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You can’t live with your current kitchen any longer, but how will you survive without it while it is being renovated? Forewarned is forearmed, they say, so here are some ugly truths and some survival tips to help you get through a kitchen renovation.

  • Add the cost of eating out and getting take-out food to your budget. No, it won’t be every meal, but it can take a toll if you fail to anticipate it. Plan ahead how many meals a week you’ll eat out, and think about when you’ll be most stressed, and your kitchen is most torn apart.
  • Prepare an area of your home to double as a mini-kitchen during the remodel. If you have space in the sitting room or another room, move the table in there and set up some essential food prep equipment. Your microwave will probably be getting a lot of extra use! You’ll want to have your kettle and toaster at the ready too. Consider if you can move your refrigerator to another room during the remodel too. The less you try to use your kitchen while it is torn apart, the easier life will be.
  • Clear out the things you won’t be using during the remodel. It’s a great time to declutter and get rid of things you don’t need or want. And the other stuff? You probably won’t be using the good dishes or those crystal wine glasses you got as a wedding present. Will you really be using the juicer during the remodel? (Think about how you’ll clean it if your sink is out of commission.) Some things are easy to box up and put in the attic, but if you have a lot of stuff, such as furniture you want to protect, it might make sense to book a storage unit for a few weeks.
  • You’ll have a work crew coming and going a lot for a while. Save yourself the daily clean-up by putting down some dust clothes in the hallway. The plastic ones sold for house painting projects are inexpensive and will spare your rugs and floors from a lot of muck and wear.
  • Ask the renovation crew if they need a workspace aside from the kitchen for sawing wood or anything. Agreeing and preparing a place in advance avoids the horror of finding sawdust all over the rug in a spot you expected to be untouched.
  • When your renovation is over, your kitchen probably won’t be entirely ready to use. Kitchen renovation is dusty, messy work. Treating yourself to a professional house cleaner would let you start off with your fabulous new kitchen at its best.

You don’t have to spend the weeks of your kitchen renovation with your kitchen furniture crammed into every spare corner of your house.

U Store It offers short-term storage units in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Belfast to keep your sideboards, shelving units and ornaments safe and sound while your kitchen is being renovated.

You don’t even have to agree in advance on how long you’ll use the unit. You just need to give seven days’ notice to vacate it.