Unless you are a frequent house-flipper, many years go by before you’re back in the market for all the materials that make a renovation.

As we prepared to travel Renovation Road 2023, I started picking up decorating magazines, did reconnaissance store tours and took full advantage of Mr. Google’s capacity to pull up anything from everywhere.

Maybe these are all old news to you, if you keep abreast of all the latest things. But to me, these are five Wow! Why did we not have these before! Fantastic! discoveries for our new kitchen and living room.

Pull-out pantry cupboards

Psychological studies show that, over time, material items’ ability to make us happy wanes: We get used to them and crave something else. Every theory has exceptions and, for me, pull-out pantry cupboards are one of them.

We are getting these installed in our new kitchen and there is a similar set in the rental we’re staying at while renovations are underway. Every time I pull out one of those sliding bin-like shelves, and can easily see which cannister is rice, quinoa or lentils, or which can is diced tomato, black beans or coconut milk on the shelf below, my heart does a happy flutter. How many moments adding up to days and months over my lifetime have I emptied a cupboard without pullouts looking for an item that is (of course) the last one at the back?

Sinks with at-back drains

The tangle of pipes under a kitchen sink get a whole lot less intrusive when sink drains are positioned toward the back, rather than in the middle. Usable space with no compromise on function! Win!

Counter depth refrigerators

Like the pull-out pantry cupboards, these shallower-but-wider refrigerators — generally about 30″ deep rather than the standard 36″ — make it a whole lot easier to see where things are, reducing the chances of forgotten bits turning into science-lab petri dishes for moulds you never knew existed.

Electrical outlets in the island

I had one of these in our Toronto kitchen and thought it was genius: Plug in a laptop if you want to work at the island; great for hand mixer or food processor so you can look out while you work, rather than be working with your backside turned toward everything else while you face a set of upper cabinets.

It turns out that, in new builds, these outlets are mandatory by building code where we live in Ontario. When you have an island, you want to work on it: and without a receptacle in the island, the temptation is to put your appliance on the island and string the electrical cord over to the socket in wall behind. (That is, if the cord is even long enough to reach: short cords on appliances are now regulated to be so short for the same trip-and-hazard prevention reason.)

In the reno, we’re getting two island outlets: one on the kitchen appliance side and one on the seating side. A great addition at little cost.

Frame TVs

I hate how TV screens dominate a room. And when turned off, they are hulking black holes. The TV of my childhood looked more like a piece of furniture with doors that closed over the screen: when that TV needed replacing, my father removed the mechanical guts and turned the rest into a liquor cabinet. And while TVs these days are skinnier, they cover far more acreage and are harder to hide.

I can’t remember the first time I heard about a Samsung Frame TV but it was invented in 2017. In the past year, I’ve seen three in action at the homes of family and friends. These are TVs that hide in plain sight.

With the pressing of a few remote control buttons, a Frame TV displays an image of a work of art or a photograph. The TV itself is surrounded by an art-like frame. The device becomes a piece of projected art. These aren’t the cheapest TVs on the market, nor the most expensive. But they are, for my money, the best because they can add to your decor, rather than destroy it, when you’re using the room for purposes other than binge-watching The Crown.