Posts in the Home category cover topics relating to homemaking and home life. You’ll find tips for cleaning, cooking and organizing. Freelance journalist and blogger Stacey A. Shannon keeps the posts real and practical. She’s far from perfect at any of this stuff, but shares what she’s learning as she goes.
Cook-at-home kits taught me a few lessons I’ll continue to use even if I don’t continue to use the kits!
When my daughter first proposed trying cook-at-home kits a few months ago, I was certainly hesitant to give them a try. But now, after trying multiple meal kit services, I’m glad we did so! I wanted to wrap up the series with my overall thoughts, lessons learned and what we’ll do in the future.
(And, as a reminder, I have no affiliation with any of the meal kit service providers and am earning no commission from any of them. These are just my own opinions about Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.)
One cook-at-home kit that didn’t work
Of all the cook-at-home kit services we tried, only one didn’t work out at all. Others I liked at varying degrees, but Blue Apron just wasn’t a fit for my family.
While we didn’t actually receive meals from Blue Apron, it wasn’t for lack of trying. In fact, when I saw Blue Apron offers a two meal plan a week, I decided to try them. I looked at the menu and found it iffy. But I decided to take the plunge and sign up anyway.
I discovered that some of the menu items I saw before signing up that looked good were only offered in two-person portions. And I couldn’t change portion sizes within the same box. All of them had to be the 4-serving selections. There were only eight recipe options I got to pick from by eliminating fish, lamb and shellfish.
Its website was the most cumbersome of the ones I used and not very user friendly overall. I couldn’t find meals that worked for my family. The prices seemed higher to me for what I was getting as well. Once I was clear that Blue Apron wouldn’t work for us, I wanted to cancel my subscription. I found that in order to do so, I have to email Blue Apron’s customer service. I did so, but I find that to be quite annoying. All the other cook-at-home meal kit services had options for me to click in my account to cancel or indefinitely pause my service.
The features I liked
Cook-at-home kit services definitely have likeable features. For the most part, food shows up at your door in the right portion sizes and is ready for you to cook. Some of the services made this easier than others. Overall, my favorite cook-at-home meal kit service was Home Chef. It gets props from me in that it allowed me to pick only two meals a week (best for my family), adjust the portion sizes for all selections I made and had the easiest to cook recipes of all the services that delivered food to my door.
I didn’t know these things would be a draw going in, but I quickly learned they made a big difference after I tried a few other services. Your family may not care as much if you three meals a week is the smallest amount offered or if all meals come in the same portion sizes. But, for our family it really made a difference and fit our needs the very best.
Assessing the cost
Along with concerns about whether we’d find enough foods we like in cook-at-home kit services, my other biggest concern was the cost. For each service I tried, I listed the cost in detail in the individual review posts (see links in the second paragraph or at the end.) Almost all of them offered discounts for new subscribers, but the discounts were distributed over multiple weeks, so they were much smaller on a weekly basis.
Because Home Chef was my favorite, I contemplated whether to continue with it once we were done with the cook-at-home meal kit service reviews. I even found that I could opt to get a delivery every other week or once a month. Being allowed to skip deliveries, it could be even further in between, I suppose. But what I ended up with was a box with two meals for my family (one of which was only two portions because half my family wouldn’t eat it and would need other food prepared for them) that cost around $67. I could take my family of four out to dinner twice a week for the same amount. It just doesn’t seem worth it to me in the end. So, I have indefinitely paused my service.
I know part of the fee for the cook-at-home kits is paying for the ingredients and the convenience. For my family, though, I can get the ingredient locally for less and don’t mind picking them up with my regular weekly grocery order anyway. The cook-at-home kits aren’t made to replace our entire grocery shopping for the week, so they weren’t saving me a trip to the grocery store either.
The one service I’m keeping — at least for now
While I’m not keeping any of the meal kit delivery services, I am keeping EMeals — at least for now. That’s in part because when I subscribed to the service, I had to pay for three months at a time and that time hasn’t ended, yet! But, I am thinking I will continue to use EMeals even after that and renew my plan.
I like that EMeals is cheaper and has way more food options that work for my family. It also uses more convenience items that make getting dinner on the table on weeknights much easier for me. When I first tried EMeals, I didn’t think I’d stay with it. Pinterest and other websites basically do the same thing for free. But, I found that EMeals makes finding new recipes and figuring out what ingredients I need much faster and easier. I don’t get bogged down by too many recipes like can sometimes happen to me online.
EMeals helps me stay creative and out of a rut, which I like. And it fits much better in my budget at $30 for three months. (It does offer an option to pay $60 for a year, which I will do if we continue to like and use it as much as we have been these last couple of months!)
The lessons I’ve learned from cook-at-home kits
I don’t regret trying the cook-at-home kits at all. This experience has changed the way I cook and meal plan — both for the better! We are trying new recipes on a weekly basis now (usually two new recipes a week). I have gotten outside of my comfort zone for cooking and made all kinds of foods and recipes I hadn’t made before. The cook-at-home kits taught me some kitchen skills I hadn’t used before.
I’m now pretty dang good at peeling garlic, cooking chicken and roasting vegetables. I’ve figured out how to meal plan entire meals rather than just main dishes. And my family learned that making two separate meals once a week isn’t so difficult. My husband and son are more particular eaters. Cook-at-home kits got me in the mode of making one meal a week that I knew the guys wouldn’t like for just my daughter and me. I put in a frozen pizza or make something very easy for the boys on those nights. Everybody is happy.
I have also learned that cooking from scratch is tasty, but it isn’t always practical for my family. Some of the cook-at-home kits took me at least an hour at prepare. On weeknights, especially, that’s just too much for it to be on a regular basis. I don’t want to use all convenience, prepackaged food, but I’ve found a happy medium.
Finally, using the meal kits also helped my family eat at home more and enjoy what we’re eating even more. They certainly got us out of a dinner rut. And that’s always a good thing!
