If you haven't already read part 1 of this series, you can start here.
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Part 2: Dishes and Glassware
Plastic dishes might be OK for camping, but they're not great to use every day. If you're going to be handling and eating off your dishes multiple times every day, it's worth it to have something that's pleasant to use, and doesn't feel cheap.
These are the best options for compact, lightweight, and high quality dishes and glassware for a small kitchen.
Corelle Dishes
By far, my favorite dishes for tiny living are Corelle. They're beautiful, thin, and relatively lightweight. They're not totally unbreakable, but they're crack and chip resistant and dishwasher, microwave, and oven safe. Properly stored, Corelle dishes can easily survive years of bumping down dirt roads in an RV.
Best of all, they're real, not plastic.
The 8-1/2" Corelle lunch plates are a good choice for a kitchen with limited storage space. If you don't like plain white, there are a few colored designs available. Corelle lunch plates are a little smaller than you may be used to, but that saves space and weight, and smaller plates are also proven to help with portion control. You can always go back for seconds.
While a few standard bowls can be useful as well, we find that our pasta bowls are the most useful of all our dishes. Pasta bowls can be used for soup, salad, or any dish that needs a little more containment than a plate, but doesn't fit nicely into a small bowl. If I had to pick just one type of dish for everything, it would be a pasta bowl.
Enamelware Dishes
If Corelle is still too heavy and breakable for you, there's still a better option than melamine plastic dishes.
Enamelware dishes have a steel core and a porcelain coating. They're super lightweight, but also sturdy, and the porcelain coating gives them a premium feel. They're mostly unbreakable, though the porcelain coating can chip over time.
Glassware
Duralex tumblers are fantastic real glasses for small and mobile spaces. This French tempered glassware is incredibly durable, so they're less likely to break when dropped or bounced around. And they're dishwasher safe. We have traveled thousands of miles with our tumblers bouncing around our kitchen drawer and haven't lost one yet.
Similarly, Schott Zwiesel Tritan Crystal is surprisingly durable, resisting breaking and chipping, and it's also dishwasher safe. We keep a set of their all-purpose glasses. They're a nice intermediate design, so they work just as nicely for white wine as red.
If you're in the high-impact ultra-lightweight camp, enamelware mugs are the most lightweight, versatile, unbreakable option.
For flatware, lightweight stainless silverware is available if weight is an issue. You're going to be using it every day, so don't buy super lightweight flimsy silverware. But don't keep more than you need. If only two people live in your home, you probably don't need service for sixteen.
To store your cutlery, this Joseph Joseph drawer organizer is a brilliant design for saving space. You can tame the clutter in the remaining space in your cutlery drawer with a set of these adjustable drawer dividers.
