Here I was remembering the full sized metal sink and stove playset that I had as a kid. :)

What does "adult" mean? I can't say we cooked a lot--in fact I don't even remember eating a lot, and I had a broken wrist--but I moved to a house off campus with a couple other girls my third year of college. It was a standard three bed, two bath tract house in a development old enough for the houses to look different even though they started the same. The back of the brick fireplace/chimney was part of the kitchen. Otherwise it was a standard U, probably 1960's, wall ovens and cooktop. I can't remember, but I'm guessing it was electric. Nice kitchen.

My folks gave me an Ecco set of flatware and a Farberware set of pots. A roommate had a set of Corelle dishes and a couple of pans, and a couple of knives. I had a few utensils my mother wanted to be rid of an a few other things. The third roommate was dating a pro athlete and rarely around. A lot of pasta was consumed one way or another. We roasted a chicken for a small dinner party. Lots and lots of salad, and the occasional pot of frozen peas. Bread and cheese. Fruit. We baked a little. Brought in pizza once a week or so. But I remember acquiring the pizza better than what we cooked most of the time. When we were home, that is.

My first apartment was much older than 1988. If I had to guess, I would venture the home had been built in the 1920's. I'm also guessing that the apartment may have been servants quarters? It was a single bedroom, tiny bath, kitchen/living area with its own foundation and basement. At one time there had been a passway connected to the main house but that had been walled off. Actually enclosed to make a desperately needed coat closet (hallway width) in such a small space.

I had my own refrigerator, used....my mother had upgraded. There wasn't one in the unit. The apt had elec coil stove with oven, a sink, no microwave and very few cabinets. No dishwasher. Formica counter. There was room for a drop leaf table and two chairs. (small sofa and two chairs in the open living area. And a television.)

It's saving grace was a great location and the fact there was a basement. I was able to have a freezer, and purchased (installments) a repossessed & reconditioned washer/dryer. My elderly landlady also included 1/2 the double garage in the rent ($92/mo) for my car so it wasn't out in the weather.

My first kitchen [50s house] was okay.

My second kitchen bit; it had the washer and dryer in the kitchen just inside the front door [yuck].

We designed our third kitchen which has plenty of space and an island that seats six ... we never use it for seating. It's great for my plants [it's under a double skylight] and four great windows facing west.

First kitchen was a pullman kitchen in a rental apt in a big old house. Iw as 21 and newly married, had not much but wedding presents and a few things I bought. The kitchen was almost a hallway....the sink refrigerator and stove were sort of a "kit" an all in one unit....4 burner stove but burners close together and an oven with a broiler. Small sink and a refrigerator under the counter top. We lived there 11 months, and i baked cakes, cooked half a turkey several times ( for some reason the meat packing plant would saw a frozen turkey in half....so you could have a 12 pound half a turkey instead of a 24 pound whole one)...had guests for dinner, made pork chops etc.
Then we bought a house, a 1957 ranch brand new but no appliances....bought a refrigerator and a second hand stove....which we sold when we moved.....sure wish i hadn't...it was an early Maytag and so well insulated you could leave a stick of butter on the top while the oven was baking and it wouldn't melt.

My first kitchen was an apartment kitchen. I don't really remember a lot about it but that it was a galley style as most one bedroom apartment kitchens are. I don't remember it being too small to cook in. My current kitchen is the worst kitchen I've ever had to cook in. It has hardly any counter space and no pantry. Heck, even the first kitchen had a pantry. I don't know how people raised huge families and cooked most every meal at home in these tiny 1950's homes' kitchens? The kitchen itself isn't little, it has a big empty space to the side that is for a table which we have put free standing shelves and a microwave cart. We also have a free standing island cart too and it is still about useless for cooking in. I have one two feet long counter space to prepare meals on. Then I have the island. Love this house, hate this kitchen!

My first kitchen was a standard mobile home kitchen. Nothing fancy but it was adequate. We lived there for 3 years before buying a house. Yeah... the kitchen in that house was a nightmare. It had one tiny cabinet and just enough room for the fridge and stove and a small table. Sink? The sink was in another room!! We bought a portable dishwasher and the only place to put it was in the doorway between the main kitchen and the sink room. You had to turn sideways and suck in your breath to get past it. And we had to put our microwave in the dining room. I knew as soon as I saw the kitchen it was going to be not fun but the house was built in the 19-teens and had all this original woodwork and stained glass windows and DH would not be budged. He HAD to have this house. Ugh.

I’m so enjoying these stories, thanks all and any to come. :)

My first kitchen was in an apartment in a building that was probably constructed around the turn of the 20th century or soon after. It was a galley style with a small dining area that was separated from the actual kitchen by built-in glass cabinets. And with glass doors that shut it off from the rest of the apartment.

I don't remember a lot about it but it had both a rubbish/garbage cabinet area and an old fashioned ice box that could be accessed from the corridor. The ice box was no longer functional but made for good storage! (had a real, apt. sized frig as well).

It must have functioned well enough as I remember hosting Thanksgiving dinner for my family in that tiny space! My first official dinner party in my own place!

My first real kitchen was in a cute apartment in Pasadena that I still think about. I had put my name on a waiting list hoping one of the apartments would become available...but never expecting it to happen. It had a tiny galley kitchen but had everything I needed. I just loved it and did a lot of cooking in that little kitchen. I had a little glass-top bistro table with two chairs at one end of the kitchen by a window. A nice perk was the apartment was in walking distance from Trader Joe's. It was the mid 70's, so it was the only TJ's in existence. Seems forever ago! Also crazy to think the rent was only $140/month.

