How to Set Up a Kitchen on the Cheap Without It Looking Cheap

After living and working in Shanghai for 6 years, our oldest daughter and her partner decided it was time to return to Canada to pursue new careers and educational opportunities. They each had only a few boxes of personal items that had been stored at our place and his parent’s place.

Setting up their apartment kitchen could have been prohibitively expensive if they’d purchased everything they needed new. But with the cost of return flights and having to buy furniture as well, they wanted to set up their kitchen on the cheap.

To that end, she and I have been scouring thrift stores, Facebook Buy, Sell, Swap groups and Kijiji (online classifieds) to set up their kitchen without breaking the budget.

This is what we’ve managed to buy cheaply in only a few days time.

Dinner plates, salad plates and bowls:

Coffee mugs:

We weren’t able to find a complete matching set but the dinner plates and coffee mugs are close enough in design to the salad plates and bowls that it makes it look like she deliberately chose to mix and match them.

Soup bowls… great for cold summer gazpacho in addition to soups and stews for those cold days we have all too many of living in Canada.

A set of 6 drinking glasses:

2 coffee mugs… the teacher one is for her partner, the flower one is for her:

A canister for coffee complete with wooden scoop, half pint mason jar (for spices) and reusable lunch containers:

Teapot, sugar bowl and creamer:

And if you’re going to make tea, you need a kettle:

Aren’t these ceramic mixing bowls fun!

She said the honey pot was just too cute to resist.

This casserole dish is large enough to make one meal to eat and one to freeze for nights when they don’t feel like cooking.

The two ramekins for making individual quiches and casseroles for lunches to take to work or simply heating up leftovers.

A microwave and toaster, both in perfect working order:

And finally a set of knives:

All these items, with the exception of the microwave, toaster and knife block of course, will be put through the dishwasher on the sanitize cycle and they’ll be ready to use.

So far, she’s spent just under $100. I’ll update this post as we find items on her list of things they need.

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