I usually work in the small space to the right of the cooker too, the cutlery drawer is to the left as is the fridge and the food cupboards are there too. However if I'm baking I use the breakfast bar as it's double the width of the normal counter tops and about 2 metres from wall to end so there's plenty of room for baking trays, bags of flour and the food mixer etc
In other words, there's plenty of room there to get messy.