My House
carltheperson.com
carltheperson.com
You're not allowed to use them as your listed place of residence; authorities require you to have a "real" residence as well. This can of course be circumvented by claiming you live with a friend and listing yourself at their address, but it's illegal and measures will be taken accordingly if you're found out - you'll surely lose your allotment, if nothing else.
Allotments are concentrated to specific areas, typically on municipal or county land rented by a co-op consisting of the inhabitants. Nowadays, most co-ops have installed municipal utilities (water, electricity) but not plumbing for human waste, which means most of them still have outhouses. Outhouse waste management is of course also heavily regulated. Often these utilities, at least water, are turned off during winter.
The permanence of allotments is fleeting; many of them are continually moved or chopped off in order to make room for actual residential buildings. They are however very popular among apartment dwellers who move out to their cosy little allotment houses at the first sign of spring.
Regarding the OP, nice work! Looks great.
The #1 thing the USPS could have done to retain customers would be to have an actual sane forwarding service. I just had a company I worked at 10 years ago call me for an updated address because I had mail that kept going there after being returned from an address I had 5 years ago...
I wish I could just tell the USPS my current address, and instead just list an address for leters that would forward to my actual address.
(yes this exists as a forwarding service, but we could skip all that)
Would that be legal in the US? It sure wouldn't be in most of Europe because you don't live there. Which for some fucking reason is a must.
There is no good reason that I should need to give someone literal directions to my physical house, just so they can send a letter to me. Only the post office (and other delivery companies) need to know the physical address to send their trucks to.
> USPS is now piloting a new technology platform: Informed Address (IA).
> This innovative concept enables mail to be sent and delivered without a consumer’s physical address. Instead, Informed Address allows recipients to use identifiers including an email address, social media handles, or a custom name for mail processing and delivery functions.
> As privacy remains a top concern, Informed Address will replace the delivery point with a unique code where the usual IMB (Intelligent Mail Barcode) is substituted with an “Informed Address IMB”, which contains the physical address information. This allows customers the enhanced privacy and identity protection, as marketers will no longer need to obtain or hold a physical address for their mail communications.
> During the testing period, the USPS will assess consumer engagement, gauge mailer interest, and determine technical feasibility. This new technology provides the opportunity for marketers to provide additional services, including vanity address development and enhanced consumer targeting for B2B and B2C marketing.
There could presumably be a "no fixed address" category at the federal level but don't hold your breath as this is an outlier among people who earn enough to pay taxes and would absolutely be abused if it existed.
I actually agree there is an edge case of people who are nomadic for at least a period who genuinely don't have a fixed address and have to "fake it." I'm also not sure it's a large enough category to institute the significant changes needed to deal with it.
Just send all mail to that, if notice of a fine doesn't reach you, proceed as if it was ignored. Seems reasonable to me.
OK, I can see it now with remote work being common (why live in a CoL state then?), but these laws are way older than that.
Lots of things factor into where people live. I live in a fairly high CoL location and could move pretty much anywhere in the US I wanted to. But I have a house and like where I am for various reasons so moving is unlikely.
I certainly imagine there are lots of flaws in my ideas, but it would be nice to see steps away from the assumption that each of us has a long term residence we can get mail at. Just like you used to need to provide a "home telephone", it's becoming less valid of an assumption.
Like you say though, its probably not high enough on many peoples agendas, and is threatening enough to tax revenues (it would mean competition if nothing else) that it's unlikely to happen
Yeah, it is in fact very harmful to homeless, refugees, and even common immigrants ("expats"), among other groups. In some countries, you need a registered or confirmed address for things like opening a bank account, getting a prepaid phone, or even getting a job. Not having those things also prevents you from getting a home, so it's a vicious circle.
But to rent a place, several of them required me to have a family income that was only enough if I had my wife with me, but since we weren't married officially yet, it didn't count.
That seems a bit extreme
Maybe "you'll lose access to the allotment" would be more clear.
I mean, it is 100% fair to say a region will never get some types of utilities, or postal service, as it is part of city/environmental planing. They can also prohibit regions to have septic tanks, etc, for the same reasons. Thats fair, I guess?
But why would they go as far as punish people that are using compost toilets, being environmentally friendly and largely self sufficient in small lots?
Think of this as more like an area permanently deeded for a certain kind of activity, with the existing belief (encoded into law) being that permanent living there is in conflict with that activity.
