How to Take Back Your Kitchen and Love to Cook Again

Does coming up with three meals every day of the week fill you with dread? Here are some tips to help you love to cook again!

For many people, cooking is a relaxing and rewarding activity, yet it can be another chore that has to be completed three times a day for homeschool moms.

However, three times a day grind of cooking can become a bit monotonous (and exhausting) over time, and it’s easy to fall into a rut.

Fortunately, there’s plenty you can do to make cooking a bit more enjoyable, or at least not as dreaded, and also get your kids involved to make family mealtime a bit easier.

Here are ten ideas to help you love to cook again:

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Try Out Themed Days

We’ve all heard of Taco Tuesday, but have you considered making it a part of your weekly cooking routine? Themed nights give your week some structure and make it easier to plan. 

Plus, it’s fun for you and your family to have something to look forward to. But beyond the expectation, I find it can help a bit when one child doesn’t love tacos. So, ok, your favorite is coming up tomorrow; you can make it. 

You can also jazz up your themes; maybe a Tofu Taco Tuesday would be a big hit? Go ahead and be creative. Meatless Monday can be a great option, as can Wing Wednesday or Fettuccine Friday.

Take a Trip Around the World

Exploring food from around the world is such an excellent idea for homeschooling families. Combine cooking with some geography for some homeschool strewing.

When developing cooking skills, people often stick to a relatively small number of recipes in their repertoire. For example, if you grew up in a home where classic meat-and-potato kinds of meals were mainstays, you might stick with similar meals most of the time. 

Thankfully, we live in an era where online recipes and free videos make it easier than ever to try new cuisine types. Are you a fan of spicy food? Adding a few Indian meals to your collection can make cooking more enjoyable. 

Don’t just stick with popular types of foreign meals; you might be surprised at what you find with a bit of exploration.

Get Organized and Inspired Pinterest

All social media platforms can be great for finding new recipes and cooking ideas. However, one platform reigns supreme: Pinterest. 

While browsing Pinterest can help you find ideas, make sure to pin the ones that strike your eye. Pinterest offers robust tools for organizing your interests more than any other social media platform, making them easy to search and browse when you need some inspiration. Learn how these tools work to make the most of the platform.

You can even follow my Plant-Based Recipes board for some exciting inspiration.

Clear Out the Kitchen Clutter to Love to Cook Again

Kitchen gadget fads come and go. While some will likely hold a valuable place in your kitchen, having too many gadgets taking up precious space can cause you to feel overwhelmed and stressed out. Not to mention, if your kitchen is small and your family is large, there isn’t room.

Set aside some time to take a complete inventory of your kitchen gadgets to find out if you can eliminate any. Are there some you never use?

Did you jump on the Instant Pot bandwagon, for example, but find yourself never using it? I did, and I now have two I love, but eventually, I donated the three slow cookers I also had. Clearing out even a few items can make your kitchen a bit more welcoming and fun, which will, in turn, help you love to cook again within your organized space.

Solve Your Spice Situation

Did you try out a recipe years ago and pick up a few spices specifically for it? Have you used any of those spices since then? Next, take an inventory of your spice rack and determine which you’re likely to use again. 

In addition to taking up space, unused spices also make it more challenging to find the one you need. Even if your herbs don’t take up a considerable amount of space, they can contribute to clutter in your kitchen. 

A bit of decluttering can go a long way to making your kitchen a more pleasant environment.

Easily Digitize Your Recipes

Pinterest is a fantastic resource for finding meals and inspiration from others, but it can also help you in your kitchen. 

Use your smartphone camera and take an inventory of recipes you’d like to keep from your magazines or cookbooks. Then you can create a private board and save them to Pinterest. It will be easy to find on either your computer or your smart device with that setup. 

Clean up some space by donating your old magazines and cookbooks. Holding on to a few favorite books can be great, but the space you save will help streamline your cooking and recipe-hunting.

Maximize Meal Planning

Even if you’re the top chef in your home, you can still take steps to involve everyone else in the process. Set aside some time for family meal planning to get everyone interested. 

Find out what your family’s favorite meals are and try to work them into the rotation regularly. Along the way, you might even be able to recruit a sous chef or two.

Create Cooking and Clean-Up Teams

This is such a great idea and one I’m about to implement. 

Preparing meals is often best when it’s a family affair, and everyone in your family has specific skills that can make the process of cooking and clean up a bit more fun. 

Is one of your children interested in learning how to cook certain meals? Add them as a recruit to the cooking team. 

Is your spouse less skilled with a pan but excellent at filling the dishwasher? They might be a great captain for the clean-up crew. 

In our home, we will alternate this process and allow everyone to cook and help clean up. That’s real life.

When done collaboratively, cooking and cleaning can be a quick and even fun process, so get everyone involved.

Have Fun with a Food Bar

With a family of eight, this is our preferred method of serving most meals. It would be great to have everything on the table and pass it around, but it would be chaotic. 

However, if you don’t already serve most meals this way, it can be a great way to spur some interest in cooking and meal preparation. Set up a food bar on occasion. Taco Tuesday? Set up the ingredients and let everyone craft their perfect tacos. 

This process also works great for do-it-yourself pizzas and nachos. Of course, burgers are always a great food bar option. 

Food bars create a fun and festive atmosphere, and they can ease the cooking and even clean-up burden by reducing the number of serving dishes required. 

Give Recipe Kits a Try (and/or Grocery Delivery)

Cooking meals takes a significant amount of time, but it’s easy to forget just how much time you spend on planning, purchasing, and remembering the ingredients. 

Food kit delivery services, such as What a Crock Meals to Go, make the cooking process simpler while still saving money over take-out meals. Everything is sorted and ready to be cooked. In addition, they can help you learn how to add new meals to your repertoire by introducing recipes you might never have chosen on your own.

And nothing makes a homeschool mom happier than a meal waiting in the crock pot after a long day at co-op.

You deserve to treat yourself, so check out what food kit delivery options are available and make meal planning simpler.

Need Some Encouragement to Love to Cook Again? Join My Newest Challenge

They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, but if you dread your kitchen and think cooking is a necessary evil, let me give you some encouragement. I created a 5-day challenge centered around getting your kitchen organized and learning how to have fun cooking meals again. When you join the challenge, you’ll receive daily emails from me, where we can compare notes, share recipes, and cheer each other on to take back our kitchens! Can’t wait to see you there!