An ode to the humble kitchen

keeping a kitchen running is my super-power. that, and breastfeeding.

They say, “The kitchen is the heart of the home,” and I know this well. I don’t need a decorative wall hanging to tell me. I do, however, have a small trivet hanging above my sink that reads,

“No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best”

The funny thing about it hanging here is that in this single-wide trailer, it’s the only indoor space that I have to serve my guests.

Never have I felt this more, that the kitchen is the heart of the home and the place where people want to gather. While I wait for a house square-footage that fits our family size better and make plans for the future kitchen of our new home, I’m here in this kitchen.

This is the kitchen

This is the kitchen where the oatmeal pot is full, where the cold brew in its gallon jar greets me in the morning, where the sourdough bubbles right out of the bowl.

It’s the place we pray before meals and learn hymns together. It’s the place where I hope my young children will learn table manners. The kitchen table is for multiplication, cursive, and business meetings, sometimes all in the same morning.

It’s the place where I’m learning how to draw, practicing while babies nap in the afternoon.

There’s a lot of beauty here, in the fresh salad and roasted chicken for supper, in the different shades of brown and white eggs collected from the coop, in the sunset shining through the windows.

purple cauliflower and broccoli, ready for the oven

It was the place for my child to curl up in my lap with a puke bucket just last night. The linoleum floor seemed like the better place to be than the carpeted bedrooms. We snuggled close to the washer and dryer because my kitchen is also home to the laundry room.

My kitchen, and maybe yours too, is the place for fly tape and a fridge cluttered with monster sketches and grocery lists. You wouldn’t see a kitchen like mine featured in a magazine, or YouTube video. It’s not what you would call…aesthetically pleasing.

It’s homey.

And when I think about it, my favorite kitchens I’ve spent time in have been a lot like this: cluttered, loud with conversation, a little messy, and mismatched. Wedding invites and old Christmas cards hang crooked on the fridge, and faded recipes are propped up near the sink. Band-Aids are stuck-on, crackers are passed out. The sauce is splattered, and coffee is sipped.

At the end of a long day, I hope for the last of the flies to find their way to the fly ribbons above my table. I pray that no more kids wander through the kitchen for another glass of water, and that no one else gets the pukes. I sit at my “writing desk” which is…you guessed it, my kitchen table.

I thank God for kitchens, even this little kitchen, because it’s the place where I hope to change the world— one pot of oatmeal at a time.

Catherine Pfenning

I would love to hear about your kitchen! Is your kitchen more pretty or functional? What’s the best kitchen you’ve been in, and what did you like about it? Was it the food, the decor, the people?