A Year in my Tidy Kitchen

I started posting food photos on Instagram, because the kitchen is where I am the most aware of my own tidiness.

I absolutely love cooking in a clean and well organized kitchen. I do not like cooking in a disorganized kitchen… at all. My love of cooking just disappears in the face of a messy kitchen.

Since I usually only eat out 3-4 times per year, I have a lot of incentive to keep my kitchen neat. For every meal except those 3-4 in restaurants, either I cook or my husband does. He cooks professionally, so he also appreciates a tidy kitchen.

I’ve been cooking “week meals” since 2008. Over the years, I’ve been aware of how it adds up in terms of savings in my food budget, but I didn’t think much about how it was adding up in terms of cooking experience. Seeing my photos adding up on instagram got me thinking.

We’ve cooked a lot! I’ve quickly done the math, and it adds up to about 7,000 meals cooked, many of them week sized batches.

This is fabulous example of why I am so passionate about habits and lifestyle. If I had set out to cook 7,000 meals, it would have been daunting. Luckily, I actually set out to eat nutritious food every day in the most affordable way I could dream up: cooking it myself.

Along the way, I learned to love the act of cooking and the deep satisfaction of making things in the real world.

I realized that, even though I didn’t want to buy many things, I did shop every single week. I shopped for food. I decided to uplevel my grocery shopping experience so it became a pleasure. I started menu planning more creatively and shopping at Whole Foods, which felt like a treat every single week.

I learned more about food through reading cookbooks as if they were novels. I started eating seasonally and thus found a new way to feel viscerally connected to the earth on a daily basis. I eat fresh fruit in the summer and root vegetables in the winter.

So now, as I round out a year of sharing my cooking on instagram, I’m reconnecting to just how much cooking sparks joy for me and just how grateful I am to have found a lifestyle that is a good fit for me.

Though your dream lifestyle will undoubtedly be different from mine in many ways, I wish you the same joy!