What have been your experiences with cook-at-home kits? I’d love to hear from you!
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first; meal planning on my own worked. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Meal planning on my own
I realized to truly be fair and give an accurate review and comparison that I needed to also include meal planning on my own. So, I wanted to include that as well. This is what intentional meal planning and looking for new recipes to try on a weekly basis on my own looks like.
The menu choices were virtually unlimited. I had the entire internet at my disposable, including Pinterest, the great mecca of recipes! The biggest challenge in meal planning on my own, in fact, was that I have so many different recipes available to me. I have a variety of meals saved on my personal Pinterest board and browsed through it. I got a couple of ideas that way, but it was hard to narrow them down.
I found that I did better by having an idea of what kind of dinner I was looking for; otherwise the options were just too many. So, for example, my daughter mentioned she’d love to have BLT pizza. My husband didn’t think that sounded as great. My daughter likes the crescent roll crust most, so I searched for recipes using a crescent roll crust and found a Mexican one that I could easily modify for our family of four.
Thanks to the meal kit services, I did better with planning entire meals rather than just a main dish. I did discover one of my favorite new recipes this way. I made this Ritz cracker chicken in the oven and added mashed potatoes and roasted green beans. My daughter, parents and I loved it!
Cost
One bonus to meal planning myself meant that I could also go with things I already had on hand. This helped keep the cost a bit lower as a result. For example, I knew I had a box of spaghetti noodles in the pantry, so looked for recipes using spaghetti noodles that were outside of a jar of sauce. I could also meal plan based on what was on sale at the local grocery store the same week. That I didn’t actually do this time around, but I have in the past.
Shipping
Shipping wasn’t an issue for meal planning on my own. I do utilize grocery pick-up service, so I did that. Easy peasy!
Ingredients
As mentioned with the cost, I could use ingredients that I had on hand. Otherwise, I went with recipes that had ingredients I knew my grocery store would have as well.
Cooking the meals
Meal planning on my own meant that I could pick recipes based on what we liked and how involved they were to make. So cooking the meals was as easy as I wanted it to be. I didn’t have any issues with any of the recipes I picked not turning out well or having complicated instructions.
Portion sizes
Again, this depended on the recipe I chose. The Ritz cracker chicken, for example, called for six chicken breasts to serve six people. Since I only needed enough for four, I used only four chicken breasts instead. Had it been just my daughter and me, I’d have used only two.
Overall rating
Overall, I would say meal planning on my own is about 4 out of 5 stars. I realized that having some help with recipe ideas for the week did make my life easier. I can also get stuck in a bit of a rut if I don’t have ideas of what I want to make or don’t have time to search out new recipes.
Honestly, that’s not the result I expected going into this whole thing!
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
EMeals
From the beginning of this journey, I was most intrigued by EMeals. It is much cheaper because you’re only paying for the meal plans and buying the groceries yourself. They partner will various grocery stores to help make shopping easier. I do like that. As a rather DIY person, I figured EMeals would be the best fit for us.
Signing up for EMeals was pretty painless. I signed up online but then had to download the app to do much else. You can see your account and payment information online, but finding recipes and creating shopping lists has to be done through the app. I’m not anti-apps by any means, but I often have my laptop and like having the option to use it as well. Plans that have both make me happiest!
Menu choices
Since EMeals doesn’t have to source the food for its recipes like other meal kits do, they have many more menu options. There are a few that are family friendly options, and I started with those. Of all the meal kits we have tried, this one definitely had the most options that worked for my entire family. Quite a few of the meals were similar to things in our regular rotation, but there were lots of new options as well. My concern was whether I’d push outside of our comfort zone as much as I have with other meal kits!
EMeals also goes with some premade items on many recipes to make cooking time quicker. That’s a nice bonus for this mama on busy weeknights!
I’d love to have a search feature in EMeals to look for meals that utilize specific ingredients. For example, the first week using EMeals, I bought a half gallon of buttermilk for a blueberry muffin recipe. That’s not something I usually use, so I wanted to find other recipes to make use of the buttermilk.
While you do select a specific plan you’d like to go with (like family friendly, low calorie or budget), you can easily access and pick from recipes in all of the plans. I really like that!
Cost
EMeals offers 14 days for free, but you have to put in your payment information for them to start charging at the end of 14 days. Instead of being a monthly or weekly charge, EMeals charges either every three months at $9.99 a month or once a year at $4.99 a month. I opted for the three-month option when signing up, because I didn’t know how much we’d like it. Honestly, I’d prefer a monthly option at least to start with.
For additional fees, you can also add on a breakfast plan and a lunch plan (each costs additional). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anywhere to view these plans ahead of time and they aren’t included in the free trial, so I didn’t go for them.
Shipping
Shipping wasn’t relevant to EMeals for me. I order my groceries online and pick them up. EMeals partners with a variety of retailers to help you make your list. So, I worked with Walmart, which is my go-to for grocery pick-up anyway.
Once you pick however many recipes you want for the week, then you can click and see your ingredient list in the EMeals app. It will pull up every single ingredient needed to make everything you have saved for the week. One negative to me is that it often automatically adds alcohol to pair with meals to the shopping list. We don’t drink alcohol, so I removed it from the list, but it sort of irritated me I even had to do that. However, it wasn’t difficult to remove. Each item has a box next to it to check whether you need it. It starts out with everything checked. And the list also tells you how much of an ingredient you need and what recipe you need it for. (I like that!)
Before even connecting to Walmart, I was able to remove items from the list that I had on hand. Once that was finished, then I clicked a button and it took me ingredient by ingredient through the Walmart app to add whatever choices I wanted. It pulled up a selection of items and I picked from them. It was easy!
I also was able to add on additional items as well. The items I added to my Walmart cart through the EMeals app also were in my Walmart cart in the Walmart app. For the rest of my shopping, I just switched to the Walmart app itself because that’s what I’m most familiar with.
