Fall is when people start cooking more again, so the kitchen needs its counters. The trick is to put fall everywhere except where you chop: towels, the table, the tops of shelves and the windowsill.

Towels

The quickest change in any kitchen. Swap the dish towels and the hand towel by the sink for fall ones (on Amazon), or just plain rust, mustard or olive. You see them every time you wash a dish. Get a couple of extras; you’ll be using more.

A bowl of real fruit

A wooden bowl of apples, pears or clementines on the table or the end of the counter looks like fall and gets eaten, which means it never looks stale. A long dough bowl (on Amazon) holds a lot without taking much width.

Open shelves

If you have open shelving, put two or three small pumpkins (on Amazon) in front of the plates or between jars. A white one and an orange one look better together than three orange ones. Keep it to one shelf so the kitchen still looks like a kitchen.

No open shelves? The top of the fridge or a high cabinet can hold a small cluster, as long as it isn’t over the stove.

The windowsill

The sill over the sink is the most looked-at spot in a kitchen and the least useful. A small pumpkin, a jar of cinnamon sticks (on Amazon) and a few sprigs of eucalyptus (on Amazon) in a glass is plenty.

The table

If there’s a kitchen table, lay a runner down the middle. A plaid runner (on Amazon) carries straight through to Christmas. Put the fruit bowl on it and leave the rest of the table clear for actual meals.

Make it smell like fall

Real cooking does most of this for you, but on days you’re not baking, a pot of water on the lowest burner with apple slices, cinnamon sticks and a few cloves fills the whole apartment in twenty minutes. Turn it off when you leave the room.

What to leave out

  • Anything on the main prep counter. You’ll just move it every time you cook.
  • Candles near the stove or under cabinets.
  • Real gourds on wooden shelves for weeks; they can soften and leave marks.

After Thanksgiving

The towels and pumpkins go away, the runner and bowl stay, and the windowsill gets a sprig of pine instead of eucalyptus.