We are a family of five living in a fairly small space with a careful budget. Spending big bucks on fancy kitchen appliances that sit around collecting dust and cluttering our cupboards is NOT a high priority for us. However, having kitchen appliances that make life easier and better ARE a high priority for us!
We tend to live with a “make do” mentality. So it’s taken us over a decade of married life to eventually collect all of these appliances. But these truly are our top five most used kitchen appliances in our home. There is a lot we live without in the appliance department (obviously not the big appliances: stove, oven, fridge, freezer, etc). But these are things we WILL plan to replace as they eventually wear out. They make life easier and better and get used multiple times per week, and some even multiple times per day.
So, if you’re just starting out living on your own, or you’re making a wedding registry, or you just need some encouragement to take a good look at the kitchen appliances in your home and minimize what you have, I hope this post is helpful for you! And if you enjoy this peak into our kitchen, I’ve done a whole house tour series, including our kitchen, which you’re welcome to check out!
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.
Our Small, Organized Kitchen’s Most Used Budget Appliances:
We try to keep our counter tops clutter free, as much as possible. But we do have some of our most-used appliances out on the counter for regular use. If they get a spot on the counter, it means we use it probably a minimum of three times per day. Any appliances used less frequently than that are stored away in a cupboard.
As I said up above, our top five most used appliances, I truly believe, make our life better for us! And the best part is, none of them are super expensive. So if you’re a budget-keeping household, with a little planning, I think these are within reach for most Western families.
1. A Super Cheap Milk Frother ($8.99)
We bought this a year ago. Other than replacing the batteries a few times, this thing has been fail-proof so far! Gabe uses it to froth our oat milk for our coffee in the morning. I love to use it for an afternoon London Fog latte with collagen. I also use it to froth my vitamin drink. And if I’m making an oil and vinegar-based salad dressing, the frother does a great job mixing it up. It lives on our counter because we reach for it at least three times per day – usually more than that! We lived without it for a long time (using our blender to froth milk instead). Yes, it is doable to live without it. But I seriously love the convenience and ease. And I think it is well worth the investment of money and space in our kitchen!
2. Our Nutribullet Blender ($129.99 – currently $109.99)
This appliance is one of the work horses in the kitchen. We make smoothies regularly, I blend up protein drinks for lunch a few times a week, and we use it for making sauces and salad dressings with nuts and fruit. I also use it for blending up non-dairy milk for baked goods a lot. With our frother also on the counter, it does get slightly less use than it used to prior to when we purchased the frother. But we still use it multiple times per day between the large pitcher and the smaller cups. We made do for many, many years with a magic bullet blender, and that worked fine for us most of the time. But it has been nice to upgrade to a slightly more powerful and large capacity blender.
3. A large crock pot ($49.99 – currently $32.50)
I actually don’t know how I would survive without a crock pot! In fact, I don’t know how anyone on a budget survives without a crockpot among their kitchen appliances! I use it all the time for soups, to make stock, cooking dried beans, even to cook homemade granola in it. It doesn’t live on our counter full time when not in use. I probably only use it about five times per week. But it does a lot of the cooking work in our house.
I love the fact that I can cook things overnight in it. I use it to make stock or cook a whole chicken to break down, or dried beans to then have for ingredients in the next day’s meals. And I also love the fact that I can throw stuff in it in the morning when my kids tend to be the most able to self-entertain. Then dinner is well under way for when the pre-dinner hangry-meltdowns begin! As part of my postpartum plan for our third baby, I heavily leaned into freezer dump meals that could be thawed and tossed into the crock pot with minimum fuss. In my estimation, it’s one of the best investments we’ve made in money and storage space.
4. A deep dish electric skillet ($59.99)
This has been a relatively new addition to our kitchen. But Gabe’s parents have used theirs as a work horse in their home for years. The quantity of food I’m now preparing for three hungry kids tipped us over into the “regular electric skillet user” category. Since we have company for dinner a lot, and I also love to cook double or triple what we need for one meal so I can have leftovers, the size of our electric skillet makes it a lot more versatile than a skillet on the stove top.
I find this appliance the least-used of all the appliances on this list. That may be because it’s still the newest so I haven’t completely incorporated it into our life. But either way, ours stopped working this morning and I had a bit of a frantic moment trying to figure out how to pivot and get breakfast done in time to head to church. Those frantic moments showed me how much I’ve come to rely on this appliance when I do use it! I will be taking it back to the store this week, since it is still under warranty. And getting a replacement very soon!
5. An Electric Kettle ($36.99)
This is a counter-top resident appliance in our budget kitchen as we use our electric kettle a LOT. Since our drinking water is mostly supplied through rain water collected off our roof, we like to bring our drinking water to a boil before we drink it. Our electric kettle is run literally multiple times per day to refill our glass bottles that we use for drinking water. It is also super handy for making a quick bowl of oatmeal, or soaking nuts for non-dairy milk, or for coffee or tea, of course. We’ve always had an electric kettle. I love getting boiling hot water with just the push of a button and a few minutes of time! I cannot imagine how households actually function without an electric kettle, so this is an absolute must for me.
