You walk into a kitchen showroom and your eye catches a sleek little cabinet by the window, maybe a narrow hutch in matte oak. That is not a piece of kitchen furniture. That is a seductive decoy. The real kitchen furniture you need to worry about is the stuff that does double duty because your living room is basically a hallway and your dining area is the same four square meters where you fold laundry. I have spent ten years watching people buy a gorgeous farmhouse table only to realize they still have nowhere to sit when six relatives show up for Christmas. The problem is not the table. The problem is that your floor plan has been lying to you since the day you signed the lease.

Small kitchens force you to become a detective of hidden uses. That corner unit with the butcher block top looks innocent enough, but what if I told you the base of that cabinet could contain a pull-out sofa? Not a joke. I installed one for a client in a 45-square-meter flat.