If you really love having the groceries delivered to your house, then opt for your grocery store’s delivery service.
Ingredients
Again, this is a bit different from the others in that the ingredients being fresh or not didn’t depend on EMeals. I liked the way I made selections of ingredients in the app. However, I also wondered how difficult it would be to find and purchase the ingredients needed for recipes. With previous meal kits, we used multiple ingredients that were a bit more specialty. I wasn’t confident my local Walmart would carry some of them.
However, EMeals recipes are more simplified and use some convenience foods as well, like refrigerated mashed potatoes or mac & cheese. I had no problem finding any of the ingredients I needed.
Cooking the meals
Of all the meal kit meals I’ve made, EMeals were the very easiest. The recipes are more like recipes I usually make for my family on a weeknight. While I love making things from scratch sometimes, a lot of weeknights, I just need to get food on the table and move on. I never felt out of my depth with anything I made from EMeals. They weren’t as challenging as the other meal kits, which is both a positive and a negative. Though they were easier to make, they didn’t push me out of my comfort zone.
I don’t like using my phone to read recipes, which I thought was going to be an issue with EMeal. The recipes are only on the app. But, I discovered that if I share the recipe via email to myself, then it takes me to the recipe on the website and has a print button right there for easy printing. I loved that!
The estimated cook times seemed accurate and sometimes it took me a little less time than estimated, which was great!
Portion sizes
The portion sizes vary on the recipes you make. All of them are clearly marked. Since you purchase your own ingredients, you can adjust the portion sizes as needed. For example, my family isn’t big on eating meat. The first week, I halved our ground beef purchase for the recipes. So we got fewer portions as a result. But feeding a family four with the family plan was super easy. Many of the recipes feed up to six people. The portion sizes seemed spot on for the recipes we tried.
Overall rating
I’d give EMeals a 5 out of 5 stars. It is certainly a different type of service, but for the price, I liked it. I debated back and forth about whether it was any easier than just doing meal planning on my own using recipes I find on the internet. (Check back next week for a post about meal planning without a service.) I definitely could, but having everything narrowed down in one place is helpful. So, EMeals is definitely one of my top picks.
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Every Plate
The next meal kit delivery service we used was Every Plate. It was like Home Chef and Dinnerly in offering three meals a week as the lowest option. While Every Plate focuses on its lower prices, those prices are in part because there are many premium offerings cost extra per serving. Other meal kits did this, too, but Every Plate seemed to do so even more.
Menu choices
The menu choices for Every Plate were a bit so-so to me. They don’t seem to have quite as much selection as some of the others — at least of food that my family will eat. I have a couple of picky eaters, but getting three meals a week minimum in four portions made it more noticeable to me this time around. With the other meal kit services, I was able to find two meals per week my entire family would like and then maybe have one other meal my daughter and I would eat alone. That was a challenge for us with Every Plate.
Cost
I selected the minimum amount of meals per week, which was three. I went with four portions. Unlike Home Chef, you couldn’t modify portion sizes. The cost for three basic meals for four servings was $59.88 plus $9.99 delivery. Each serving is $4.99. In order to get the premium selections, add $3.99 more per each serving for a total of $8.98 per serving. So if you get all premium recipes for four people for one week with three meals, which would bring the cost to $107.76 plus $9.99 delivery. Premium recipes included things like hamburgers, steak and salmon.
Shipping
My Every Plate boxes arrived via UPS in a large cardboard box lined with foam and with two big ice packs included. I like that the boxes arrived UPS because they get to me in the middle of the day. I didn’t especially like the ingredients were all thrown into the box and had to be sorted out by me. However, the large box also include a smaller open box with handles that my non-perishable ingredients fit nicely into once I pulled everything out. That box was easy to store on a shelf in my pantry.
Ingredients
The ingredients were fresh and not frozen. They were individually packaged. A couple were branded as Home Chef, which was interesting. It really does seem that most of these meal kits get their food from the same vendors because they are very alike.
Just like with Dinnerly, Every Plate needed a few extra ingredients from my kitchen to go with meals like ketchup, flour and butter that weren’t included in the box. The produce was mediocre on freshness, but I also live in the Midwest and it was March when I received Every Plate meals, so I’m not sure how much I can dock them for that.
One of the things we noticed is that the recipe cards for Every Plate did not include the nutrition information. All the other meal cards we tried previously did so.
Cooking the meals
The recipes were similar in writing style to Dinnerly and Hello Fresh. While they didn’t take lots of extra time like some of the others, this meal kit delivery service did take slightly longer for some recipes than the time estimated. But, overall, the estimated time was how long it took. It really depends on how much produce you’re using in the recipe and how long it takes you to prep it!
Portion sizes
The portion sizes were good on this one. They were good-sized portions without seeming way too much or too little. I guess like Goldilocks says, they were just right. We only tended to have leftovers when I made four portions but one or more of my family members either didn’t eat a portion or ate only a small portion.
Overall rating
I’d give Every Plate a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I don’t feel like their selection was as great. It just wasn’t a good fit selection-wise for my family. I also didn’t like that the smallest number of meals you could do a week was three. Two really does work best for my family. But, that’s certainly not the case for everyone! I also didn’t like that the nutrition information wasn’t included. While I didn’t pick a low-calorie meal option, I still like to have the nutrition information to keep track and make sure I plan accordingly for the calories needed for the meal.
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Home Chef
Next I chose Home Chef. Its ads kept showing up everywhere, so I figured it was a good one to try! One thing I noticed in the ads was some ready-to-heat meals. That piqued my interest for sure. The menu looked like it had enough options for my family, so I was in.
Menu choices
From the beginning of picking meals with Home Chef, I was pleased. Home Chef had a variety of options that worked even for my particular eaters. The Home Chef menu was different from the others in that you can customize the number of servings for each meal selected for the week. I picked a two-meal-a-week plan.
