7 Kitchen Resolutions for the New Year

Set kitchen resolutions for the year ahead to help you be intentional in this area of your home! These are my kitchen resolutions for 2019 (and beyond). It’s my hope that these goals will become habits in the kitchen that are simply second nature to me.

It’s a lovely practice to make general resolutions for the year ahead, but I’ve also found it helpful to make niched-down resolutions in various areas of my life. For instance, I make yearly blogging goals. When we moved into our current home, I made a list of ongoing house resolutions.

Why not grab a pen and paper (or your list journal) and make resolutions for different focus areas of your life? You could do health resolutions, family resolutions, eating resolutions–really any slice of life you want to work on. And if you’re reading this and it’s no longer January, do it anyway! You can create ongoing, long-term resolutions, or just set a list of goals for the rest of the year.

Below, you’ll find some new Kitchen Resolutions I’ve set for myself. Much of our daily life radiates out from the kitchen, so it makes sense to be intentional about it.

7 Kitchen Resolutions for the year ahead

1. Eliminate food waste

This has been a priority of ours for awhile, and I believe we’re getting better. As is probably typical, our biggest areas of food waste are leftovers and fresh produce. To combat this, we try to turn to leftovers as a first option for snacking instead of opening the pantry. I also rely more frozen fruits and vegetables than I used to, and we switched to weekly (instead of every-other-week) grocery trips to make sure we eat through our produce more quickly.

2. Aim for two green smoothies per week

My four-year-old is a good eater, but leafy greens are hard for him to handle. And I know we could all use more of them! Smoothies are a great way to get in the greens; I usually put in fresh or frozen spinach, but kale works, too.

3. Sit down to supper by 6:30

Actually, I prefer it when we eat closer to 5:30 or 6:00, but if we can at least be eating by 6:30, I’m good. The earlier, the better! Early suppers make mealtime and bedtime less rushed, and Eric and I can still get some grownup time in after the boys are in bed.

4. Treat the kitchen sink as the “last dirty dish”

One piece of advice I picked up in a homemaking book (I don’t remember which!) was to treat your kitchen sink as a dish that needs to be washed with the rest. When you’re cleaning up from supper, the last “dish” you wash should be your kitchen sink; wipe it down before you close up shop for the night! Doing this will keep the sink looking clean and avoid buildup that you have to scrub at later.

5. Seek out beauty for the kitchen, not just functionality

Since I spend so much time in the kitchen, I want this room to be beautiful. I already love the layout, but this year adding a paint color (a custard-y yellow) has made the space even more inviting. I want to look for more small yet effective ways to add beauty, whether that’s in artwork or kitchen accessories.

6. Keep the counters clutter free

I only have a few items that are designated to live on the kitchen counters, but every day new flotsam washes up and I need to keep on top of that!

7. Choose one kitchen “focus area” per week

The idea of “focus areas” comes from Kim Brenneman. Basically, over the course of a month you stay on top of deep cleaning by cycling through different spots that don’t need a daily or weekly clean. My focus areas for the kitchen are things like:

• cleaning appliances
• clearing out the fridge
• tidying the pantry
• washing windows
• wiping down cabinet fronts

I don’t mind doing a big spring cleaning, but I’m hoping that tackling focus areas regularly will cut down on housework in the long run.

I’m sure I’ll add more kitchen resolutions to this list in the years to come, but for 2019, these are the 7 big things I want to nail down.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also want to read 8 Things Intentional Homemakers Do Every Day, and check out the Kitchen Index here!