Everyone clearly had way more charming first kitchens than mine! 😄

Chloebud, please tell me your apartment was decorated like Three’s Company. Please tell me you had macrame planters and fondue parties, while Summer Breeze played in the background. Don’t burst my bubble!

LOL, Jinx, no macrame, fondue or Summer Breeze playing. Though pretty nice, it was a lot smaller than the Three's Company apartment, and the landlord was much younger/cooler than Mr. Roper! The apartment was on Pleasant Street...very fitting. :-)

I guess one might say my first kitchen was a galley, but was really more like the hallway to the rest of the apartment.... and just as wide. If one of us came in the back door the other had to vacate the space so they could pass. It was literally a refrigerator, sink, and stove... all in a row against one wall. I did cook, but was hard pressed to roll-out anything with no counter-space at all. I had to take the laundry to my MILs and got a chance to help her make dinner in her big kitchen while the clothes washed and dried.

Ours was the cabin my parents bought in the Russian River area in 1956 for $2500.00! By 1974 it had been "renovated" a couple of times, bringing the bathroom inside and adding some sq ft to the kitchen area! We had, and still have about a total of 8' of work area including the sink and drainer area!

Hey! It's a cabin! ;)

We have since moved on, but still cook in that cabin kitchen and make magic happen!

I was 18 when I got married to my first husband and we moved into the standard mobile home. It was right next to the railroad tracks, so every time the train came through the dishes would rattle in the cabinets. If the doors weren't closed securely they'd rattle right out of the cabinets!

We only lived there a couple of years before we bought a house for $10,000 on a land contract. My boss at the time used to tell me that if we would tear down the house the lot would conform to the County's junk ordinance restrictions, LOL. The kitchen floor went downhill at a pitch steep enough that I could set my rolling pin in the doorway and it would roll to the other end of the room. The cabinets were those old metal ones and two burners on the electric stove worked. We had fuel oil heat and the heating bill was more than the monthly payment on the house, plus the line would freeze and I'd have to go out in the middle of the night and pour a teakettle of boiling water over it to thaw it out. We lived there when Amanda was born and stayed there long enough to save a down payment on a REAL house.

From there we moved to a small apartment but at least all the burners worked, and snow didn't come in around the windows. We lived there while shopping for a house and eventually bought the White Cloud house with the orange formica counters and the in ground pool. Priorities, you know. (grin) Ashley was born while we were in that house and both the girls grew up there. The applicances were all KitchenAid and they were good ones, except the refrigerator. The owners had just purchased a big side by side and wanted to take it with them, and we used every penny we had for a downpayment, so we bought a used refrigerator. We lived there for 30 years, eventually got divorced and I kept that house.

When I retired and Dad died, I bought the farm I grew up on. Elery and I got married and here we are.

Annie

What a fun memory. My first kitchen was in a little apartment which was part of a very old house. The cooker/oven was a 1930’s gas cooker... one of those green and beige enamel with curvy legs. Found this photo, it was exactly like this. I learned to cook with this.

The memory must be working well today because I’m pretty sure I remember the first meal I cooked on it. It was homemade Italian sausages which were mince squashed into a sausage shape flavoured with garlic and Italian herbs. You couldn’t buy Italian sausage here back then, but I’d had them at a little Italian restaurant and wanted to make them myself.

https://images.app.goo.gl/g18ZB5jHdq1nTWcP7

Ours was in a tiny, dark, drab apartment in a building that had been converted from old WWII Army Air Field barracks in Drew Field, Tampa. I was told that these buildings were built by POW's but I don't know for sure. Anyway, tiny propane gas stove, very small frig., sink and one 4 x 2 foot counter separating the kitchen from the "living room". Horrible place. No A.C. (this is Florida folks). We didn't have enough room in the "living room" for a table so we ate on TV trays. We couldn't afford things like steaks and roasts but I did cook a lot of spaghetti, chili, anything that contained ground beef and we ate a LOT of canned tuna and hot dogs, too.

Very first "adult" kitchen was in graduate student housing shared among four of us. It was a little nook. Worked fine if one person cooked at a time, and usually two of the others seldom did. The fourth, alas, used to get out of her classes around 1 pm or so and go back to the housing unit, toss in a chicken into the oven, then go to sleep. We'd all get back home around 5 pm to smoke coming out of the oven, and have to rescue her charred chicken (and awaken her). As I was the last person to leave end of spring that year, I was the one who got charged for the range replacement...

But I did cook there, as I'd only bought a 5-weekday-lunch plan, and had no car to go do take out. I think the only time the four of us cooked together was during the blizzard of February 1978, when no one was going anywhere for two or three days, but I did fight the blizzard to walk into campus to bring back a lake salmon from the ecology lab, which one of the other residents (not the chicken scorcher) cooked up. The four of us had a great feast that night, along with three off campus guests who weren't going to be able to drive home once the campus shut down. (The lab was doing a study on thermal effluent effects on fish in Lake Michigan, which meant trapping salmon and trout for measurements - rather than waste what was caught, we kept them for use in a freezer at the lab.)

1966 when my son was born. Don't have a picture of our first apartment, but we weren't there too lon. I have become fascinated by looking up old addresses on Google ever since I found the home my parents built in 1960 for sale. If the property has sold in the recent past, the pictures are probably still available.

PS: This is considerably remodeled!