Routine

I have a confession to make … my kitchen in normally, everyday, mostly in a state of disarray of one kind or another. Stuff on the counters, stuff in the sink, floor needs sweeping or mopping, or the dishwasher to be loaded or unloaded. Sound familiar? If you cook at all I’m sure you can totally identify!

But, you might say, The Granny Plan step number three says it’s important to clean as you go. And I do.

So, what’s going on here?

An Active Kitchen is Always in a State of Becoming the Next Meal

Take a look at these three stunning kitchens and what do you notice?

Zero cleanup, zero meal prep … all is perfect!

Of course we all know these are model kitchens, but I still think it has an effect on us that we see oh so many of these picture perfect kitchens on TV shows, in advertisements, online, on cooking shows, and on and on ad nauseum. On cooking shows all is clean, ingredients are pre-measured and in cute little bowls and totally ready to cook.

But, in your own home there are dishes from the last meal in the sink, a full dishwasher to be unloaded, appliances and other tools you use daily on the counters, some needing cleaning themselves, a floor that needs sweeping or mopping, a dirty range top. All of these are true of my kitchen in this picture:

This is my kitchen just after a fairly big family breakfast. Everyday my husband makes breakfast for the four of us, then after we eat I cleanup the kitchen. He cleans as he goes, but let’s just say, not as much as I do 😉 .

The dishes in the foreground just came out of my overly tiny dishwasher ( it’s weirdly small ) , way in the background you’ll note a stack of baking dishes and bowls drying on the counter, a couple of pans soaking overnight from dinner. The sink has breakfast dishes in it and the counters need to be wiped down along with the range. The floor needs sweeping and mopping. There is a percolator that needs cleaning out, and we keep quite a few everyday things on the counter like silverware, cutting boards and utensils, for a lack of drawer space.

This is a kitchen in the process of cleaning up one meal, and prepping for the next! Just after this photo was taken all the dishes went in the cabinets or the dishwasher, pots and pans were scrubbed, then lunch was made for my Mom by my husband, my son made his lunch then he made a batch of brownies for later. Late in the afternoon I cleaned the kitchen once again before I made dinner, then again after dinner. And so begins another day.

There was no point in the day when my kitchen looked even remotely like the ones in the pictures. Okay, well maybe about 5 minutes! All day there were dishes clean or dirty on the counters, ingredients being prepped, things drying, and of course floors in various stages of clean/dirty.

Clean tidy kitchens are an ideal, a much longed for Kitchen Utopia like the ones in the model home pictures that will just never arrive no matter what you do. Of course, unless …

I think this is exactly how many sparkling home kitchens come about, lol!

Our working home kitchens should more closely resemble a commercial kitchen with tons of activity, things in process, and a mix of clean and dirty utensils about, all of which are on there way to the stove, the table, or the dishwasher.

Clean as you Go Can Look Different Depending on your Situation

If you live alone your kitchen probably does look pretty tidy most of the time. Or if you live like me with several adults, most of which cook, then well, things will probably always be in a state of flux.

And if you live with several little kids, well, all bets are off 😉

Clean as You Go means do whatever cleaning you can as you are cooking and prevent as much in-between meal work as you are able. But try as you might, cooking still leaves evidence that will have to be handled in between cooking. But keeping it to a minimum is a huge contribution to keeping your kitchen cooking ready.

So relax, drop the perfectionism …

Life is messy, and food is life in a way 🙂 . Enjoy your kitchen in all it’s glorious chaos … just try to keep it in check enough to be ready to make the next meal!

While browsing Pinterest earlier today looking for good recipes to share I happened to see a pin that reminded me of one of my pet peeves … so of course I thought I’d write a short post about what you should absolutely positively not do when you are switching your family over to a real food diet. When it comes to getting people on board with the program this one thing is probably the very worst thing you can do.

What’s shocking about it is that it is standard advice to everyone starting any kind of new diet! Truly terrible advice for 99.9% of us.

So what is it? The advice to march to your kitchen and immediately throw out anything and everything that doesn’t come up to your new standards.

What Everyone Thinks Will Happen

It’s easy to think that without the food you no longer wish to eat around to tempt everyone that they’ll just have to eat all the healthy stuff you’re planning to buy to replace it. It’s easy to imagine that sure, there will be a little complaining but they will soon get adjusted. And you as the head cook and bottle washer, well you’ve got a list of recipes and plans of the things you’ll make with all the good ingredients you’re about to buy. It’ll be so great they won’t miss their favorites for long at all.

We all think the first time we try this that sudden change of this kind will be like removing a bandaid … “Rip it Right Off!”. It’ll hurt like hell and then sweet relief when it’s over. Everyone will get healthier faster the quicker we get this phase over with.

What Actually Happens

Okay, so we’ve got our fridge and pantry cleaned out. We found a lot of labels with things like “cottonseed oil” or “hydrolized soy protein” in them … out they went! And it feels good, real good. We are making great progress! We head off to the store to get some replacements. Being a bit tired from the mornings activities we only get about half of what’s on our list … reading thru all the labels and remembering all the things we’ve read about what to buy and not to buy is pretty exhausting. We arrive back home hungry.

That’s okay we have a plan for that. We set out to make one of the recipes we found on the internet with our good ingredients. It turns out well and the family seems pleased. But the littlest picks at his food a little and hubby says he still feels hungry … what else is there for him to eat? He looks for his favorite snack but it’s gone. He wants to be helpful so he doesn’t complain … much :-).

The next day the little ones are crying for their usual snacks, you’re hungry and already a little sick of cooking. You start using a little willpower to stick with it. You have to rush out for baseball practice in the early evening so dinner is a hurried and misbegotten affair. Everyone is grumpy. But you insist they stick with it. The next day is kinda similar only you and everyone else’s patience is wearing thin. You discover that getting all of the foods you want to buy adds up to much more expense than you thought. Processed food begins it’s sneaky trek back in. Pretty soon you’re back where you started, but worse ’cause now the family associates eating better with tons of stress!

Change and the Elephant

In the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath use an analogy of a elephant and it’s rider to talk about making big changes that stick. The rider is willpower and the elephant is the momentum of current habits and emotion mixed up together. The rider has to exert a lot of willpower to influence the direction of the elephant. He will tire of this quickly then the elephant will do as he likes. Oh, and heaven forbid the rider should do something that spooks the elephant. Most anything might happen then :-).

When we make big changes all at once we are frightening the elephant! The whole system goes into overdrive to ensure that the status quo continues. Everyone will want their twinkies when they suddenly fear they are about to lose them forever! Your rider, the one that made the decision to clear out all the bad food, will quickly tire out using willpower to a) make yourself cook all the food all the time and b) keep everyone on the straight and narrow food-wise. This path is doomed.

What to Do Instead

Big change is made up of lots of little changes gradually implemented. In other words babysteps! Instead of swallowing all the change at once you’ll want to do one small thing, practice it till it becomes a habit, and then and only then add another step.

Instead of tossing everything at once you’ll want to do step 5 in The Granny Plan and eliminate just one processed food at a time. This gives everyone time to get adjusted to it’s disappearance and to it’s replacement.

A Day in the Life of a Busy Kitchen