiling-water tap is not the cheapest investment, but once you’ve got one, you really wouldn’t want to go back. In fact, make sure you shop around because prices are definitely coming down. You can buy these with the kettle function integral to the main tap – they normally have a safety feature on the boiling water valve that makes it harder for children to twist on. Others are separate, standalone taps that you can put near the main water tap or even elsewhere in the kitchen out of reach of little hands. There’s a storage canister, which is housed below the sink, so before you take the plunge, you’ll need to check on available space.
Fit a waste disposal unit to your sink They’ve been around for years, but modern-day units are incredibly efficient, quiet and also environmentally friendly. Tip your food waste (including bone) into the drain, press the switch, and in a matter of seconds it will have been pulverised into tiny pieces and sent off to the water processing plant. There’s now capacity in the UK for this food waste to be made into fertiliser, so it’s ultimately a good, green solution. You can even get rid of that little food waste caddy that takes up space on the worktop.
Put together a work station behind closed doors Microwaves can be bulky and take up a lot of worktop space, but you can give yours a home in its own little cabinet. Make sure you keep the doors open while it’s operating for maximum ventilation, but feel free to hide it away again when you’re done. Another popular storage nook idea is a breakfast station, with a coffee pot, kettle, toaster and other morning necessities all to hand in one place. Or you could create a baking zone, where a large food mixer can sit, plugged in and ready to go. This sort of function-specific storage is great for making the most of your mid-sized appliances while keeping your work surfaces clear.
Secrete those sockets As we add more and more appliances to our kitchen arsenal, we have a greater need for plug points in handy places. It used to be that the only solution was to line up four or five double sockets on the wall. These can be tricky to tile around, and it’s expensive to cut a bespoke splashback to fit. With a few of these pop-up power points in your worktop and island, you can reclaim your walls and simply tuck the sockets away when not in use.
Embrace drawers not doors In the quest for simple, easy-to-access storage, the drawer is an ideal vehicle. Some kitchens are designed entirely with deep drawers, because it’s so much easier to get to your heavy pans from above than scrabbling at the back of a cupboard. Now appliance makers have caught on: you can get a pull-out dishwasher, fridge or freezer contained in a sleek drawer. With a birds’ eye view, it’s much harder to lose a sorry pot of houmous at the back of the fridge. And who knows – when the dishwasher is this easy to unstack, members of the household might even fight for the privilege! Discover more ingenious storage trends
Let your oven clean itself Scrubbing away at baked-on grease deep in the belly of an oven has to be one of the toughest cleaning jobs there is. So next time you upgrade your cooker, opt for a self-cleaning model. One of the most effective technologies to accomplish this is the pyrolytic cleaning function. The oven heats to an extremely high temperature, which enables it to burn away grease and spills. You can then wipe the ash away with a damp cloth. Alternatively, ovens fitted with catalytic liners are a less pricey option. The liners are fitted to the sides of the oven, and are created to absorb and then burn off grease at 200ºC. They only clean the sides, however, so you’ll need to deal with the trays and door.
The kitchen is often the social hub of the home, and the place where we tend to congregate. Into this informal atmosphere come our gadgets, too. However, it’s not always the safest environment for them, with sinks and hot plates, steam and heavy pots. So why not incorporate a charging drawer or cupboard into your kitchen design? Here, the drawer consists of a tray with recesses for each gadget. Hidden away beneath is a charging hub, with a port for every item.
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