7 Items You'll Need For Your Apartment Kitchen That You Didn't Need in the Dorm

By Julia Dunn on July 30, 2015

This article is brought to you by CORT, a subsidiary of Berkshire-Hathaway and the world’s largest furniture rental and relocation services company. To learn more about how we can help college students like you, click here.

After a couple years of on-campus living and eating from the dining hall day and night, transitioning to an apartment off-campus is incredibly exciting.

While the dining hall you know all too well has had its moments as a convenient food source that takes some stress out of your day, most students feel excited to move off-campus especially because they’ll have access to a full kitchen, equipped with almost everything needed for cooking anything, anytime.

Image Via: Ziyi Liu (uloop.com)

To ensure your kitchen off-campus is prepared to produce quick, easy meals for busy school nights and relaxed weekend snacks for you and your buddies, snag these seven kitchen items for ease and efficiency as a full-time college student, part-time chef.

1.) A versatile blender

Blenders are essentially a go-to gadget to start nearly any meal–a college student’s best friend when you’re hungry at 11:45 p.m. but you have an essay due at midnight. Not only are blenders great for making dips or creamy soups, but they’re also great for chopping vegetables if you want to reduce the hassle when making salads or stir fry.

If you’re a smoothie fan, blenders are practically mandatory! There are a number of super-sleek blender models on the market, such as the “Magic Bullet” blender which has various blades you twist onto the blender (a whipping blade or a chopping blade), making it a simple task to transform your appliance to suit different culinary needs.

As college students on tight budgets, purchasing a high-quality blender might be a little pricey if you want a brand new one, but an easy-to-use blender will save your life on nights you can’t afford to spend too much time cooking.

2.) Toaster

Bagels, bagels, bagels. What more do you need? No matter which bread product you fancy, a toaster is perfect for warming up bread and bagels for a fast snack as you’re running out the door to class. There are a number of toaster styles, such as the standard 2-slice toasters or small toaster ovens.

3.) Coffee maker

Image by Always Curious via flickr.com

… Does this need much further explanation? Welcome to college life.

4.) Ice cream scooper

You work so hard in college. All those flashcards, review sheets, essays and meetings … you deserve some ice cream. Keep an ice cream scooper in a convenient area of your kitchen for well-deserved emergency ice cream breaks. Some scoopers have ergonomic handles, so you can grab the largest scoop of rocky road possible.

5.) A large pot (and colander to go with it)

Having a large pot on hand in the kitchen allows you to make large quantities of food at a time, which is perfect if you want to reheat food later in the week after cooking extra on the weekend. Any college student knows that in college, pasta is life; it’s yummy, comforting, and easy not to “mess up” when you’re new to cooking for yourself.

A large pot will be key for linguini nights, and when you get tired of pasta (an impossible scenario to fathom, I know), you can throw a bunch of vegetables and broth into the pot for a delicious soup that will last for 3-4 days. For recipes that require a pot for purposes of boiling or steaming food, you’ll also need a colander on hand for straining spaghetti or for rinsing vegetables.

6.) Cutting boards

Image By: Ziyi Liu (uloop.com)

Easily forgotten, cutting boards are fundamental and all-around important to establishing a well-stocked kitchen in your off-campus apartment. Without cutting boards, it’ll be difficult to slice the delicious fruits you picked up in the cute little farmer’s market downtown, or to slice your favorite sourdough bread for some 1 a.m. toast.

Cutting boards vary in quality and material, so if you’re interested in having guests over on a frequent basis, you can use stylish wooden cutting boards as serving platters if you so desire! Who doesn’t love a 2-in-1?

7.) Measuring spoons/measuring cups

These are basic kitchen elements you can’t forget. Wouldn’t it be awful if you bought all the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch, only to find that you have zero measuring instruments in your kitchen? Measuring cups and spoons are sold at most grocery stores in the kitchen tools aisle, so there’s no reason not to have enough of them in your apartment kitchen.

Do not feel overwhelmed by this list of appliances and gadgets. Shopping for your kitchen should be fun! After all, it’s up to you how you’d like to organize your apartment kitchen, and it’s up to you what you want to cook for yourself. Students have such packed schedules that it’s already hard enough to carve out time in the day to make a meal that will replenish their lost energy, so keep that in mind when collecting kitchen items. Make cooking easy on yourself by using tools that will really work for you.

Image Via: Ziyi Liu (uloop.com)

Looking for a more convenient way to furnish your off-campus apartment? Rent stylish furniture from CORT and save time and money. For more information on furniture rental packages, click here.

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