Saving Space in the Smallest of Kitchens

Featured blog post by 2018 Brand Ambassadors Jen & Chad

VanLife Living: 2 people, 80 square feet of living space, and one very small kitchen.

Recently Jen and I were on our second month-long journey throughout beautiful British Columbia, Canada; touring various parks, mountain bike destinations and lakes. We love the VanLife and all the freedom it affords us, but it definitely presents unique challenges when you have two people that live in 80ish square feet of space for extended periods of time. As our trip progressed we learned what works and what doesn’t in terms of storage and finding a home for things.

As you can imagine, efficient storage space and good organization both become paramount. Most areas of the van are fairly easy to hash out, but out of any area in our camper van, the kitchen galley gets the most attention day after day. We love cooking gourmet meals and testing how creative we can get with food while on the road. Being on the road doesn’t mean living off fast food and instant noodles!

That said, we have very limited storage space in our galley for all things cooking, eating, and drinking. Traditional plates, bowls, pots, and pans just don’t work well in terms of efficient storage utilization in tight spaces. Our Sea to Summit X-Series collapsible dinnerware fits into our van kitchen very nicely and has become our favorite, most used gear in our kitchen galley (and probably in the van overall). We are able to keep maximize our storage space, placing a full compliment of bowls, plates, and X-Seal & Go food storage containers in a single 4 inch tall drawer! Now that’s efficient!! The more space we save, the more space we have for our “luxury” items like our mini blender and rice cooker, which help make eating on the road way more healthy and enjoyable for us. Especially when Jen gets her breakfast and coffee in bed in the morning.

Considering our tight space restrictions, we typically look for items that can serve more than one purpose. The X-Plates and X-Bowls are awesome in that respect - they basically both plates and bowls in one product. We love the versatility of using the X-Seal & Go storage containers to store food or use them as a cup or bowl when we are cooking for new friends. For us, this not only has made our storage more efficient, but it’s made things simpler - we have 8 X-Series pieces that we look to daily, all in a single drawer. We even fit in our Drylite Towel and Wilderness Wash that we use for washing and drying dishes in the same drawer.

Our fridge is no different when it comes to space...it gets packed, and I mean PACKED! Usually we will stock up on certain things if we know we aren’t likely to be able to get something to our liking down the road. Chalk one up for the X Seal & Go containers again! They help us maximize our space in the fridge as well. Whether we use them to store prepped food or leftovers, we are able to collapse them down as we take a little out of each container here or there, making more room in the fridge. Bowl, plate, or food storage - we love the grab and go versatility!

Sea to Summit’s X-Series dinnerware is one of the most used and versatile items in our VanLife arsenal - from the drawer, to the fridge, to breakfast in bed, or a quick seaside lunch, they go with us everywhere. We can’t imagine our van without them!