My plan was to pick one meal my whole family would like and then another that my daughter and I would eat without our particular eaters. I loved that Home Chef had the option for me to pick just two servings for those meals. It saved me money and made food prep easier as well. I also like picking serving sizes for times we have company so then I could opt for more servings.
And, as I mentioned, some menu choices were marked as oven-ready.
Cost
Home Chef listed the price per serving clearly on each of the menu choices. The majority are $8.99 per serving, but some were lower at $6.99 per serving. The highest price I saw was $14.99 per serving for some more gourmet dishes. As I selected meals and servings, Home Chef updated my overall price at the top of the page, which is great if you are trying to stick within a certain budget. It also doesn’t result in an unexpected higher price in the end.
The price without discounts for one 2-serving meal and one 4-serving meal a week was $53.94 plus $8.99 shipping for a total of $62.93. If I had done two 4-serving meals, the food cost would have been more around $71.92 for $8.99 meals, which is what I usually got.
Shipping
I received my Home Chef meals via FedEx, which worked really well. Just like UPS, FedEx usually delivers in my neighborhood around lunchtime.
Ingredients
Ingredients for each meal came packaged together in a large, resealable zip-top bag. I could easily pull out all the ingredients I’d need for prepping a meal. I liked the bag being clear so I could see what was inside. The only thing that shipped outside of the bag was meat. For oven-ready meals, the pan was even included in the bag for easy prep.
Just like with the others, the ingredients were all pre-portioned. I needed very few things from my own pantry with Home Chef meals, usually just olive oil, salt and pepper. For recipes that needed butter, Home Chef even included pats of butter. One thing I especially appreciated is that fresh veggies came prepped and ready. Green beans, for example, were already trimmed. I just rinsed them and got to cooking. For recipes that used garlic cloves, the cloves were packed in sealed bags and were already peeled. They were ready to go, which I greatly appreciated. It saved prep time!
One of the other things Home Chef did differently was include some plastic containers with some of the ingredients. One of the Mexican dishes, for example, had a plastic jar with a twist-on lid full of enchilada sauce. I saved the containers, because they work well for leftovers or other home projects. Plus there is less waste that way!
The only drawback for some people is that the meat arrived frozen. My husband isn’t usually a fan of frozen meat. But we couldn’t tell a flavor or texture difference, so I think it was frozen just before shipping. I liked that better, actually, because I felt like the meat was likely to not spoil as easily during shipping and it would stay fresh a day or two longer than non-frozen meat.
Cooking the meals
Hands-down cooking the Home Chef meals was the easiest of all the meal kit services I’d previously tried. While the meals from Dinnerly and Hello Fresh both took longer to make than the recipe said, Home Chef meals took either the same amount of estimated time or less!
Each box arrived with 8.5×11-inch glossy recipe cards. The recipe cards were hole-punched to easily store in a three-ring binder if desired. All of the recipes are also available in your account if you prefer to cook with the recipe digitally on your phone or tablet. I’m a fan of recipe cards myself!
The directions were easy to follow. Home Chef had some prep required for things. Even the oven-ready meals needed a bit of prep, but it wasn’t nearly as much as the other meal kits. For example, with Hello Fresh I made a pasta with tomato sauce and started with whole tomatoes I had to puree and cook. With Home Chef, a similar recipe came with tomato sauce that I added seasonings and tomato paste to for easier and quicker prep. As a result, we also used less pots and pans with Home Chef recipes, which made for easier clean-up.
My 12-year-old daughter could easily make the Home Chef meals on her own. I appreciate fresh ingredients and doing things completely from scratch, but for weeknight meals, I loved that much of the ingredient prep was done for me. It saved me time on cooking dinner, which is always a bonus.
The only drawback is that since some of the items were prepared for us (like a marinara sauce and pesto that one pasta recipe used), it could be difficult recreating those dishes with just the recipe card later. For us, that wasn’t such a drawback, but I can see where it might be for some people.
Portion sizes
The portion sizes were good. For the meals I got two servings of, my daughter and I usually ate them without leftovers. For the servings of four, we tended to have some leftovers. But that is in part because my son is hesitant about eating much of new recipes.
Overall rating
I’d give Home Chef 5 out of 5 stars. We got good home-cooked meals with less work that gave me more time to enjoy my family!
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Hello Fresh
Of all the meal kit services, I had heard most about Hello Fresh. It seemed to pop up everywhere. When the new year started and it offered a variety of deals, I decided to give it a try. It was our second meal kit service. My daughter was excited for it the most, because she also had heard the most about it.
Menu choices
Hello Fresh had a good amount of menu choices that worked for our family. Our second box, for example, included a barbeque flatbread pizza recipe that I could easily customize portions of for my particular eaters. Hello Fresh had a decent selection for both meat eaters and non-meat eaters. And some recipes I could customize to use less meat. For example, one box was a ground beef flauta recipe. I used half the amount of ground beef the recipe called for to fit my family’s tastes. The meat came in two separate packages, so it was easy to pop the unused package in the freezer to use later.
One of my complaints for the Hello Fresh menu is that the gourmet meals are mixed in with all the other menu choices. Since the gourmet meals cost extra per serving (usually around $8.99 per serving per meal), I’d like them to be separated so I know they’re gourmet without having to be sure and check.
That said Hello Fresh has way more non-gourmet meals than gourmet. It isn’t a big issue and when you click or tap to confirm your selections, it is clear that you are paying more. You can go back and make changes if you don’t want to.
Cost
Hello Fresh isn’t inexpensive. I opted for two meals a week for four people. Other meal kit services have three meals as the lowest option, so I liked that I could do two with Hello Fresh. Two meals a week for four people is $75.92 plus $9.99 shipping. New sign-ups usually get discounts and such. I had some discounts for Hello Fresh that offset the cost.
Discounts are applied over multiple weeks, so you get a smaller amount off of a few orders rather than a larger amount of one order. Hello Fresh also has a rewards program you are automatically entered in to. Every four boxes you get a reward. In only doing four boxes for each service for this post, I got one reward of a free random dessert in my fourth box.
