A kitchenette is a small cooking area, which usually has a refrigerator and a microwave oven, but may have other appliances - for example a sink. They are found in

studio apartment A studio apartment, or studio Condominium, condo also known as a studio flat (United Kingdom, UK), self-contained apartment (Nigeria, Ghana), efficiency apartment, bed-sitter (Kenya), or bachelor apartment, is a small apartment, dwelling in ...

s, some

motel A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the Parking lot, parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central Lobby (room), lo ...

and hotel rooms, college dormitories, office buildings, furnished basements, or bedrooms in shared houses. New York City's

building code A building code (also building control or building regulations) is a set of rules that specify the standards for construction objects such as buildings and non-building structures. Buildings must conform to the code to obtain planning permis ...

defines a kitchenette as a kitchen of less than 7.4 m² (80 ft²) of floor space. Cuisinette studio in Sherbrooke April 2010

In hotels and motels

Kitchenettes are a common feature in hotel and motel guest rooms and often contain a coffeemaker and a bar refrigerator, commonly called a mini-bar. Some hotel kitchenettes have provisioned refrigerators that have an interior sensor feature used by management to monitor guest use of the refrigerator's contents and thus charge for the consumables, which typically include soda, beer, and liquor.

In Britain

In British English, the term kitchenette also refers to a small secondary kitchen in a house. Often it is found on the same floor as the children's bedrooms, and used by a

nanny A nanny is a person who provides child care. Typically, this care is given within the children's family setting. Throughout history, nannies were usually servants in large households and reported directly to the lady of the house. Today, modern ...

au pair An au pair (; : au pairs) is a person working for, and living as part of, a homestay, host family. Typically, au pairs take on a share of the family’s responsibility for child care as well as some homemaking, housework, and receive a monetary ...

to prepare meals for children; the same feature can be found in hotels such as some in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Small apartment style

The word ''kitchenette'' was also used to refer to a type of small apartment prevalent in African American communities in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

and New York City during the mid-20th century. Landlords often divided single-family homes or large apartment units into smaller units to house more families. Living conditions in these kitchenettes were often wretched; the author Richard Wright described them as "our prison, our death sentence without a trial".Jerry Washington Ward and Robert Butler. "Kitchenettes". ''The Richard Wright Encyclopedia''. ABC-CLIO, 2008. 220. In Brazil, a kitchenette (spelled "quitinete" in Brazilian Portuguese) is a small apartment with one room, one bathroom, and a kitchen which is often in the same space as the room. It corresponds to the

in American culture (or a bedsit in the UK and

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

References

External links

Kitchenettes entry
at the

Encyclopedia of Chicago ''The Encyclopedia of Chicago'' is a historical reference work covering Chicago and the entire Chicago metropolitan area published by the University of Chicago Press. Released in October 2004, the work is the result of a ten-year collaboration ...

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