How to save your time and energy while working in home kitchen?

The kitchen is a very important space in the house, and it is also essential to have a kitchen to cook our food. So let's see the answer to your question about, how you can save your energy and time while working in the home kitchen.

"Time Management"

As you already know, time plays an important role in human life, and it is necessary to take out time to complete our other important tasks as well. That's why a time management strategy is crucial, which will help you to save time for your important tasks. 

Cooking at home kitchen takes a lot of your time and energy. It consists of various steps and processes to get the final cooked food, like washing vegetables, cutting, etc.

Nowadays, there are various gadgets and equipment available in the market to reduce the workload of kitchen work, with help of these gadgets, work can be done in less time. But using these gadgets also takes human time and energy. 

The person who has been doing kitchen work for many years, and cooks 2 to 3 times a day, for them, it has become their habit, they know how much time and effort they need to complete the task in the kitchen.

But for those who are new, who have not done a lot of kitchen work, such as professional working men or women, and who have recently got married and shifted to a new location, or just started cooking.

Now for them, in less time, cooking becomes a difficult task because of office workloads and other important tasks at home. 

So here I will discuss what are the rules and tips for the kitchen, which can save you time and energy, to complete other important tasks on time.

Before starting the discussion of rules and tips, I would like to tell you a short story of mine, from where I got the idea to write this article for you.

If you do not want to read the story then you can directly read tips and rules for home kitchens.

So let me begin my short story,

Around 26 August 2022, my mother and father left for Barmer, Rajasthan from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh to visit my younger sister's place.

Now, there were three people in the house, me, my wife, and my grandmother who's age around 90 years old, and the responsibility of the house fell on me and my wife for a few days.

My wife is a professional working woman, she is a computer teacher at a school and I was also an Interior Design Faculty at that time.

Now our routine was completely changed, first, my wife and I used to get up at 5 am morning and, we used to do 20 minutes workout, after the workout we used to do the rest of our work.

But after my mother went to my sister's place, I and my wife used to wake up at the same time, but our morning workout skipped, after we woke up, we directly rush to the kitchen work to prepare morning breakfast as my wife need to report school at 7:30 am.

After preparing morning tea, and breakfast we (my wife, me, and my grandmother) have morning tea, and after tea, my wife leaves for school. After she leaves for school, I move to complete another home task, like sweeping and mopping the whole house.

After cleaning the house and kitchen work, I complete my daily routine of bathing, pooja, and breakfast, till 10:30 am, till now I have loosed my mental energy to get focussed on my official work. So, after having breakfast, I take a 20-30 minute power nap to get back my mental energy to complete my other important task.

Till 1:30, I work on my office work, then again I rush to the kitchen works, to prepare food for lunch, as my wife is going to come back home at 3:00 pm. We do our lunch till 3:30 pm and rest till 4:20 pm.

Now, in the evening, it's time to take tuition classes from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm, after taking classes, it's time for evening tea for my grandmother.

Till now we both are a little bit tired, it's time to take 30 min rest. From 7 pm, I read a book and my wife plays music on melodica, till 8 pm, it's time to prepare evening food and other home task.

Throughout, the whole day and night, I realized, I had lost so much time and energy in kitchen work. This made me think more closely about how my mother and wife work so fast and they don't get tired so easily.

After working in the kitchen for a total of two months, I have realized many things. As an Interior Designer, I have got the idea to share my imagination and knowledge with people, because the issues I have faced, might facing by many around the world.

So let's see what are the ways with the help of which we can save our time and energy,

Tips To Save Time and Energy

1. Food Preparation Weekly Plan 

As you might have experienced deciding food what to cook the next day or in the evening, consumes your time. So, to save time and energy, as a professional you can choose this method, by creating a format for a weekly food plan chart.

First of all, you have to make a list of foods which you like to eat regularly, after that you have to prepare a weekly chart in which you have to make day, afternoon and night columns.

Now you have to fill the gaps with the dish name, in columns and rows, what do you going to eat the whole week.

The table will look like this,

This is a sample chart, you can modify it accordingly. This food preparation weekly chart will help you a lot and will save you time in deciding what you are going to cook the next day.

This type of chart is prepared and used by many professionals, like doctors, nutritionists, gym trainers, athletes, etc. They usually have a much more detailed chart. You can do more research on it, to create the best chart for yourself.

2. Kitchen Size and Working triangle

Now, let's ask yourself, how much time do you spend daily in the kitchen working, 2 hrs or 3 hrs, or 4 hours....?

As an Interior Designer Consultant, I realized there might be many more people who are getting tired while working in the home kitchen for long hours, especially housewives. 

If you are reading this post and want to help your sister or mother, then you should take action, to help them, because they feel very tired till the end of the day, standing long hours, hurting their feet and heels, which later leads to long time pain. 

There are various shapes or types available for kitchen design as per space availability. 

Types of Kitchen

1. L - Shape Kitchen
2. U - Shape Kitchen
3. Parallel Shape Kitchen
4. Straight Shape Kitchen 
5. G - shape Kitchen
6. Island Shape Kitchen

These types of kitchens are categorized as small, medium, and large kitchens. 

