Summer Kitchen Ideas

Freshen up your home for summer with these simple summer kitchen ideas and decor tips. An easy step by step plan that works every time!

Seasonal Simplicity Summer Series

Welcome back to week six of the seasonal simplicity summer series hosted by Krista from The Happy Housie! Each week we’re sharing a new summer idea with you – from free summer printables and simple summer DIY projects, to delicious summer drink ideas. Everything you need for the perfect summer at home! If you’ve missed the previous weeks, you can find them here:

• DIY Outdoor Planter and Candle Holder
• Summer Basket Wreath
• Ice Cream Bar and Free Printables
• Summer Decor Hutch Styling with S’mores Bar
• Lemonade Floats

Summer Home Tours

This week, it’s time for the summer home tours! Each day, there will be 6 new home tours up with tons of beautiful summer home decor and design ideas. You’ll find a wide range of decor styles and inspiration, so there’s definitely something for everyone! You can find a list of all of the bloggers participating in the home tours at the end of the post and I’ll be updating the links as the new home tours are posted. If you’re coming over today from Setting For Four– welcome! Heather has such a timeless, elegant style and I always love seeing her home!

Summer Kitchen Ideas

Today I’m excited to show you around our summer kitchen! The start of a new season is always the perfect time to do a little room refresh.  A good cleaning, a quick decluttering, and a couple of simple decor changes is all it takes. I’ve put together some simple summer kitchen ideas to help you get started on freshening up your own home for the summer. Although I’m talking about our kitchen, you can apply most of these tips to almost any space. I hope you find them helpful!

Start with a good cleaning.

No matter what room you’re working on, the best place to start is with a nice, deep cleaning. I find the change of seasons is a good reminder to do some of those extra cleaning tasks that always get put off.  And since you’re moving things around anyways, it’s the perfect time to get into all of those corners and surfaces that are usually covered up. I always start by putting away any old seasonal items that I know I won’t be using and then taking down all of the other items so I can completely wipe down shelves, counters, and other surfaces. Wash down cupboards, dust off the tops of cabinets and give your appliances a little extra love!

Change up your artwork.

Changing up artwork is one of the easiest ways to add a little seasonal touch to your home. Whether you swap out a piece of art on the wall, or just switch out a photo frame, it only takes a few minutes. I always keep all of my prints in the back of our picture frames, so all I have to do is rotate them around when a new holiday or season hits. You can find lots of summer printables HERE and HERE or grab the Day Dreams and Ice Creams printable HERE.

Put together a summer vignette.

I have one corner of our kitchen set aside to use as a seasonal display area. I love putting vignettes together and I find it fun to come up with new ideas each year. Keeping it all together on a tray helps to make things look a little less cluttered and makes for easy cleaning when needed. This year I went with a cute ice cream bar and it’s already had lots of use! You can see all of the details and grab the free ice cream bar printables HERE.

Add fresh flowers.

Flowers may be one of my favorite things about summer! They just bring so much life and color to the space. During the summer, you can always find some pretty, inexpensive options at the grocery store or, if you’re lucky, find some flowers or branches that you can cut from your own yard. To really get the most out of your bouquets, follow these tips to make your cut flowers last longer. And if you don’t want to be bothered with fresh flowers, there are lots of beautiful faux flower options available these days.

Swap around seasonal kitchen items.

When storing seasonal items, you want to keep in-season items at the front of the cupboards and move those non-seasonal items towards the back. For the summer, I bring out our popsicle molds, our plastic drink pitchers, dishes for the patio, etc. and move those items that I won’t be using to the back. I’ll also rotate around our cookbooks, and display a few of my most used ones on the counter for easy access.

Do a quick decluttering.

As you’re going through your kitchen cupboards and drawers, donate items that you no longer use and/or love.  It feels good to lighten things up for summer! If you don’t like to do this all at once, just keep a donation bin in a closet or your garage and add to it as you come across items. To help get you started, you can print out this list of 20 items to declutter in the kitchen.

