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3 Cut down on unnecessary cookware. For the vast majority of cooking purposes, all you really need are the following: one gargantuan pot for making stock and cooking pasta for a crowd, one medium-large pot for making soups and cooking pasta for just a few, one small pot for sauces, plus one good-sized fry pan (cast-iron is a good choice -- just as non-stick as Teflon-coated versions, with the added bonus that it can go into the oven as well as on the stove). That's just four pots and pans total, which even the most miniscule of kitchens should be able to accommodate just fine.

4 Rethink your small appliance needs, and pare down to the bare minimum. Keep only the ones that you'll use on a regular basis, and don't necessarily go for the biggest and most powerful versions either. Opt for a hand blender rather than a full-sized one; think about whether you really truly need a food processor, or if it'll just be taking up precious space; consider holding off on your Kitchen-Aid stand mixer dreams and going with a more space-efficient hand mixer instead.

5 Free up another burner on your puny range by buying a rice cooker. Perfect, no-brainer rice every time -- giving you more time and space to deal with real cooking.

6 Like big breakfasts but don't have enough stove space to get your eggs, bacon and pancakes all ready in time? Get yourself an electric griddle, which gives you heaps of extra cooking space when you need it, and stows away when you don't.

7 Get your ingredients organized. The only way to make a small kitchen work for you is to be efficient about how you use your limited space. Think about what things you store where, and how easy it is to get to the stuff you use most often. Are your spices jam-packed into a cabinet, stacked one on top of each other so that trying to get to the one you need feels like a game of Jenga? Get yourself a spice rack that mounts to the wall, so you can actually see what you have at a glance, and use that cabinet space for larger items.

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