I think it's fine to argue that this belief is wrong, and that living permanently in the structure that is permitted to be on the allotment is just fine. I might even agree with you.
But in general, it also seems fine to me that communities can mark out certain places as being for only a specific set of activities, and exclude others from taking place there.
It does seem fine, at first, but the end result is the housing crisis, because people, having been given this power, will work very hard to ensure that expensive single-family homes with multiple parking spots and generous setbacks are the only living arrangement that's legal. (Let's not forget that people also marked out racial boundaries, when they were allowed to do that, too. When you let homeowners set housing-use policy, you get...bad results.)
There's land out on the periphery that hasn't yet been used for housing, but look: we urgently need to get our emissions under control because the course we're on will be catastrophic for the planet. Urban sprawl is massively inefficient.
Buying a house cannot entitle you to the neighborhood around you never changing if we are to have any hope of dealing with this mess. Change is part of life.
But I don't care what they want.
It's not up to them. It's illegitimate to tell a property owner that they can't build a duplex on their own property. It's an illegal taking. It's not up to a vote. My neighbor's opinion is irrelevant.
> There are plenty of places people for people to live and build.
Indeed, there are plenty of places to live and build and the burden is on those who don't want anyone to build near them to move to some place new if they don't like what their neighbors are doing. You have the burden exactly backwards. If you don't like what people are choosing to do on their own private property, then you can move. You shouldn't be allowed to tell everyone else to stop building.
Seems like the blame for the housing crisis lies a lot more with landlords who'd rather kick out a tenant paying X for a new tenant able to pay out X*y - if you have more people moving in than moving out, and existing landlords can simply choose to serve the new, wealthier ones, you're going to have a problem. If you couldn't take advantage of the migration simply by choosing to rent to the higher-income and kick out your existing tenants, maybe the politically-connected multiple-property-owners would figure out a way to get more construction going. We used to have both rent control and more densification than we have today.
SF is the second-densest "large" city in the US. I haven't found specific numbers, but looking at zoning maps at least 50% of the residential space is zoned for single-family homes only, with the majority of the remainder explicitly zoned for low-density residences. A big chunk of the city is basically a suburb! The rest of the Bay Area, of course, is more like 90% single-family housing. This year Berkeley passed a resolution removing single-family zoning throughout the entire city so perhaps the tides are shifting, but even if zoning laws and politics change, it'll take decades for this to meaningfully affect the housing supply.
But, second, any objection that places the blame on "greedy landlords" is a total nonstarter. Everybody is responding to their incentives. Landlords aren't greedier than anybody else. If widget makers could set higher prices, they would. They don't because they can't, not because they're "less greedy."
Sure, some would be prime real estate but I’d rather have a few of these co-ops mixed into the cities than just private housing projects everywhere.
That said, I think that a concept similar to zoning is probably a good one to have on hand, particularly for uses like greenspace of various sorts. It's use does need to carefully controlled/moderated.
As you can see, the land and real state market changes. Things used to be accessible, today many people flee to barely legal situations just because it is too expensive otherwise. What used to be desirable in one area might change over time, and punishing the first ones to try seem too harsh to me.
Try to build a duplex in your neighborhood and you'll really find out how far people will go to punish you for living as you wish on land you bought and own.
These exist in the States as well (though not nearly at the level and cultural significance as in the UK) as "community gardens," and exist in many other countries as well. I don't think any of the cities that provide these parcels for gardening would allow people to simply build a house and live there instead.
Have you ever smelled a compost toilet? (It stinks up an entire area) I certainly don't want to be smelling your composting poo while I'm sitting on my back porch eating dinner (or worse, while sitting in my dining room eating dinner with the windows open).
If you want to do that, move out to the country(rural areas) where you have space.
Your freedoms end where they infringe on others freedoms. Because some people don't understand that (or don't care), governments step in and say "You can't do that".
> with the right separation of pee/poop
How does one do this logistically? Does this mean a compost system where you have two distinct toilets/containers for each of those bodily functions?
I imagine it's similar to a yard waste compost pile. If it's not done right the smell can get pretty bad, but a proper one should have little to no problem with smell.