My only gripe about the free random dessert is that it was two individual cheesecakes. Since I was ordering with a four-person plan that didn’t make much sense to me. Unbeknownst to Hello Fresh, though, only two of my family members really love cheesecake. So it worked out anyway.
Shipping
Hello Fresh shipped to me through UPS, which was awesome. UPS delivers regularly to my house and neighborhood. Usually our deliveries come around lunchtime, so I received the meals early enough in the day that I could plan them for dinner that night if I wanted. I like that!
Ingredients
While the ingredients arrived pre-portioned, they also arrived brown-bagged based on which recipe they went with. So all the ingredients for one recipe were in one bag I could pull out of my fridge when I was ready to cook. Meat was separated but everything else was in the bag.
Everything was pre-portioned and even included things like packets of flour. The ingredients were all branded “Hello Fresh.” All of the ingredients were fresh. Veggies needed to be washed. I had to supplement my own ingredients much less. Usually olive oil, salt and pepper were all I needed from my own pantry. Once I needed butter.
We did encounter a couple of missing ingredients and once a missing add-on. The flauta recipe was supposed to come with Mexican seasoning, but it didn’t. I always have taco seasoning on hand, so it worked out OK. The third box, I had a reward of $10 for add-ons with referring a friend. I chose a combo of creamy tomato soup and garlic bread. My out-of-pocket cost ended up being around $3. The garlic bread arrived, but the soup didn’t. I used the automated chat for customer service and my account was credited for the missing item. However, I was only credited my $3, so I lost the $10 reward and chose not to try ordering the soup again.
Cooking the meals
Each box came with recipe cards for what the box held. They were printed on thick, glossy 8.5×11 pages. The recipe cards listed the ingredients, description of the recipe and detailed instructions. I did download the app for Hello Fresh, but since it sends recipe cards, I didn’t need to have the app.
The first meal I made, which was a corn chowder, took longer than the estimated 40 minutes on the recipe card. It took more like 60-70 minutes. Other meals were usually around the time listed on the card, but never quite as quick as the estimated times. I think again that the times are estimated by professional chefs. I found that overall, the meals did take longer to make than was estimated on the card, so I learned to plan for that.
The directions were pretty straightforward and easy. It included the directions for a 2-person plan and 4-person plan in one. I didn’t need any special kitchen gadgets for any of the recipes. I did use a grater on a couple.
Portion sizes
The portion sizes were large and good. There was easily enough for my family of four. We almost always had leftovers as well (due in part to my particular eaters). But, even meals that everyone ate, we still had at least enough leftovers for one person to have for lunch.
Overall rating
Overall, I’d go with 4 out of 5 stars. I’m only dinging Hello Fresh for price, being off on estimated cook times and missing ingredients.
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over the next few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Dinnerly
Dinnerly was the first meal kit we tried. It seemed like decent prices and had a variety of options we could make work. I signed my family of four up for the 4-person plan of three meals a week. Three meals a week was the smallest amount Dinnerly allows.
Menu choices
I was pretty impressed with the Dinnerly menu choices, because I could find a good amount of meals that would work for our family. My husband and son are not big on eating meat and can be a bit particular. Usually, I would go for two of the three meals to work for all four of us and have one that I’d make an easy alternative for the guys.
I also was able to modify some recipes to fit our preferences. For example, when I made pasta with meat sauce, I used half the amount of ground beef the recipe called for, because that’s what our family likes. I froze the remaining half easily since it came is 1/2-pound sealed packages. Another time I got chicken tostadas to make and used some of my own ground beef to give my guys an option, since they don’t like chicken.
Overall, the Dinnerly recipes had a decent selection whether you are big meat eaters or not. We only had two recipes we didn’t care for. One was for a breakfast casserole, which was a miss because of the scrambled eggs that much of my family doesn’t like (not Dinnerly’s fault). The other was a miss because I tried gnocchi for us. None of us had ever had it; none of us cared for it (probably not Dinnerly’s fault either).
There were a couple of weeks that not much looked good to me, so I skipped the week, which was easy to do. Dinnerly also has a feature to allow you to pause your service rather than cancel, which is what I did for this meal kit comparison.
The cost
Shipping for each box was $8.99. The meals were $22.36 each for four servings. I had some discounts for being a new subscriber to help offset the cost, but without them, the cost was $76.07 for three meals a week for four people. Discounts are applied over multiple weeks, so you get a smaller amount off of a few orders rather than a larger amount of one order.
Shipping
Starting off with the first shipment, things went a bit awry. Our box didn’t arrive on the day it was supposed to. I contacted customer support who assured me it should show up the following day and still be cold. I was dubious, to say the least. The box didn’t eventually show up and it was cold enough.
Every week, the box was delivered around 6 p.m., which is late for deliveries in my neighborhood. And because we eat dinner around 5 or 5:30 p.m. most weeknights, it meant that I couldn’t plan a Dinnerly meal for delivery day. I still don’t know the delivery service used, because it was very vague in the app. The one time I saw the truck deliver the box, it was an unmarked box truck.
Ingredients
The ingredients were fresh, though, and of good quality. We had one bunch of green onions one time out of the four kits we got that were pretty wilted, but it was also winter in the Midwest. So I didn’t hold that too much against them. Everything was pre-portioned. All items came in one big box that I then would divide up what I needed when cooking. Things like sour cream, for example, came in 2-ounce tubes that I would use a certain number of per recipe.
Cooking the meals
My biggest gripe with cooking from Dinnerly is that the estimated times were much less than actual. If a meal said it took 20 minutes to make, it usually took more like 30 or 40. I’m not sure if the times were from a professional chef or what. I’m not a complete novice in the kitchen, but I’m certainly no professional.
