List of Kitchen Essentials for a New Home

This list of kitchen essentials for your new home isn’t just a list of basics – those are everywhere! This is the ultimate list of what I actually use in the kitchen, specific brands I love, and HOW to use each item (some will surprise you).

Whether you’re moving into your first apartment on your own, buying a new home and want a fresh start, or are creating your wedding registry anticipating a new home with your spouse, this list will help you know what to buy.

Related: Berkey vs Brita Water Filters

Related: 63 Inspiring Homemaking Quotes

This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.

Download your PDF Checklist of Kitchen Essentials for a New Home

If you’re anything like me, you get a ton of satisfaction crossing things off lists. You’ll love this checklist of kitchen essentials for your new home that you can download as a pdf and print out.

List of Kitchen Essentials: Basics

These are all the basic kitchen essentials you’ll need for your new home. Whether you like to cook from scratch or semi-homemade, these essentials will get you through anything you need to make in the kitchen. I’ve linked to either the exact item I have or one very similar.

Kitchen Appliance Essentials

• Water Filter* – we love using our Berkey since it filters more than 200 harmful contaminants.
• Blender* – great for raw kefir smoothies, and tons of other uses!
• Immersion blender – I love making sauces with an immersion blender, and using it to puree soups!
• French press – for coffee or loose leaf tea drinkers. Learn how to make iced coffee in a french press here.
• Instapot – perfect for making your own bone broth, cooking entire frozen chickens, or making dry beans, etc.

Kitchen Utensils Essentials

• Wooden spoons – learn how to season wooden spoons and keep them nice forever.
• Metal spatula
• Silicone spatula
• Slotted spoon
• Whisk
• Tongs
• Masher – great for potatoes, but I mostly use this for breaking up ground beef.
• Ladle
• Pizza cutter – perfect for slicing my same-day sourdough pizza crust!
• Can opener
• Ice cream scoop
• Garlic press
• Meat thermometer
• Bottle opener/corkscrew

Kitchen Cleaning Essentials

• Scrub brush – I like to make this attractive since I’m constantly washing dishes.
• Soap dispenser – All the soap dispensers in my house are in these amber jars with these matte black pumps. You have to snip the ends of the pumps about an inch, but I think they look so good!
• Dish towels – I keep dish towels clean for drying clean hands, and use the rags below for dirty things.
• Dish rags (use in place of paper towels for most things)
• Trash and Recycling duo
• Drying rack – This stays on my counter with beautiful blue and white dishes at all times and I think it looks so pretty.
• Microfiber cloths* – use microfiber for cleaning stainless steel so you don’t get streaks.
• Skillet scraper – perfect for scraping stuck-on food from cast iron skillets.

Cookware Essentials

• Cast iron skillets – I highly recommend learning how to use, clean, and season cast iron skillets. Your food will taste much better! Cast iron is exclusively what I cook on.
• Cutting Board* – this cutting board is worth the splurge. It has a meat side and a veggies side as well as a tray to dump whatever you’re chopping!
• Dutch Oven – Definitely get a big one to use in place of a crockpot or large stockpot. I have one for bread-making (see below) and one for everything else.
• Rectangular glass casserole dish
• Square glass baking dish
• Loaf pans
• Ove gloves and pot holders
• Splatter guard – great for cast iron cooking.
• Small saucepan
• Kettle – I use a copper one from an antique store, this one is similar.
• Cooling racks
• Silicone baking mats

Kitchen Food Prepping Essentials

• Glass or ceramic mixing bowls – good for sourdough bread – see the section below.
• Stainless mixing bowls – these are great for mixing up big salads, tuna salad, sauces, vegetables to roast, chicken salad, etc.
• Glass storage containers* – it’s so important not to use plastic, especially if you’re going to be reheating your food. Also wise to splurge on these so they last!
• Knives (with sharpener)* – this is the set we ultimately splurged on after buying multiple cheap sets. Save yourself time and money and get a good set of knives since you’ll be using them so much.
• Stainless baking sheets
• Collander
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Chip clips
• Ice cube tray
• Apron – see my post all about aprons here. This is the one I mainly wear, but these are the ones I have hanging in my kitchen.

Serving Essentials

• Dishes – I have the Upplaga dish set from Ikea, but I thrifted my blue and white dishes I keep in the drying rack.
• Silverware*
• Drinkware (water glasses, mugs, wine glasses, etc.) – I just use mason jars for water glasses.
• Serving platters – no links because these have all come from Goodwill and I recommend you do the same since they have so many nice ones for super cheap.

Kitchen Organization Essentials

• Pantry and fridge organization containers
• Lazy Susan’s for organizing the pantry
• Silverware organizer
• Spice containers – I love the ones I have because they look like little mason jars! I get my spices in bulk so these are perfect to store them.

List of Kitchen Essentials: Bread Making

These are all my bread-making essentials used for baking homemade loaves of bread. Some of these might overlap with the kitchen basics essentials, but most are specific to bread making.

