Managing your kitchen when you have so many other priorities and issues soaking up your time and energy can feel like an uphill battle. That’s why we’ve put together a list of the of the best 3 kitchen hacks to save time.
At Power To The Kitchen we believe that the kitchen is the heart of the home; it provides nourishment and the fuel needed for everyone to be at their best.
When your kitchen is running well, the whole home has a better chance.
The thing is though, the kitchen is not always an easy place to manage especially if every adult in the home is working and/or you also have kids to look after. It can be a significant drain on your time and energy. Both of which would be better spent with friends and family or simply just eating and resting after a long day at work.
If you get the kitchen right, everything else has a better chance of flourishing. It helps to keep your health, your energy and, to an extent, your happiness in check.
But with so many conflicting priorities how can you keep everything in order and save time doing it?
Top 3 Kitchen Hacks To Save Time
There are many kitchen hacks that we’d love to share with you but in this post we’ve put together the top 3 hacks focusing on saving time in the kitchen. These hacks will help you improve the health and wealth of your kitchen and hopefully make life a bit easier.
1 – ONLY USE ONE SET OF UTENSILS AND DISHES PER PERSON: This first idea is so simplistic in nature yet so effective in practice. Everyone in the home is given one set of utensils and general kitchen items. You then select one of each other type of item that would be needed for cooking and preparing food.
So for example in a household with a couple, each partner would get a plate, bowl, spoon, knife, fork, glass and mug. Then the common items might be a sauce pan, a frying pan, a serving spoon, a wooden spoon etc (you get the idea). The basic idea being you only have one of each type and you only use what you need.
After you’ve allocated the items however, it is then critical that you then stick to them and do not go into the cupboards the first time you find your plate has already been used and needs a wash. Here another key principle comes into play; you have to wash and re-use the same set of stuff. If you don’t, the system does not work.
This system can be highly effective if used correctly because it cuts out the majority of the time you would spend washing up dishes that you would still be using.
It also means that you avoid the dreaded dish pile up next to the kitchen sink especially during the working week when you’re in much more of a hurry; if there are no dishes to use, there are no dishes to pile up. (Sidebar; my wife and I, who have 3 kids under the age of 3, tried this system after finding we were spending too much time managing the kitchen and it completely changed our evenings – it freed up so much more time and made the job of managing the kitchen a lot easier).
2 – TIDY UP EACH NIGHT BEFORE YOU EAT DINNER: This second idea is much easier said than done – it requires that you commit to tidying up the kitchen every single night not when you feel like it but before you sit down and eat.
If you’re like most people you probably tidy up the kitchen at some point in the evening when you can, sometimes this might be after dinner or before going to bed. The issue with these slots however, is that once you’ve eaten and settled on the sofa to enjoy/binge on your favourite shows it becomes much harder and even less enjoyable to get up again and head back to the kitchen to tidy up.
It might seem counter-intuitive but if you can get into the habit of tidying up once your dinner is ready but before you’ve served this will mean you get the hard stuff out of the way but still have the pleasure of eating and relaxing to follow. Once you get started you’re more likely to continue as the next night the last thing your brain will have to associate with the kitchen is the pleasure gained from tucking into your well prepped dinner.
3 – TIDY UP AS YOU GO: When you keep pace with tidying up in the kitchen as you go, you make the whole process of managing it so much easier. Whenever you can squeeze in a minute or two at the kitchen sink or wiping a worktop, do so as it will ultimately mean you have less to do in your daily tidy up time before dinner.
If you manage to implement ideas #1 and #2 from above (particularly #1) tidying up as you go will be even easier as you’ll have far less stuff in the kitchen to keep on top of.
The kitchen hacks to save time presented above may seem simple but the most effective solutions often are. There are some more useful kitchen hacks we can recommend. Also you should checkout some useful tips and tricks to organize your pantry and 33 kitchen hacks that will make you love cooking.
Why not try them out and give us your feedback below? We would love to hear from you.
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