The recipes were available in the app or through my online account. I used the app because having my phone in the kitchen was easier. I still wasn’t crazy about having to use my technology where I was cooking, though. Later, I discovered that if I open the recipes on my computer then I could print out recipes cards, which I much preferred.
I also found that we needed some kitchen tools I didn’t have on hand and had to look up work arounds for. Using a handheld grater was the most common one. I did end up buying one of those. Another time, I needed a meat mallet tenderizer and didn’t have one (we really don’t eat much meat).
I like to look at recipes ahead of time to get an overview of the steps so I know what’s coming. The first time I cooked with Dinnerly, I didn’t do that, but I learned after that to swipe ahead and see all the steps before I started then I could go back. Sometimes the directions for the steps were a big vague. I’m a recipe-follower and like very specific instructions, though.
Portion sizes
We almost always had leftovers. Dinnerly has decent portion sizes for sure. In fact, we contemplated switching our plan to a two-person plan. But we found that most things froze well, and we ate the leftovers.
Overall rating
Overall, Dinnerly was a pretty good fit for our family. I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars. I don’t like that three meals a week were the smallest amount we could use. Of all the meal kits I compared, this one also had the worst shipping and tracking.
Use these tips to save time so you can do more of what you enjoy this holiday season!
Affiliate links are used in this post, if you make a qualifying purchase via my link, I receive a small percentage of the sale at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products and services I use and love. It helps support my blog, so thank you for your support! Read my full disclosure here.
Christmas may be “the most wonderful time of the year,” as the song goes. But it is also and often “the most busy time of the year!” Along the way, I’ve found a few simple Christmas hacks that make my life easier. And I’m all about easier!
These Christmas hacks help me stay sane during holiday crunch time. I figured I’d pass them along in case they help anyone else. And if you have anything you do, please share! We are in this together!
1. Use parchment paper
Christmas cookies are my jam. I enjoy making them. One of my family’s favorite cookie recipes is toffee crunch cookies. They are good but a bit sticky. Parchment paper makes baking them so, so, so much easier. I use it for all cookies because it also makes clean-up way easier.
Even if you only use it for holiday baking, parchment paper is one of my favorite Christmas hacks. I mean, who couldn’t use easier clean-up right now?! I didn’t discover the joys of parchment paper until about five years ago. I was only sad I didn’t discover it sooner!
2. Use small appliances to help
Cookie dough doesn’t have to be mixed in a stand mixer, but my life is a whole lot easier with my stand mixer. Not only can I do other things while ingredients are mixing (like tossing out eggshells or closing up brown sugar), but it also saves my arms. Honestly, that’s the biggest benefit. With fibromyalgia, I’m all for anything I can do to help save my hands, arms and shoulders. I couldn’t do half the baking I do without my stand mixer. I love Dorothy so much! (Read more about my stand mixer here!)
I also utilize online shopping for everyday items from makeup to paper products to nonperishable foods. It’s one of those Christmas hacks I love because it saves me time at the grocery store and helps me avoid crowds, which is pretty priceless!
4. Keep wrapping supplies handy
This is my wrapping “corner” right now.
This one happened on accident this year, but it’s worked so well for me. This is our first year living with two stories since our very first townhouse college apartment when we got married 19 years ago. I keep my wrapping supplies in the closet of our guest bedroom/game room upstairs. I do my wrapping at my kitchen table. (We have a counter height table this year, and I’m loving how easy it is to wrap on that thing without killing my back!)
I brought down some wrapping paper and supplies for a gift wrapping session and they’ve remained downstairs ever since. I put most of them in a box. Some gifts yet to be wrapped are hidden in there as well. Others are elsewhere. This has become one of the unexpected Christmas hacks I’ve discovered to make my life easier. Yesterday, for example, I picked up a gift for my husband, came home and had it wrapped and under the tree within a couple of minutes. Does it look super great between my living room and dining room? Maybe not. Do I care? Nope, because it really is making my life easier!
5. Wear an apron
This sounds a little crazy, maybe, but wearing an apron when I’m baking makes my life easier. A long time ago, I’d just wear old clothes for baking then have to change if I left the house. These days, I have to leave the house more regularly because the kids need to be picked up from school and such. I’ve learned that my grandma’s generation was really onto something with aprons. I have my favorite apron hanging in my pantry at all times ready to save my clothes from flour and powdered sugar messes. It’s another one of those simple things that makes a difference for me.
6. Set reminders
If you were to look at the calendar on my phone, you’d find all sorts of “appointments.” I set them for so many things beyond just appointments and meetings. Last night, for example, I had just snuggled under the covers to go to sleep when I remembered that I hadn’t put a spoon in my daughter’s lunchbox and was planning to send her soup. I sat up, grabbed my phone and set a reminder for 7 a.m. to put a spoon in her lunchbox.
The best part of setting reminders for such mundane things is that it lets me let them go. I don’t have to hang onto that thought and try to remember it or stress about it. I know my phone will ding with a reminder. I have appointment reminders set for things like my son’s PJ day for his school winter party next Friday or my making sure to put cookies in my daughter’s backpack for hers. While this is my go-to organizational tool year round, I consider it one of my Christmas hacks because it helps me so much this time of year when life gets even more hectic.
7. Ask for help
My husband is really good to do things around here. But he isn’t a mind reader. I can’t expect him to always know when I need him to jump in, so I ask. Last night, for example, I was cleaning up from making cookie dough and asked him to get supper started. Later we divvied up tasks between kitchen clean-up from dinner and laundry duty. This coming week, we will work together to finish wrapping gifts.
When our kids were younger and home all day, we had times we’d ask our parents to watch them for a few hours so we could wrap gifts or I could bake without having to try and keep a toddler away from the oven door every time I opened it. It takes a village sometimes to make holiday magic happen!
What Christmas hacks do you use to make your holiday season a little less hectic?
Looking for more Christmas ideas? Check out these posts!