Related: How to Store Sourdough Bread

• Stand mixer
• Dough hook attachment
• Paddle attachment
• Whisk attachment
• Water filter – back to the Berkey, since it’s so important to use filtered water for sourdough bread so the contaminants in the water don’t kill off your precious yeast.
• Tea towels – I have separate ones I use for bread. These are lighter weight than the dish towels I use.
• Loaf pans
• Dutch oven (I like to have a separate one that won’t turn black when heated at high temps)
• Rolling pin – this one is so pretty it sits on my counter!
• Scale – it’s so important to weigh rather than measure ingredients when baking bread.
• Parchment paper
• Bench scraper
• Dough scraper
• Instant read thermometer
• Paper bags to store bread
• Proofing baskets
• Lame and blades
• Beeswax wrap – for covering bread while proofing.
• Serrated knife – this set has a serrated knife.
• Bread machine (I don’t use this but it’s nice to have)
• Grain mill – I have the Komo mio grain mill from Pleasant Hill Grain.
• Wheat berries or quality flour – I get mine from Azure Standard, I have a whole post on what I get from Azure and how to shop from them!
• Pastry brush
• Room thermometer – this is helpful to know what the specific temperature is in the room in which you’re proofing your bread.
• Fine mesh strainer – used for dusting dough with flour or dusting work surface with flour.
• Danish dough whisk
• Wooden spoons – this is what I use for stirring dough and my sourdough starter since they’re non-reactive and won’t kill the yeast.
• Glass or ceramic mixing bowls – not metal, since metal is reactive and can kill your yeast.

Related: Start a sourdough starter from scratch

Tips for Kitchen Essentials Basics for Your New Home

I’ve learned a lot when it comes to buying different kitchen essentials for a new home and made a ton of mistakes along the way. Here are my top tops for when you start purchasing your essentials for your own kitchen.

1. When in doubt, go neutral

Once you live in your home for a while you’ll start to see what colors you like and go well in that particular home, but until then, I’d stick with neutral colors.

2. Buy quality where it matters

Like anything, there are certain areas of your kitchen where you can save and areas where it’s best to splurge if possible. The items marked with an * are where I’d splurge and buy good quality.

3. Thrift everything else

If you aren’t in a hurry to get everything for your kitchen, I’d spend the time to thrift everything you aren’t planning to splurge on. For example, I have found almost all of my nice cast iron skillets at thrift stores and refurbished them back to new (learn how here).

4. Material matters

You’ll notice I specify stainless steel baking sheets, cast iron skillets, metal or wooden utensils, etc. These are non-toxic materials that won’t leach harmful chemicals into your food.

Related: Non-Toxic Living: Where to begin

5. Buy aesthetically pleasing things

You spend so much time in your kitchen (especially if you’re cooking from scratch), so make the things you buy something you enjoy looking at and using. All the way down to the scrub brush you use to wash your dishes!

How to Save Money when Buying Kitchen Essentials for New Home

I’m a huge bargain shopper – I pretty much never purchase anything full price and these money-saving tips will show you how. Buying kitchen essentials for your new home doesn’t have to break the bank – learn how to save your money with these tips.

1. Ask for a discount when shopping in person

It might feel awkward at first, but after a few times of saving a bunch of money, all awkwardness goes out the window. I literally as the cashier “do you by any chance have any discounts I’m not aware of?” MOST of the time, they do!

2. Shop around

Look for the kitchen essentials for your new home at multiple stores. One store might be offering a discount on that particular item, or they may have great storewide sales that you can take advantage of.

3. Price Match

If you’re shopping in person and you find the same exact item that’s cheaper somewhere else, you can ask the cashier to price match and they usually will. Did you know that Target does price matching too?!

4. Buy secondhand

I mentioned this in the tips above too, but it’s worth mentioning again – make secondhand shopping a priority and you’ll save tons of money! There are certain kitchen essentials that can wait until you find it at a thrift store.

I love using Offerup, Facebook Marketplace, and good old-fashioned thrift stores for as much as possible.

Related: 32 Tips and Tricks for Thrift Store Shopping

Kitchen (Non)Essentials I Never Buy or Use

Over the years I have owned each one of these items and gotten rid of them (or wished I didn’t have them in the first place) – save yourself the money and go without these items – you’ll be shocked when you don’t miss them.

1. Crockpot

As soon as I purchased my dutch oven, I got rid of my crockpot. My dutch oven could do anything my crockpot could (and better). I do use an Instantpot, but that came later!

2. Toasters or toaster ovens

I just use the broil function on the oven and these stainless steel baking sheets.

3. Microwave

Ok, I actually do use this because my house came with one, but I wish I didn’t rely on it! It’s so doable to go without and just reheat food in a cast-iron skillet or the oven.

4. Coffee Machine

I love just using a space-saving french press versus a huge coffee machine. Also, the coffee is MUCH BETTER.

Shop my Six Month Meal Plans

Shop for my six-month meal plans here. These will help give you a restful dinner-time routine by giving you all your recipes laid out in a weekly meal plan format for 6 months.

More Homemaking Posts

12 Practical Uses for Aprons

Modern Homemaking Schedule

Simple Cleaning Schedule for Busy Moms

Clean Living Lifestyle Tips

Grilled Cheese without Butter – 8 Alternatives

Pin it For Later – List of Kitchen Essentials for New Home

About Me