Uncomplicated Housekeeping- The Kitchen

Uncomplicated living didn’t come easy, Ill be honest, I still very much have to work at it on a nearly daily basis. However, along my journey to un-complicate life, I have stumbled upon, created, invented, and developed a very UNCOMPLICATED routine for day to day housekeeping, my nemesis. I mean, who wouldn’t rather take their kiddos to the zoo or sit on the floor for hours playing cars or baby dolls with their “only this little once” human beings, over daily chores!? I personally have had my fair share of guilt over choosing to do things with them instead of getting chores done and vice-versa, only the guilt of doing chores over spending time with them is much more intense. Either way, chores need to get done and our babes always want us to play with them (for now anyway) so finding the best most uncomplicated housekeeping routine was absolutely necessary for this momma. I had to go through a lot of trial and error, so I’ll only offer the tricks that been the most sustainable over the past few years. No sense in complicating your life with more advice than you already may be getting. I’m going to turn this into a series because I promised my posts would be short(er) and there are a lot of areas to cover, so please enjoy the Uncomplicated Housekeeping series. Up first...



#1 - THE KITCHEN (Cooking, Clean up & Dish Routine)

Getting meals made and cleaning up the kitchen comes with a “trick” I’m not exactly proud of but here it goes. My boys are 2 and 5- they aren’t big into TV really at all, which I’m not complaining about but it can be a helpful resource at times. Turns out, through trial and error, they love, and sit still for, YouTubes Ryan’s Toy Review. If you have young kiddos in your life and you haven’t heard of this multimillionaire YouTube star/family, I can only assume you live under a rock... I, personally, will be forever grateful to Ryan’s Mommy and Daddy for this help because besides music videos, it is the only thing they will both sit down and watch intently enough so I can cook dinner pretty much without interruption. We only offer this as a special treat which is probably why it still works, and we usually only put it on when they are feeling peppy, typically when I’m about to cook dinner and dinner is getting delayed because I have to keep breaking up their fights or cleaning up their messes or they don’t want to play with their playroom full of toys. 🤦🏽‍♀️ So some weeks it’s every evening after nap until just before dinner, some weeks we only watch it once or twice. It may or may not have been turned on a time or two or three, when momma just needed a few minutes to relax, work, or take care of another chore too... I digress; as I’ve mentioned in other posts, our meals are pretty UNCOMPLICATED so they only get to watch a little bit but this works really well for us and we are all happy heading to the dinner table. I cant guarantee your kiddos will love watching it as much as mine but if it works, it can be an absolute game changer for any momma/dadda chore, not just while cooking.

Now, as for the earlier meals in the day, breakfast is prepared and served during early morning cartoons. During the week I allow them to watch only educational type shows like PBS KIDS, nature and animal shows. On weekends I let them watch any cartoons, basically whatever they want that is age appropriate on Netflix, PBS Kids, or Disney or recently we have found a love for NickJr. This is the only meal they watch while eating typically.
 
Lunch time is one of my favorite times of day with them, they are alert, usually happy, talkative, and I remember a time when I was a working mama who rarely got to eat lunch with my family, so I thoroughly enjoy this time of day. Since our lunches are really the most simple meal of the day I either ask for their help preparing their plates or they just wait patiently at the table with a tiny snack or drink and we chat about random things or play 20 questions, which is hilarious with a 5 and 2 year old by the way. 

Last but not least for my Kitchen Routine, doing the dishes and basic cleaning is even more uncomplicated than cooking; I unload the dishwasher first thing in the morning while the babes are eating breakfast. I usually have it unloaded before I’ve finished sipping on my first cup of coffee, this way it’s ready to load throughout the day. We run it after we load the dinner dishes or right before we head to bed. The best part about this is that it helps keep the sink empty all day long so when those surprise guests show up 😳 you don’t have to be embarrassed about your sink full of dishes. After meals, I have the boys help me wipe down the table which they love, usually with a natural disinfect wipe or just a warm damp paper towel and I quickly wipe down our WHITE cabinets and countertops with a damp cloth or disinfect wipe. For those of you against white cabinets because you can “see all the dirt”, if you change your mindset and CHOOSE white cabinets because you can “see all the dirt” you may actually love it... I love that I can see when and where there is dirt. I quickly wipe the spot and in turn it helps me with long term care and maintenance. Just a thought. Back to the counters, once every other day, typically after lunch or dinner, I take a few extra minutes to wipe down the counters with an actual cleaner for the type of counters we have. It keeps them conditioned and again helps with long term care. 

So that’s it for the Kitchen! I know this post is long but ultimately the details of the chores are very quick, easy to adopt, and UNCOMPLICATED! You just have to try it and see if it works for you and your family. But don’t fix something if it isn’t broken, so if you found something that is already working, complicated or not, don’t change it. Please share what you are doing so that others can learn from different family dynamics, we are a community and can learn a lot from others. 

 

**** Don't forget to check out Uncomplicated Housekeeping post #2- Laundry! Dun Dun Dun...