BONUS: An Aeropress ($39.95)
I’m not sure this actually classifies as a budget kitchen appliance (no electricity required!), but since it takes the place of a coffee maker of some kind, I’m going to include it! It also is SUPER handy for our small, organized kitchen since it doesn’t take up much room at all. Gabe bought one almost six years ago, and we just replaced it last year. We have found we can use more budget-friendly coffee beans without noticing a big compromise in taste. The reason for this is because the aeropress minimizes the acidity of coffee. I honestly prefer our homemade oat milk lattes with the aeropress coffee from budget, pre-ground beans to anything I buy at coffee shops! We bought the reusable metal filter years ago, and it’s served us well through two aeropresses. For minimal kitchens that like quality tasting coffee, I highly recommend an aeropress.
Five Appliances We Do NOT Have in Our Budget Kitchen:
Some of these might come as a surprise, but there are actually quite a few “common” appliances we don’t own. We might, someday, invest in them (if we feel we have the room to store them without overcrowding our cupboards). But they just aren’t a priority right now and whatever their functions are, we’ve found ways to work around them.
1. An instapot/pressure cooker
We actually used to have one when we first got married (it was on our wedding registry). Since it was a pressure cooker/slow cooker/rice cooker combo, I thought I’d use it a lot. I did… but really just as a slow cooker. Some of my friends swear by their instapot-type-appliances, and I have nothing against them. I just haven’t felt the need to invest in one with the way we do our life.
2. An Air Fryer
Again, this seems like a really on-trend appliance as of writing this blog post. I’m not even actually sure of what an air fryer does… So I don’t know if I’d be in love with it or not if we had it. But since our counter space is limited and our storage space is limited, it’s something we just haven’t bothered to look into.
3. A Food Processor
Sometimes I do actually wish I had a little food processor. It would be nice for grating cheese or pulverizing dates or nuts, etc. But I’ve never owned one and we’ve always made do with a knife and cutting board, a box grater, or our blender. Given that I wouldn’t be willing to give up my blender, and I don’t currently have room in a cupboard for one, I can live without it being part of my budget kitchen appliances.
4. A Stand Mixer
I have a kitchenaid in the USA that I LOVED and used all the time (another wedding registry gift). My landlady gave me a different brand of stand mixer awhile ago that I used a little bit. But I didn’t use it as much as I thought I would, so I passed it along. If there was a good way to get my kitchenaid here, and I could convert the voltage to work for it easily, I’d consider bringing it back with me. Currently, my sister is “babysitting” it and loving it, I think.
Of course, I do recognize, it is NOT something that would be found on a list of budget kitchen appliances! But it does help make bread very frugally, so maybe we can keep it on the list because of that. Since I bake my own bread, I do miss using it with the dough hook attachment for making our sourdough. But, since I don’t want to haul it back, and I don’t want to give up the counter space, and I don’t want to buy another one, I just make my bread by hand with a wooden spoon and my own arm muscle power! And on the rare occasion when I need to whip up whipped cream or make frosting, I just use our little hand-held mixer.
5. A Toaster Oven
We do own a toaster, and my kids love to run it, so it’s nice to have. I don’t personally feel like I need it to survive or maintain my current level of ease in life. And I feel the same way about having a toaster oven. I can see the usefulness of it. But again, counter space and storage limitations make it a “pass” for me for now. It’s not a high priority for my budget kitchen appliances collection.
BONUS Kitchen Appliances We Do Not Own: Obscure, Fancy Gadgets and Appliances That Wouldn’t Be Used Often or Are Not Budget Friendly:
I cannot tell you how many houses I have been in that have cupboards or drawers or counter tops stuffed with random appliances and gadgets that are rarely used. Some things that come to mind are: pasta makers, zoodle makers, rice cookers, George Foreman grills, meat grinders, apple corers, cherry pitters, waffle makers, etc. Or soda can openers, jar openers, cork screws, etc.
I don’t have anything against any of them, and honestly, I think all of them would be kind of cool to use. But I’m not willing to sacrifice the space for them or pay the cost of them, so we just haven’t prioritized buying them! Similarly with a BBQ and an espresso maker. I don’t think I would use it that much, and they aren’t cheap, so we just haven’t invested in one. And it does make me sad to think of all the financial expense that is just sitting in cupboards all over the place in the form of kitchen appliances that just aren’t be utilized!
In Conclusion:
Gabe and I are big advocates of figuring out what you actually want and need and will use, and prioritizing those things. I would even go so far as to say that it is best to live without most kitchen appliances for a little while. Then as you regularly come up against having a real need for something, you can budget (both money and storage space) for and add on to your appliance collection.
I know some people will have very different ideas of what are “top priorities” for their households than what Gabe and I have, and that’s totally OK. For us, we like minimal stuff, maximum visual appeal (ie: open counters), and the most efficiency for our space that we can manage. Shuffling things around from shelf to cupboard, unloading things onto the counter to reach stuff in the back of a cupboard, etc – that’s the kind of thing that makes us grumpy and irritable really fast! So we just avoid it for the well being in our marriage and attitudes!
I would love to hear from you about what your top five most used budget kitchen appliances are! Let me know in the comments below… Maybe you’ll even inspire me to branch out a bit!
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