Affiliate links are used in this post, if you make a qualifying purchase via my link, I receive a small percentage of the sale at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products and services I use and love. It helps support my blog, so thank you for your support! Read my full disclosure here.
When my house is a mess, I feel guilty. And when I feel guilty, I get grumpy. And when I get grumpy, I’m more inclined to snap at my family for small things. The other option is that I spiral into a pit of self-pity and sadness that I’m not better at cleaning my house. I feel more pressure than my husband to keep our house clean and more embarrassment when it isn’t. I interpret our messy house as my own personal failure.
You’d think that would make me an excellent housekeeper. But it doesn’t. Instead of doing something about it, many times I just beat myself up. I have had literally years at a time where I couldn’t do better for a variety of reasons and still berated myself over it.
However, I have recently learned some things, and as a reforming slob, I’m going to share them with you in case you aren’t one of those rare folks who love to clean. I don’t offer a detailed cleaning plan. I’ve tried those, and they stress me out and make me feel worse about all that I’m NOT doing. Instead, I’m offering real-life tips that have helped my family.
In order to get where I’m coming from right now, you need to know where I’ve been. I grew up as the youngest of two children. I have one older brother. My mom has always loved to clean. (I know. It’s weird to me, too.) She comes from a long line of women who keep immaculate homes. When my grandma was younger, she would vacuum under her furniture weekly. Weekly. I’m talking under armchairs and recliners. Growing up, I had some chores to do around the house, but my mom did most of the cleaning. She was good at it, and she liked it. When I got married at age 20 in the middle of my college years, my husband and I worked together to clean our small college apartment. It wasn’t always straightened up, but we did an OK job cleaning the bathroom and kitchen and such. In our second apartment, we continued. Our biggest cleaning strategy was to do it all at once, usually on a Saturday morning.
When we moved into our first home, though, we went doubled in square feet. Cleaning certainly took more at that point, but we still did OK with cleaning everything at once. It got a bit more challenging because my chronic bladder condition flared for a couple of years straight and kept me from being able to be on my feet for long periods of time, but we made it work.
Ten years into our marriage, we had our first child. Suddenly spending two or three hours cleaning the whole house was almost impossible. I did well to keep myself clean, let alone the house. I didn’t have a great strategy. As time went on, we had a second child and I had more health issues that left me choosing between being able to take care of the kids or clean the house well. Since I had to keep the kids alive, I chose them. Between 2011 and 2017, I had three major surgeries, a minor one, a second baby, shingles and more. Cleaning? Ha!
Then last fall, we moved in with my parents. We had sold our house and were building a new one, but we had about six months in between the two and needed somewhere to stay. I’d just had another surgery. I decided to take the time to learn from my mom, the cleaning guru, while I was living with her. And I did learn a few things that have helped me tremendously. When I last lived with my parents, I was 18 or younger or only home on college breaks. I didn’t pay a bit of attention to how my mom managed her house cleaning. This time, though, I determined I would. I felt motivated because I was getting a fresh start that not everyone gets. I was moving into a new house that was starting clean, and I was determined to keep it that way.
I noticed a few things about my mom that helped me. Since we moved into our new house in April, I have managed so far to do a decent job. I’m not going to pretend that I’ve suddenly become the best housekeeper in the world or that I’m not still a bit of a slob. We still have boxes to unpack. We haven’t decorated much. We still have clutter, though we’ve done our best to purge and eliminate.
Employ the ABC method: Always Be Cleaning One of my best tips from my mom is ABC — Always Be Cleaning. That might sound like a nightmare to you, because it certainly would have to the me of a couple years ago. But, hear me out. My mom’s strategy is to clean as she goes so there isn’t a big mess to deal with later. It sounds simple, and it really is. Like when she finishes washing dishes, she takes an extra 60 seconds and wipes down her kitchen sink. She brings in the mail and deals with it instead of tossing it on her countertop. She wipes down her bathroom counter with a cleaning wipe after she finishes getting ready. I’ve learned a lot of these tasks take a short amount of time. Seriously in 30 seconds, I can do a quick wipe of my bathroom countertop. I can unload the dishwasher in less than 5 minutes.
Keep cleaning supplies handy If you’re going to always be cleaning, then you need cleaning supplies where you use them. My mom stores cleaning products under each bathroom sink and her kitchen sink. Moving into a two-story house, I knew myself and knew I’d either forget to bring cleaning supplies up or down the stairs or find it easy to procrastinate if they weren’t in easy reach. So I bought enough for each location. Each bathroom has wipes and toilet bowl cleaner. I do share Windex between them. The kitchen sink has wipes and vinegar. I have a separate vinegar bottle for upstairs. I know this doesn’t sound ground-breaking to many people, perhaps. But it has made a difference for me. For example, earlier this week I realized that I hadn’t yet cleaned the half bathroom downstairs and needed to. On my stop by there before going to pick up the kids from school, I cleaned the toilet in a minute. Later I wiped down the sink. And those are the biggest areas that need weekly cleaning in there, so it worked well. If the supplies were even just around the corner in the pantry (a few steps away!), I know I wouldn’t have done that. And, quite honestly, I probably STILL wouldn’t have done it even now a couple of days later.
Cleaning isn’t all or nothing Previously I’ve had the idea that if I can’t clean everything then I don’t even want to start. However, I have been timing myself on doing tasks and realize that in a few minutes, I can accomplish a lot. And the things that need cleaned most don’t take all that long. I can spend five minutes cleaning my bathroom and feel much better afterward. Yes, it still needs to be deep cleaned and floors mopped and such, but every little step counts. Finding hours to devote to any one task is difficult. Being able to physically spend hours cleaning my house is basically impossible nowadays. I’ve changed my mindset from doing it all or nothing to doing what I can when I can. Now I almost see it as a challenge to see how much I can get done in a set amount of time like 15 minutes. And I’ve been shocked at how much I really CAN do quickly. (I also find more motivation to clean or straighten up if I have a time limit. I can endure cleaning for 5 to 30 minutes!)
