Making home, feeding kids: I've come a long way
I didn't have a high bar set for me when it comes to making home... my mother reacted to her misogynistic father's refusal to educate her ("women belong in the kitchen") by running away, getting her education in the field she loved (music) and never going anywhere near housework. She didn't cook or clean. In my early childhood, my father did some of these things, but as their relationship deteriorated our home and diet spiralled out of all control. My father's mother sometimes came in to do a deep clean - I learned recently that she thought of our home as a dumpster, and she wasn't wrong - but in general, we lived in filth and ate ready-made microwave meals. As an aside, I had gallstones at age 16, having my entire gallbladder removed as the problems were so advanced... that shows just how bad things were. I also have fillings in every tooth.
After my mother's death, my sister and I moved in with our aunt and for the first time (I was 15) learned a few things about keeping home. My aunt loved to cook, so we never got a look in to helping with that; but she assigned chores to each child which had to be completed every day. Mine was the kitchen. It had to be cleaned and mopped before 8pm, when TV started and making noise was no longer permitted. If it wasn't done, or not done well enough - she would lift up appliances to see whether the surface underneath had been wiped - there would be consequences. So I learned how to clean a kitchen, but not much else.
In short, then: I have always felt on the back foot when it comes to homemaking, cooking, cleaning.... all the homely skills. Not that I haven't tried to acquire them, but it's always been a conscious effort - none of it is intuitive to me. Mr. has a much more intuitive approach, and will often get annoyed with me for not doing what he considers obvious (wiping down kitchen counters after use, for example). It's just not on my radar unless I consciously think about it.
I never felt like I was making much headway - until a recent conversation with a friend. I mentioned to her some of the things I was doing, and she seemed genuinely intent on learning from me... from me! Which made me think about some things I have come to do, some of them even having become normal to me rather than conscious efforts, and it's been an encouraging thought that I'm actually making progress.
Food from scratch
Coming from where I did, I know all too well how damaging ready-prepared food is. So some of the things I've done in relation to food are...
- Food planning: every Sunday I sit down with my schedule and figure out what to cook which night (this is dinners only, I haven't got to lunches with this and breakfast is the same every day anyway)
- From scratch: it's hard to avoid industrial oils but that's a very high priority to me, which means I'm cooking things like chicken nuggets, fish fingers, pizza etc. from scratch as it's impossible to get these things with good ingredients. They are a faff to make, but worthwhile - and in order to avoid having to make them often, I make a lot at a time, which leads us to...
- Batch cooking: whenever I cook fresh food, or complicated/messy foods like the above mentioned chicken nuggets and fish fingers, I'll usually make more than needed and either freeze the leftovers or have them the next day. This is why we have a standalone, full size freezer along with the fridge/freezer - it's filled with extra food!
- Pressure cooker: I've had one for ages (an Instant Pot) and it's in use at least weekly. Broth, curries, dahl, soups, mashed potatoes... I love that I can set it on a timer to have the food ready when needed.
- Bread maker: picked one up used for something like £25, and now the bread we make has no more than 4 ingredients and is fresh at the time we eat it (the machine also has a timer!) plus I've always got a frozen, cut up loaf in the freezer for quick toast. It also makes dough, so the weekly pizza night treat is homemade - the picture here is a pizza made recently by D(7).
- Nutrient density: after 20+ years vegan, I am particularly conscious of my children getting the nutrition they need, so eggs go into a lot of things (egg yolk into the morning porridge, into homemade baked beans etc...) and broth made in the pressure cooker is used to boil rice, beans, even pasta. I make our own tomato sauce for pasta, pizza etc. which has broth in it.
I definitely don't enjoy cooking or baking. I'm able to avoid baking altogether, but I can't do that with cooking. Though I do try to minimise the effort while maximising the nutrition.
Household Management
As I said earlier, it's just not intuitive to me to do things like wipe a counter after use, close a cupboard door... I have to consciously remember. Left to my own devices, my home would simply get more and more untidy and dirty until I found it overwhelming and did a deep clean... the clean-as-you-go approach makes a lot of sense but in reality, is just not what happens. I haven't arrived, that's for sure.
But there are some things I have learned, that are helping me.
- A home for everything: everything has a home, and I know where that is. That's where it goes. This is where Mr. isn't so intuitive: when he tidies up, things often just get put out of sight but not back to where they belong. Which seems to me a waste of effort. When I tidy - and admittedly, I don't stay on top of it all the time - it takes time because everything gets put back to where it belongs.
- Minimising the inventory: the more stuff I have, the more stuff I have to manage. I constantly take inventory and get rid of stuff that isn't being used, isn't fulfilling its purpose, or is just surplus to requirements. I try to use up what we have before buying more. And over time, I've consciously chosen high quality items that don't need replacing (and buying second hand makes that possible! Our 2-piece real-leather sofa suite was £100...). Also under this headline is that there's minimal 'decor' in our house - pictures on walls aplenty, of course, but I don't do knick-knacks or decorative stuff in general. We have plants, though.
- Closed cupboards: the amount of Kallax in our home is.... impressive. I love it because I can shove all sorts of things inside these things and it looks tidy! So everything can have a home. There's the Kallax pictured, which lives in the dining room and houses the kids' art materials and games because those are used at the dining table; there's one in the lounge, and in each bedroom an entire wall is taken up with them. Clothing, toys... everything goes in, the door is shut, and it looks tidy.
That's actually quite a list, isn't it? I'm having to put a lot of thought into keeping home, where others have just learned how to do this from a young age and these things come naturally to them. I'm not that way. But perhaps I'm testament, to some degree, that change is possible and improvements can be made - this old dog is still learning new tricks.