Help me understand why you think you have a Freedom to Smell Nice Things? If you were to file a nuisance complaint for "bad smell next door" (the action one can take in my locality), would you base it on this so-called freedom? If this person is following codes/guidelines for composting, wouldn't you be the Karen in the situation? Does this difference in lifestyle - your viewing the neighbor composting as a "bad neighbor" - come down to differing values?
IMO, this Freedom to Smell Nice Things does not exist. Cities smell, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Suburbs too - my suburb offers no compost service, and everyone's garbage composts in city-provided bins...it stinks. You suggested going rural, but that seems a romantic notion - the winds are your neighbors and the smell can often be worse than the city depending on where you are located.
"... certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" - US Constitution (enormously grateful for the sacrifices made to keep those freedoms)
You are right that it comes down to different values. I choose to live where these things are enforced, and you can choose, if you wish, to live where they are not.
I do like the sound of [parts] your first paragraph, where people are responsible about how they spread their poo on their garden right next to my garden... however, consider that same situation with an irresponsible (or ignorant) peerson spreading their poo on their garden right next to your garden. Considering how rain and water flow works, you have a not-unlikely possibility of ingesting their poo (and enjoying whatever diseases follow).
I'm glad poo-handling is regulated.
That is quite a stretch. As an American I'm rolling my eyes :)
I guess I'm still not understanding how a composting neighbor is a bad neighbor? I'm not arguing against enforcing correct composting, I'm simply trying to understand why your comment makes it seem like any type of composting makes someone a bad neighbor? If your argument is that participating in a regulated activity (composting here) and not following guidelines (dumping ill-prepared compost on the ground), well that seems obvious - there are lots of regulated activities we participate in daily!
In trying to understand the "bad neighbor" comment, I sought out my local government's guidance. Where I live - highly dense county with a major city - the local government has a recommendation on their website to "Consider installing a composting toilet that converts human waste to nutrient-rich fertilizer for non-food plants and uses little to no potable water for flushing." which to me implies being a good neighbor (https://kingcounty.gov/depts/dnrp/solid-waste/programs/green...).
I guess you're not familiar with modern composting toilets.
They have become very popular replacement heads (toilets) in small boats, for instance. Where the toilet and composting container is often within inches of your sleeping area due to very limited space. Smell is a non-issue even in such tight quarters.
A land-based neighbor dozens of feet (or more) away stands no chance of smelling anything.
That's false. Composting toilets can easily be odor free.
Also, to round out your treatise on freedoms you really need to mention that serious problems can be posed by poorly maintained or designed septic systems, holding tanks, and municipal sewage treatment facilities (beyond offensive odors). To boot, our habit of using clean drinking water to transport urine and feces is simply ... wasteful.
Easy. Governments need to be sure that there is enough soils and fields and pasture around to produce food or at some point we run into problems. Also, governments like its citizens happy (bear with me) so for instance they prevent open air industrial poultry breeding next to houses, make maps with sections dedicated to farming/pastures/residential occupations, etc. You also cannot build anything you want on the land you bought and own: a 600 meters tall jenga building next to a highway or a your own giant windmill for example.
Living in a tribe grants benefits but it also cut on some of our liberties.
You don't own the land of an allotment. You rent it from the local council, usually for many years, but you don't own it. Sometimes there's an option to "buy" it so there is no rent but you still don't own the actual land, no title is ever assigned to it or to you. You just get permanent right to use it.
Reason is that they are located in areas where actual residential construction is likely in foreseeable future. So on one hand, it would be a waste to keep the land completely unused, but on the other, building anything permanent there would be a waste too because it will need to be razed quite soon.
On the other hand, if you still keep the tiny home low cost, easy for decommissioning and/or demolishing, why would government go as far as punish someone who is doing no harm whatsoever?
I take no offense or issue with city planing and even community planing. What I do believe is going too far, is to punish preemptively even when no actual harm was done. The rule say "no living" but the meaning is "be temporary and easy to dispose". So living there while respecting the community goal should not be punishable, instead, just recognize the goals were kept in spirit.
imagine buying a rural land to get away from the city bustle and a developer builds high density apartment next to your place. or buying an apartment in the city only for someone to demolish blocks around you and turn it into farmland so you are not as conveniently close to shops and facilities.
Sometimes rules are written too narrow and need adjustment. Following it blindly is not necessarily serving society optimally. If the actual goal is to have places people can garden, and have a large span of green land in that region, the single student living there is still following the objetive in spirit. In my opinion punishing would be going to far and serving no or little purpose for the community.
