Back in the Kitchen: Breaking 15 Years of Bad Habits

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Back in the Kitchen: Breaking 15 Years of Bad Habits

I love to cook, or at least I did.  I need to find my way back to that.  Where food and meal preparation brings joy and togetherness instead of just being something we have to do.  I miss that woman I used to be … cooking meals after being at work all day, even if it meant going to the market on my way home because I forgot to pull something from the freezer.  Everything used to be homemade and from scratch.  I used to put my love, passion, and creativity into the meals I prepared. 

Then sometime shortly after we had our first child, my desire to cook went out the window.  It may have been the sleep deprivation, or that I was too focused on being a mom and caring for my baby, but whatever it was – my joy of spending time in the kitchen was gone. 

One rut that we have fallen into (again) is ordering in a few times per week.  While chatting with my husband last night, we thought about when was the last time that we did really well not eating out … it was almost 15 years ago when we were first married, living on just my income, and we had no extra money.  Funny, how the minute things became more comfortable for us financially, we started in on some really bad habits.  

For the last 6 months, I have been sharing our weekly meal plans, and for the most part we followed them at least 4-6 times a week.  However, we have not had a single week where we followed the meal plan 100% of the time, and that needs to change.  

We are a family of 5 living on only my husband’s income as I lost my job back in February.  We have slowly been making adjustments to our spending and our dining out, but I think this week I need to declare my independence from the drive thru, the delivery services, and the carry out food, and we need to start working together as a family (that means the kids and husband are getting involved) to start making our meals at home each and every night of the week.

So then the question is …

How do we break 15 years of bad habits?

1. I’m going to meal plan.
2. The children and I will shop on Wednesday (this week is a bit screwy with the holiday).
3. The children and I will do meal prep for the week when we get home from the market.
4. I will sign off of the computer each day by 4p to begin meal prep.
5. I will have my children help with meal preparation.
6. My husband will let us know when he is on his way home from work so we can attempt to time dinner for within 15 minutes of when he gets home from work.
7. The children will clear the table, and my husband will help them to load the dishwasher.
8. We will not go to bed with the kitchen a mess.
9. Each evening, we will pull out the following day’s meal to defrost.
10. I will do any additional prep work through out the day when I have pockets of time available to me.

I feel like breaking this down into 10 things we will do to make like easier is a good place to start.  We didn’t develop these bad habits overnight, and they surely won’t disappear overnight either, but hard work and coming together as a family is always a good thing.