Why Simple Is Better In the Kitchen

I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but it’s okay to simplify your kitchen. If you’re a member of an older generation, you probably already know this. But I know I desperately needed this advice as a young mom, and I’m guessing many others do as well. We live in a world full of beautiful Instagram images of everyone’s dinners, endless Pinterest recipes, and YouTube videos where you can learn to cook literally anything you can imagine.

 In many ways our kitchens are the opposites of those of our grandmothers: they learned basic kitchen skills from their predecessors which they then passed on to the next generation; we read five different cookbooks, watch twenty YouTube videos, and scroll Instagram for hours, yet we don’t know how to cook even the most basic foods from scratch; they ate what was in season, used what they had, and probably hadn’t heard of a baking mix, yet we spend hundreds of dollars on groceries every week while our pantry and freezers are already overflowing; they didn’t waste anything, even making use of scraps like vegetable peelings, yet we throw out multiple containers of spoiled produce and unwanted leftovers each week. Anyone else recognizing themselves in the above list? Yup, me too. So what did our grandmothers know that we are missing? They knew that food is supposed to be simple.

Now, before I go any further, please know that I recognize that our kitchens can often feel anything but simple. Some of you may have real challenges in the kitchen, including allergies or health concerns that force you to follow a specific diet. I know this firsthand after four years of being an allergy mom, yet the irony is that my daughter’s food allergies are actually what first led me to simplify my kitchen.

  When she was first diagnosed with peanut, dairy, and egg allergies, I was completely overwhelmed and almost frantic as I attempted to figure out what life was going to look like for our family now. I searched for answers online for hours. I went through every single bit of food storage in my house and read the allergy warnings on every single item. I joined an online forum for dairy allergy moms. I attempted to cook with every single dairy substitute ever made. I contemplated going vegan, because anytime I searched for “dairy- and egg-free recipes” the results were ALWAYS vegan. And finally I told myself it was okay to figure out the bare minimum: a list of 10-15 dinner recipes that I knew I could safely make for her. None of these were actual recipes; I’m talking things like spaghetti that you make without a recipe. Or crockpot meals that I no longer follow the recipe for because I’ve made it for so many years that I have it memorized. For a full year, we ate nothing for dinner but those 15 recipes on repeat; eventually, I expanded the list to twenty. Even today, when we have eliminated all allergies but peanuts, I still sometimes fall back on this list during busy or stressful times where I just need to not think about supper.

Now, if you are someone who follows a strict diet or truly loves trying a new recipe every night of the week, then great! Don’t stop if what you’re doing is working for you. But I think most of us fall into the category of being overwhelmed in the kitchen more often than not.  And the temptation in today’s digital age is to find someone online who has it all figured out, and re-create what they’ve already done in your own kitchen. I don’t know about you, but that’s never actually worked for me. So instead I’m going to give you some principles that you can hopefully take and apply to your particular kitchen.

1. It’s okay to plan simple meals. I already mentioned this, but it bears repeating: YOU DON’T HAVE TO MAKE FANCY MEALS! Listen, I love cookbooks as much as anyone else on this planet (I mean, I literally read them for fun), but I still only try no more than one new recipe from them at a time. Whatever your kitchen challenge is, I’m betting simple meals can help. They’re often cheap, because they don’t require new or random ingredients like cookbook recipes often do. They free up your brain space, because you can make them on autopilot. They’re probably recipes that your family loves, which is always a win if you have picky kids like I do. And they can even be healthy depending on what you pick! Are you wanting to make changes to your diet? Try picking a few EASY recipes that fit with the diet changes you want to make and rotate them until you get used to them, then add some more as you’re ready. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stressed myself out making a complicated “healthy” breakfast, when I could have made eggs and bacon or oatmeal and called it good. 

2. It’s okay to have a simple kitchen. The amount of marketing aimed at our kitchens is totally ridiculous. Again, think back to your grandma’s kitchen: I’m guessing she didn’t have twenty different gadgets or food storage containers (although to be fair, she may have had twenty empty Cool Whip containers waiting to send leftovers home with you 🤣). If there is one room where I wish everyone would try minimalism, it’s the kitchen. There’s something about having a simplified kitchen that just makes you feel like you can breathe again. I love opening my cabinets and not having to move ten things before finding what I need. I love that I can clear and wipe down my counters in less than a minute even when I’ve neglected it for days. Those of you with small kitchens especially need to try this; I have lived in so many houses with small kitchens, but once I decluttered them, it suddenly became manageable.

3. It’s okay to simplify grocery shopping. Different seasons are going to lead to a different focus in the kitchen, so this is going to look different depending on whether you’re focusing on saving money, saving time, eating healthy, or a combination of the above. My family has been largely focusing on saving money this year, but I also factor in time when I make decisions around grocery shopping. This means I don’t shop a whole bunch of stores and stock up on sales. That’s a fantastic strategy! But it's not realistic for our family right now. Instead, I shop at Aldi as much as I can and try to go to Sam’s Club once a month. We occasionally pick up a couple of items from Wal-mart that I can’t get at Aldi, but on a normal week that’s no more than one or two. I also use grocery pickup at Aldi, because I know that I’ll be tempted by the “Aisle of Shame” if I go in (as will my kids). When we were in Montana, I ONLY shopped at Wal-mart, using either pickup or delivery through Wal-mart Plus. Don’t feel guilty if what works for your family isn’t what someone else says is the cheapest or healthiest option; your family is unique, and only you can know the right combination for your current situation. 

Hopefully, if you take nothing else away from this, you know that you have permission to make things a little bit easier in your kitchen. I never want to encourage anyone towards laziness in their homes, but I think most of us are falling on the other side of the laziness-to-stressing-about-all-the-things spectrum when it comes to the kitchen. Instead I want to see you find a middle ground, where you actually enjoy being in your kitchen; because once that happens, you’ll find you spend a lot more time there!