I used a wood burning bath stove with a 100 liter copper tank to store heat for the night. It worked great. The 100 liter of water kept heat for many hours and the tank surface radiated it slowly into the room. This was much more convenient than a simple wood stove. I had only to add wood one time per day in autumn and two times per day in winter.
I have a garden shed, thats not quite as impressive as yours. Its more of a workshop.
However the look and feel of your new house is wonderful
Where do you go for winters? Is it the same place your official registered address is?
Traditionally 'kolonihaver' were intended for recreational use and vegetable gardens for workers living in apartments in the larger cities. You were not allowed to live there full time and you should always have an ordinary home beside it.
Unfortunately the rules are not followed, and for a very large part they get used as a small property with a tiny house for the whole year. Not really for recreational use or growing vegetables - mostly for living cheap in expensive cities. I say unfortunately, as living in them are clearly an tax evasive action.
No property tax is payed, while their values rises like most ordinary properties. The Danish property tax is intended to tax the value gained by increasing property values. So when you live in one of these kolonihaver this way you are doing tax fraud. Even though it's mostly never investigated and punished.
It easily gets glorified as a smart and cheap way of living, when you present it like this in a blog post shared on a global forum(HN). But unless you voluntarily pay tax on the monetary gain you'll have the day you sell it again, I despise your lack of contribution to, and participation in, our Danish society.
The UK had a simialr tax in the late 40s - it enabled the building of the "new" towns like Milton Keynes and Harlow (where I was born). Simply put, if everyone knew the government was going to build a ton of new roads and schools on that field, then you would be crazy to sell the field for anything less then a fortune. But if everyone knew the government was going to simply tax the fortune straight back at 100% then you sold the field for a fair value, and the government spent the money not on buying the field but on roads etc. Since that was repealed in 50s no similar large scale house building has been affordable.
There is a comment just above that profit from selling a house is taxed as income! (!!!)
As long as commerical and personal taxes are aligned, that seems a strong solution.
But no politician in US / UK could survive after introducing it.
You are paying property taxes for houses every year, these taxes are in theory based on the value of the house even if they have been lagging the real value of the house.
I think the post refers to the point that you don't pay property taxes.
Having the tax miss 99% of the sales that drive that growth kind of misses the point :-(
Probably because it is? Have you tried buying a real house in any western country recently? Unless you’re already a milionaire it’s damn near impossible to find anything at a reasonable price.
The taxes are not the problem. The initial cost is.
You can in Denmark borrow 95% of the house/apartment price at very low interest rates. I have a fixed rate 30 year mortgage at 1% interest rate for 80% of my house value, the rest if a loan is needed would be a bit higher.
If you are willing to gamble with a variable rate loan you can get negative rates at the moment.
Houses near metro areas are expensive but outside that they still seem reasonably priced.
I’d say 5x median salary would be reasonable, and maybe a little more.
Where I am, Auckland, it’s about 20x and this is a significant negative.
My experience is in Northern Germany, I heard of even lower prices in the east.
Any tax he owes can be deducted from his carbon/pollution under-footprint.
Are they still cheap in Denmark? Here in Sweden they tend to cost almost as much as a small flat if they're anywhere near an expensive city.
This is the same bullshit as being self-employed for one employer. The worker is punished. Why? Go after the companies employing people this way.
But no, let's ruin some (literally) poor guy's life because he dared try making money and didn't understand that it's illegal.
This is quite a strong statement. The author is a student and does not live in this full time. Therefore he seems to be following the laws and, I would argue, is contributing to society.
In the UK the rules on sheds and structures are controlled by the local council. Often they set a maximum size, but I suspect they aren't measured unless you piss off someone enough to complain.
There was a movement in the late 1890s-1930s where building societies would buy strips of land to allow the working man to take out a loan to buy and build on a plot of land, with enough space to grow and keep livestock. I wish I knew what they were called. Basically they were allotments with houses.
In the netherlands Tuinhuisen are a thing, and they put a lot of effort into making them look nice and be livable.
That is the intention in Scandinavia as well, and how most people use them. Although it has generally always been acceptable to have a bed and spend the night there. However some people have upgraded their 'shed' to (ab)use them as more permanent living spaces, even if it is generally frowned upon.
