I don’t know about you, but my kitchen often looks like this way more than I’d like to admit. And there might even be nights when I go to bed and it STILL remains an utter disaster, but don’t tell anyone. Sometimes deciding to wake up and tackle the kitchen is easier than staying up late to get it all done, especially when I want to enjoy an evening with my husband, family, or friends.
Yes, as much as I would love to say that my kitchen always looks beautiful and put together, I would be lying both to you and to myself. But what is it about having a perfect kitchen that makes me think others will think better of me? Does anyone actually care anyway, or is it just me?
If you’re wondering, it is just me.
It’s a good thing to care, but the problem arises when we make having a clean kitchen too much of a priority. We would never spend time anywhere but in the kitchen, and there are those days we do, aren’t there? It’s easy to slip into the mode of making the kitchen a priority over our family.
Having an open floor plan, where the kitchen is not a separate room in the back of the house, makes it easier for us to justify being in the kitchen more. I love my open floor plan, where the kitchen is part of the rest of the house, but I believe that it may be, in part, to blame for my desire to have a perfectly put together kitchen. If we lived in houses where the kitchen were it’s own room in the back of the house that no one spent any time in, we might be more likely to live with more mess in the kitchen and spend less time there. But would we? Or would it isolate us more? Even if we spent less time there worrying about the mess, we eventually would have to go back and clean up, right?
Maybe the solution is that we all need to eat meals on recycled plates. And who’s going to invent the disposable pots and pans? Sign me up for those products! A quick Amazon search confirmed that someone has indeed invented them. Maybe if I used these more I would have a little less mess and a little quicker clean-up. If only they were practical and/or affordable, but maybe, just maybe I should give it a try. Nah! I would miss my cast iron, but feel free to try these yourself. If nothing else, have a good laugh and maybe a cry as you share my sentiment.
When we care about what we feed our families and live an interrupted life with kids, phone calls, and other tasks on our plate, having a messy kitchen is simply going to happen. If you are on your journey to making more meals out of your kitchen instead of eating take-out, your kitchen is going to be messier than it was before. Life is full of activity, and making food is messy. Take the time to clean up the mess, but remember, the mess is okay, too. The kitchen mess will always be with us; it’s a part of us. Love on your family and live life —outside the kitchen.