Embrace the right cleaning products I struggled with keeping my stainless steel sink clean at my old house. It had hard water stains no matter what I did. I tried different cleaning products to no avail. I just figured because my fibro arms don’t handle scrubbing hard that I’d not be able to maintain a sparkling clean sink. Then we stayed with my parents. My mom cleans her sink pretty much daily when she’s cooking. They went on a trip and while I cleaned it regularly, I still didn’t clean it daily. It started to get a build-up. Within a day of her being home I realized it was sparkling again. So I had to ask. Her newest secret cleaning weapon? Vinegar. I was a bit dubious. Then I tried it. Seriously, I put some vinegar on a paper towel, wiped just a bit and the spots were gone. Gone! It blew my mind. So now vinegar is one of my go-to cleaners that makes life way easier. Even better is that it’s cheap and non-toxic. Who knew?! It’s the whole work smarter, not harder concept in action.
Enlist help This one doesn’t come from my mom but from my own experiences. In the time of our marriage, my physical health has taken a hit many times. And with chronic health conditions, there are still times it takes a beating and I can’t do things. So I have learned to ask for help and be willing to accept it. My kids now have their own bathroom. They’re required to clean it once a week. They divide the tasks. I gave them a lesson on exactly what I want them to do. I handle some things for them like cleaning the mirror, because they have trouble reaching it, cleaning the floors and cleaning the bathtub. None of those things need done weekly. But weekly they have to clean the sink and counter, clean the toilet inside and out, take out the trash and check the supply of toilet paper. No, they don’t clean as well as I do, but I do check in on their progress and have had them redo things. And it still is helping both me and them! One of these days they’ll have their own bathrooms to clean.
I also ask my husband for assistance with tasks I usually do when I need to. And even though he may fold towels differently than I do or clean in a different way, it’s still perfectly fine. In the end, everything gets done and that’s the goal. I will say I have also learned when to ask for outside help. My mom and my mother-in-law have helped with cleaning our house during times I was recovering from surgery and such. I had a friend say to me that she could never let someone else clean her bathroom and trust them to do it right. I can only say that when it’s your only choice because you physically can’t do it, then you certainly gain perspective and appreciation.
Don’t procrastinate I’m not usually a procrastinator by nature, but I can be very good at overlooking things that need to be taken care of or put away. Very good! I try to make sure that I’m putting things away when I’m finished with them. But in that mindset, I’m also trying to make sure that each item in our house has a home. If I get derailed from putting something away immediately, then I make a conscious effort to take care of it next time I come across it.
Along with putting things away, I try not to procrastinate when it comes to dishes and laundry. There are ALWAYS dishes and laundry. But, I’ve worked to simplify as much as I can. I have arranged my kitchen around my dishwasher. So the things I use most often are stored right above the dishwasher or within a couple of steps. I can empty the dishwasher in five minutes or less and usually make myself do it the next time I am working in the kitchen (which is quite often with kids!). I’ve also worked to be practical. My kids take their lunch to school everyday. I have enough lunch containers for two days worth of cold lunches for both kids (You can find my favorite ones here!). That gives me two days to wash the containers in the dishwasher instead of by hand, which saves me time. If I throw in a day of hot lunch in their hot Thermos, then that helps even more. Each of them have three drink Thermoses for the same reason. I don’t have to hand wash lunch supplies daily. It makes me more efficient and less grumpy, so it works.
And then there’s laundry. While I’m not as fast as my mom who folds and puts her away immediately, I definitely make an effort to deal with it in the same day. At my old house, the washer and dryer were in the garage. In this house, they are on the second story in the middle of the bedrooms, so that really helps. We have also taken advantage of the laundry room and keep two laundry baskets for dirty things at all times: one for darks and one for whites. I can easily see when a basket is full and a load of laundry need to be thrown in. It helps keep me from getting as overwhelmed with load after load of laundry all at once. Another bonus is that I have a set amount of laundry baskets and I have to make sure to keep laundry folded and put away so we can use the baskets as needed. (I do keep a spare one, though. I’m not THAT good!)
My handy husband also hung me a nice bar in the laundry room so I can hang up clothes straight from the dryer. If I hang up the pants and shirts for my husband and me, shirts for my daughter and some shirts for my son right away then I don’t have as much work to do with folding either.
Give yourself grace This is my final tip. No matter what systems I have in place, no matter how much progress I’ve made, I’m not perfect and I’m not going to be. Life is going to get in the way. My health will flare for a week. My kids will get sick. Things happen. I have learned to not beat myself up if I get out of routine and don’t clean my bathroom this week. It doesn’t mean I’m never going to get back on track. I will, and I do. Can I say that in the past I was just a total slob and wasn’t doing my best? No way. I really was doing my best. There are some seasons of life where it’s easier to clean than others. Having babies and toddlers make cleaning a huge challenge. Going through physical and/or mental struggles makes cleaning a huge challenge. Doing the best you can? Then it’s enough. Don’t beat yourself up for not being perfect or having the perfect home!
Here’s the thing: I’m never going to transform into someone who loves cleaning. (At least I will be shocked if I do!) I won’t ever keep as spotless of a house as my grandma or my mom. But, that’s OK. I try to be realistic in my goals and work for what makes my family and me the happiest. We are all happier when we have clean dishes and clothes. We are all happier when there aren’t piles of papers all over the table we have to clean off every time we want to eat a meal. We are all happier to go into a bathroom that smells fresh and doesn’t have weeks of build-up. However, my family life isn’t going to dissolve into chaos if I let clean dishes sit in the dishwasher for 24 hours or a load of towels stay in the dryer for a couple of days. I do my best, but I also remember my priorities. I don’t want to be so busy taking care of my family that I don’t remember to enjoy my family.
Take my tips and see if you can put them to work for you. What other tips do you have that make cleaning easier? I’d love to hear from you!
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