How did you get electricity from the grid? Do you just tap into an existing property?
What about gray water?
https://www.boatingmag.com/choosing-composting-marine-toilet...
At least the model we have at our summer cottage, you can go multiple times while it's still burning since the incinerator and the part where you are doing your business are two separate areas. To "flush" you just press the button that opens the hatch and drops down in to the incinerator.
You have to empty it maybe once month and there is only handful of ash. It's definitely easier to maintain than composting toilet where usually you need to throw in some dry mulch/compost material so doesn't get smelly. Eventually you still have to empty the compost and hope it has mostly turned in to soil. It also smaller than composting toilet so you can fit in inside a small cottage.
The word we seek is probably something with “záhradka” … within the borders of a town, that can be rented for long periods, intended for growing vegetables.
Fortunately, people aren't snitching like in some other countries.
Unless you piss off someone in the police or government or someone needs that land for something and official inquiries are made, you're unlikely to get in trouble.
https://pressa40.ru/neskolko-millionov-rossiyan-zhdyot-garaz...
https://punkt-a.info/news/glavnoe/gorduma-i-garazhi-v-bitve-...
(Very common in xUSSR countries.)
Did it already have electricity hook up? Water makes sense for an allotment, but you can legally just pipe it in unmetered to your new house? And what about waste water & sewage?
> The first thing I started on was the electrical wiring. To actually supply the house with power I had to dig a 0.5 meter deep trench from the start of the garden to the house. I did it by hand with a shovel.
Interesting project, I'm just hungry for more detail!
He says: ' The house is what in English apparently is called an allotment.'
In the UK, allotments are about 250 square metres, and can only have a small shed on them that does not having running water or electricity. They are specifically considered 'temporary' structures, and you are not allowed to live in them.
The 'house' he shows, is massive compared to a 2.5m x 2m shed you typically see on British allotments.
That said, kudos on converting it into a liveable home. If only this option was more available to zero-income or homeless people....
Sadly I'm not even allowed a shed on my allotment.
Even if they're not 17.
[1] https://www.blogto.com/real-estate-toronto/2021/08/new-toron...
There are places outside of Toronto, Canada which are affordable and have better price to comfort ratio. London Ontario, Gatineau Quebec, Regina Sask, Calgary Alberta are quite affordable and have all the modern life style options available.
Having said that though, several of the "old boys" on my mum's allotment had fucking huge sheds to keep pigs and chickens in. They were the full width of the allotment and a good few meters long.
However. If you do have a place to put a temporary structure in, I can recommend: https://www.tuin.co.uk/Office-Log-Cabin.html (Although I bought mine when they were £4k).
With insulation they are warm/cheap to heat. Lots of space to put solar on the roof. Really strong and well made, and easy to put together. The hardest part is making the base, everything else is pretty simple.
How much time did it take to assemble, not including the base?
How did you isolate it?
on your own its about double that time. The hardest part is putting the windows in, as they are really heavy ~50-80kgs. The process is really simple, its pretty much lego.
I used rockwool 100mm bats, that are held in place with osb boards. The Tuin wiki have tips on Attaching things to the walls in a way that allows shrinking and growing.
The only thing I think I would have done differently is putting the roof insulation on the outside, under the EDPM layer, rather than on the inside in the rafters.
I've had it for a good 4ish year, I have replaced the double glazing for coated panels. They are about 3x more insulating
Here's a 2 hour video that's very relaxing to have on in the background (only the sound of hard work, no speech): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBX5qh09OIE&t=7s&ab_channel=...
And, yes, he begins by literally chopping down trees.
I guess it would have running water, but what about sewage. Does it have a toilet? Did you use a septic tank. Or are you directly fertilising your patch.
In the US we have drywall and something similar called blue board that as far as I can tell is only used in the North East. They seem similar at first but they're very different.
Most of the texture in drywall comes from the paint and is intentional to hide imperfections. Joint compound is used at the seams to hide and smooth out imperfections, it's of a different texture than the drywall itself and a truly flat paint job would reveal all the seams. Blue board avoids this by coating the entire surface and joints in a skim coat of plaster.
I struggle for time even to nail a painting on the wall or install a shelf, yet alone something like this.