Dress up your regular decor.

I’ve had this little smoothie bar for a couple of years now and I try to dress it up a bit for the different seasons. It’s basically my “healthy corner” of the kitchen. lol! I also keep our water bottles, vitamins, and herbal teas here as well. For summer I just displayed some lemons, added some greenery, and made a new smoothie bar sign to display.

I’ll be sharing more details about this area within the next week or two along with a couple of free smoothie bar printable signs for you, so stay tuned!

Put together a seasonal centerpiece.

I always have fun putting together centerpieces, and I’ll sometimes change them up a couple of times per season. I try to keep our centerpieces relatively simple so we can easily take them on and off the table if needed and I don’t like them too large as I like to see who’s sitting across from me at the table. 😉

This summer centerpiece was quickly put together using some mint plants that I picked up at our local garden centre. I’ll do a quick post on how to put one together next week and there are lots of little variations you could do. I love the assymmetrical shape of the bowl and the mint provides a nice, light scent.

Can you see the bird peeking out?

Display everyday items.

It’s always a win if you can display items that are functional and pretty to look at!  Look around for pieces that are hiding in your cupboards that you could pull out and use for decor. We love eating outside during the summer, so I grouped all of our outdoor plates and bowls into a display on our hutch. They add a nice pop of color and also provide a great spot for a little s’mores bar. Not only does it add a summer touch to the space, but it also keeps everything super accessible. You can see more of the hutch and get my shelf styling tips HERE.

Create a space for paper clutter.

This tip isn’t really seasonal, but I do always go through my papers at the start of each season, so I thought I would still include it here. For most people, the kitchen counters tend to be a common place for papers to accumulate, so create a specific space for them to go instead. We have this small desk area off of our kitchen but you could use a drawer, cupboard, or even just a file folder attached to the inside door of a cupboard.

As you can see, our calendar is blank right now and I haven’t bothered filling it in for the past two months. Now that things are opening up a bit, I’m going to start adding some plans to our calendar for the summer. I need something to look forward to!

Things will definitely be looking a little different this summer, but it will be fun to explore some local spots that we don’t always get to.

Thank-you so much for joining me today on the tour! I hope you enjoyed the summer kitchen ideas and found some inspiration to do a little seasonal refresh in your own home.  If you’re new here, I hope you stay in touch! You can always find me here if you have any questions…

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More of Our Summer Home

If you would like to see more of our summer home you can see our summer front entry and dining room tour HERE.

I’ll also be posting our summer family room on Friday…

…and our backyard patio next week. I hope you can make it back for a visit!

Now to continue on with today’s summer home tours!  Head on over to see Dannyelle from Life Is a Party next. She always has tons of fun seasonal ideas and I’m sure you’ll love her style!

More Summer Home Tours and Summer Home Decor Ideas

There are lots of amazing bloggers participating in the tours this week. I hope you get a chance to drop by and say hello. It’s always fun checking out everyone’s different design styles and decor ideas, so get ready for some beautiful summer decor inspiration!

Sharing with me today….

Wednesday

Setting for Four
Clean & Scentsible
Life is a Party

My Sweet Savannah
All Things With Purpose
Tatertots & Jello

And sharing the rest of this week…

Monday

The Happy Housie
Maison de Pax
Cuckoo for Design

Modern Glam
My 100 Year Old Home
Inspiration for Moms

Tuesday

Sincerely, Marie Designs
Cassie Bustamante
Life is Better at Home

Lemon Thistle
Grace in My Space
Maison de Cinq

Thursday

Craftberry Bush
Finding Silver Pennies
The Tattered Pew
Rambling Renovators
Zevy Joy
Two Twenty One

Friday

She Gave it a Go
Taryn Whiteaker
Rooms FOR Rent
This is Simplicite
Dans le Lakehouse
Amber Tysl