It’s easy to overlook clutter in our routines, especially in the kitchen. I’m not talking about that barely used potato masher that turns opening a drawer into a five-minute task. I’m talking about the intangibles. Taking on too much. Elaborate meals. The mental load and pitfalls that come with not having a solid plan in mind.
Been there. Done that.
This year I’ve been thrown a few kitchen curveballs in the form of underlying allergies and intolerances. I’m thankful I narrowed them down and picked them out, but I’ve found myself in a few kitchen-burnout cooking ruts as I transitioned away from being able to simply open a can of soup, order out, or enjoy the occasional convenience meal courtesy of the freezer aisle when cooking was too much.
Whether you cook all your own meals or its occasional, home cooking requires a dash of creativity—but too much and you might be overdoing it! Here, I’ll share three ways I’ve applied minimalism to help simplify my cooking routine.
Develop a short-list meal repertoire
While I occasionally try something new, I got out of the “meals as entertainment” mindset years ago and it’s made cooking a lot more enjoyable for me. We certainly want our meals to taste good, but often, (at least in my house) a well-done favourite is more appreciated than something new and complex.
If you’re an experienced home chef, that could mean paring down your favourites and saving the ones that take that extra bit of effort for special occasions. If you’re new to cooking, that could mean getting more comfortable cooking a set amount of recipes you like rather than taking on too much at once.
Personally, I’ve realized it’s best to save special recipes or those I’ve been meaning to try for a day when I’m not feeling rushed or overwhelmed.
Keep a favourites-only recipe book
Reading a recipe on your phone is distracting AF. You’re sifting through ads. You’re trying to find your place. Sure, you can put it in cook mode or hit print and pull up a plain text version of the ingredients and instructions, but the screen is small and then there’s that message or some other notification that pulls you away completely.
My solution to this was printing my very own recipe book. A simple way to do that:
- Test a recipe on your phone once in either print mode or saved to your phone as a PDF.
- Print your favourite / standout recipes (at your local library if needed).
- Put them in a binder in your kitchen.
- Leave your phone out of reach as often as possible—still within earshot, but not where you’ll grab it between steps. Use that time to wash dishes or complete other kitchen-related tasks instead.
When you keep all your recipes together in a binder, you’ll always know where to find them and you can make notes for yourself for later (with the quick ability to find those too).
If you really, really want to keep them digital and you’re good won’t get distracted by your phone or tablet, I suggest creating a recipes page in Notion so you’ll always know where to find them. There, you can save the links as bookmarks or upload the file as a PDF.
Stress less with a simple meal plan
I’m a fairly organized person until I’m not. That’s why I’ve tried many different approaches to meal planning. I find two of them useful. The first method is what I like to call menu planning, in which you essentially create a menu for the week you and the people in your household choose items from depending on what you want (and how you feel) that day.
The second is assigning meals to days of the week, which I used to think would be really boring, but I’ve come to appreciate Taco Monday and Pizza Tuesday. Now I have a meal choice almost every day of the week and use the menu method for days I’ve left open.
Even my husband has yet to get bored of it—in fact, he holds me to it.
It’s pasta night. The list has spoken.
A big part of why it’s so successful is the dishes we rotate through are versatile. Meals like tacos, pizza, and pasta are easy to change up. You can swap out ingredients or side dishes to keep things interesting.
The goal of any meal planning method should be to take some of the stress and all of the guesswork out of mealtime. In addition to that:
- Everyone in the house knows what’s for dinner—no questions asked.
- You know what to put on your grocery list—less food waste, better budgeting, you have what you need when you need it.
- You know ahead of time what you need to prep—no more forgetting to thaw the beef.
- You spend less time planning and more time cooking—(probably) reducing stress somewhere along the way.
- You don’t need to learn how to cook “whatever”—or any of its rage-inducing variations.
While my favourite is the day-of-the-week meal rotation, either method may be worth a shot.
Keep it simple
On top of these changes, I often go for recipes that use simple ingredients and require minimal steps. If you’re looking for recipe ideas for your repertoire, check out some of my recommendations here.