1. Small Kitchen - 7'x7', 8'x8', and 8'x9'
2. Medium Kitchen - 9'x9', and 9'x10'
3. Large Kitchen - 10'x10', 10'x11', 11'x11', and12'x12'

You need to check the size of your home kitchen, and in which categories your kitchen is falling. After knowing the size of the kitchen you need to check the shape of your kitchen, which I have mentioned above. 

Working Triangle

It is one of the concepts with the help of which we can calculate human movement distance in the kitchen between the sink, stove, and refrigerator. 

We mainly use these appliances more, while cooking food. For example, after we take out vegetables from the refrigerator, we take them to the sink for washing thoroughly and bring them back to the slab top to chop and get them ready for cooking. After chopping the vegetable we move towards the gas stove to cook food. 

As you can observe the three appliances getting in use are the gas stove, refrigerator, and sink. These are basic appliances to cook food in a home kitchen. We are not using an oven here. 

So how you can measure the distance between these appliances, here are the step. First, you need to measure the distance between the sink and refrigerator, and note down the distance in feet, second measure the distance between the sink and gas stove, and note it down, and in the third step measure the distance between the gas stove and refrigerator, and note down it too. Now you have got three distances, now you need to add all these distances and check how much it's coming. 

If the working triangle total is coming less than 26 feet, then your working triangle is good. You can create a rough layout plan sketch on a piece of paper and make a triangle, every corner of the triangle should connect these three appliances. Check the image below, 

Image source:www.laurysenkitchens.com

If the sum of the working triangle is greater than 26 feet, then it's not a good sign, as it's increasing your movement distance, and you are going to hurt your legs and heels. Reduce the distance between any of the appliances. Like if the distance between the stove and the refrigerator is more, then try to shift the refrigerator closer to the stove to reduce movement distance. Likewise same for the stove and sink. 

As you can not shift the sink, as it is fixed. To learn more about the working triangle you can click here.

3. Kitchen lights and Colour

The kitchen should have sufficient lights because low light can cause headaches. If the size of the kitchen is around 10' x 10' Ft, then you should install a 20 Watts LED tube light in the kitchen. 

Install the white led strip under the shelf area, above the chopping zone, so that you can get sufficient light to chop and clean vegetables. Bright light can speed up your work and save you time.

Low light affects our eyesight also, due to long exposure to low light conditions, you may feel dizzy and you will get tired in less time. 

Bright light will help you to freshen up your mind, and helps you conserve energy to keep working without any tiredness. Warm light and bright white lights are recommended for the home kitchen.

You can choose any company or brand of lights, but make sure it has a warranty period.

Place the light's in a just way, it should throw the lights to your working zones, like the cooking zone, washing zone, and chopping zone.

The kitchen should be painted with bright colors, avoid the use of dark colors, should maintain a balance between colors.

4. Shelf and Cabinet 

The wall shelves and wall cabinets, are the spaces where you keep all your kitchen jars and containers to store rice, flour, dal, masala, etc. 

The height of those shelves should not be more, make sure your's and your's family member's hands can easily reach there, to take out the required containers or jars.

You can arrange the containers priority-wise, like the containers or jar which comes mostly in daily use, place those containers first, which you can get easily. Place rarely used containers as per your weekly food preparation plan. 

Like making tea comes in a daily routine, keep the tea leaves container as the priority near the gas stove on your right side shelf or left side shelf and sugar as a second priority.

Try to make the shelf transparent or open, to save time in searching for the containers which you need urgently. Opaque cabinets or wooden cabinets can consume your time in searching for the containers you need in hurry.

Transparent cabinets can reduce the time, as you don't need to open each cabinet to look for the containers you are looking for.

If you have wooden cabinets in the kitchen, and you can not remember where you have kept the container you are looking for, you can just paste a piece of paper over the cabinet panel, and write the list of containers which is inside the cabinet, it will save your time. 

There are various types of products available in the kitchen, and you can not find the things easily if you don't spend much time in the kitchen if the kitchen is handled by your mother or some other person. You just call them and ask about the things you are looking for. So in this case it's easy to schedule before and save time.

5. Cleaning and Maintenance 

Maintaining the kitchen is a really important task. After we do food preparation and have our food, it's time to clean the kitchen and utensils and remove all stains left over on a gas stove and slabs. 

We need to do this immediately or after an hour to avoid stinking. If you leave these utensils and stains for long hours, it will take more of your time to clean them, because due to weather conditions the stains get stuck on the surface, it becomes hard to come out, we need to put more effort to clean it.

So to save time in cleaning, do it after you are done with food. A food schedule plan also helps you to reduce the utensils you are going to need for cooking. 

Select food according to the availability of time, you must consider the time you going to take to cook food and clean it. 

6. Purchase list 

Last but not least, to save time and energy, the purchase list plays another important. Here you can list out all the products you are required to prepare food for a week, this can be done two days before the week starts, that's is on Saturday.

You can buy all the required products before without wasting time, you don't need to rush to buy the products you need urgently. 

You arrange those required products in jars, so every day will go smoothly. 

Conclusion 

At last, I would like to conclude that, proper planning for any work, can lead you to complete tasks in smart ways. Kitchen work takes a long time, you can manage the work by making a weekly schedule plan for the preparation of food, you create a purchase list, and other steps that need to be considered, which you can read above.

The methods mentioned above are effective, in starting you will face little issues, but in a few days, you can see changes in your routine, and soon you will analyze how finally you able to complete all the tasks on time.