I've learned how to: replace toilets, set backerboard and tile, copper plumbing/soldering (was fun once, but from now I'll use PEX), drywall, level&plumb a wall & floor, deal with a subfloor, make a shower mud pan (concrete/sand mix), slope everything and how water & waterproofing works (gravity vs capillary action), and probably a few other things. And all those things come with various clever tricks, code requirements, learning new tools...
Out of curiosity: what's the real reason that it is illegal to live there? What are the gov trying to avoid?
As I understand from other comments there is no "real" bathroom in this house. There might be certain rules of which "features" a space has to offer to be considered a valid place to live in.
I think both sides here are understandable. There is the gov, which has to make some regulations in order to be able to fulfill its duties and to enforce some lower bound for whats considered a place to live in. On the other side, there is a lot of people who cannot or dont want to afford this lower bound and would be happy to be able to live in something that offers less.
Anyway, it's a cool spot! I'd need a shower, room for at least a queen size bed... king if it's 2 people. I wonder where my need for space came from... if it's something people are born with. Growing up my parents had a bigger house than I have now, so maybe that's it. Ha, I couldn't swing this, but impressive you've found a way to avoid mortgage payments. Good on ya!
It's incredibly popular. A friend of mine is living there in a 50 square meter house with his partner and kid. These houses do have electricity and running water.
Also, cars are stupidly expensive in Denmark - a nice van will cost you (a lot!) more than OPs allotment.
Many people just live there quietly through the winter even though it's illegal. At least that's the situation in Århus where I live :)
In the states, we don't have anything like this, but should.
It seems like in the states government goes out of it's way to discourage cheap housing.
Gov. Neusome did a great job on ADU's, but you need a house to put the unit in, or around. What happened is wealth people realized they could remodel their home while putting in a small apartment.
When begging for a variance for their bigger home, and guaranteed ADU thanks to Neusome, they promise to rent the ADU out to low income tenants.
They get their variance, build a ADU, and turn the ADU into another room for themselfs.
The wealthy are foxey.
(I'm looking at you San Anselmo. I see you are now granting Variances, but they appear to be given out to favorite homeowners? I hope this is not what it appears. For years, my little town gladly took in a $1000 fee for a variance, but never ok'ed one.)
adu=accessory dwelling unit variance=a piece of paper indicating you are breaking some zoning rule. wealthy people=foxey
I wish the US had something similar. Not so much for tiny-house living, but common community gardens. My town (Reston, VA) has a few and they're popular. But, depending on where your house is located, they could be a few miles away. I'm on the waitlist for the closest garden and it's about 1.5 miles and an easy bike ride. No sheds or buildings allowed, but the community provides water and compost. I tried veggies in my front and rear yards this season, but they just don't get enough light (tall house and a few mature trees). Herbs do well, but tomatoes and peppers need more sun - the fruit eventually, but quite late in the season.
Back when I lived in Chicago, they made it easy to create one. You were subjected to non-adversarial bureaucracy to make sure you were serious enough about creating something that would last for years and would actually be used by the community, but I had never heard of any denials and worked on two different ones in parks near my place.
As for parks, none with available space would be any closer than the one where I'm currently waitlisted. And I doubt any would allow any shed-like structures. Either way, I meant in a more general sense - I wish community gardens were more of "a thing" in the US, especially in cities.
Aside from owning an unimproved lot in the woods for this, in Maine it is common to have these camps on land leased from logging companies and those leases can be transferrable. It's also common for these camps (and corresponding leases) to be passed through generations.
There is even a hospitality industry around renting basic no-frills shacks. These are called sporting camps and are abundant in the most remote northern parts of Maine.
Having a camp is common across all economic demographics in Maine.
https://downeast.com/history/going-up-to-camp/
https://bangordailynews.com/2021/03/12/special-sections/a-tr...
There are even still some fairly massive summer "cottages" in New England that are 2-3 season.
The locals would be out with pitchforks and burning stakes after the first brick was placed.
Your narrative is instructive, though. Thus has it always been so ...
If nothing else it looks like a pretty slick way to avoid all building codes. Just run extension cords everywhere, water through garden hoses, dump the toilet bucket into the garden, no need for fire-rated anything. sweet.
Edit: by the by, Google “kitchen triangle design” for an effective strategy for laying out a kitchen. Move the fridge to the adjacent wall (right side in the photo) and put another cabinet piece in its place and you are good to go.