University accommodation kitchens are more often than not, a bit grim. There is a lot of white surfaces and bright colours – mine, for example, is lime green and it is as disgusting as it sounds. When you are in a new place and a fair few miles away from home, you want your communal living space to be somewhere you can actually bear to live in – so here are a few simple ways to spice up your uni kitchen.
As basic as they are, they add a nice low light to a room. Often the lighting is harsh in uni kitchens and sometimes you do not want that, sometimes you just want to chill with some mood lighting.
Having some foliage in a room can really brighten it up. They make for a great centrepiece for a table and if you are always stuck for a vase, a pint glass or jug wouldn’t go amiss. You can different flowers for each season; for example, over Christmas time we had a poinsettia and at the moment we have some daffodils.
Draining boards at uni can often pile up with plates, bowls, mugs – you name it, it’s stacked haphazardly on the draining board. Draining board racks help to manage the carnage and also save your tea towels from being completely drenched.
You can get all sorts of funky fridge magnets at the moment and you can stick all sorts of things up with them like flyers for societies, events and cards so that it looks less plain.
Most communal places have a pinboard for notices and leaving them blank is pretty boring. Print off some group pictures and pin them up. You could also pin up a chunder chart to record how many times you and your housemates are sick after a night out.
Because they don’t often have living rooms in uni accommodation, there’s sometimes a makeshift sofa in the kitchen which can look out of place. If you stock up on plenty of cushions and blankets you can arrange them on the sofa so that it is more aesthetically pleasing and cosy.
This is essential for general uni life. If you are hosting pres then you are going to need a source of tunes to party to and a great speaker is the way to do that. If your uni house is anything like mine then you’ll all hang out in the kitchen together and sometimes it’s nice to have a little sing along or just some background noise.
This something we have recently done in our kitchen and it was so much fun. We went down to Hobbycraft and got some stick on letters, some paints and other bits and bobs and had a craft day and each decorated our cupboards differently. It adds a touch of colour to the kitchen and also helps other people to navigate whose cupboard is whose.
This one is obviously exclusive to a specific time of year but you can decorate your kitchen during holidays like Halloween and Christmas. If theres several of you in a house you can split the cost of a fake Christmas tree and decorations – it’s cheap and still gets you into the festive spirit. You can spend some time as a group and make some paper snowflakes for the cupboards and windows. It’s a fun break from studying and you can do the same for Halloween except you can carve pumpkins and make cobwebs.
Every house needs a lava lamp in my opinion. They are a groovier version of a regular lamp and they are fun to watch. They also add to the mood lighting you get from the fairy lights and make for a cosier kitchen.
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