A little less kitchen stress

The high cost of feeding a family—and how I’m reclaiming my time (and my brain).

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The cognitive labor of keeping our families fed is exhausting. It’s not just about the actual time spent cooking, it’s the constant nature of it. As soon as you finish feeding your kids their last meal or snack, it’s time to turn around and do it all over again in just a few hours’ time… deciding what to feed them → prepping it → getting them to eat it → then cleaning up.

And while optimizing every minute of the day is an American ideal, I’m not interested in finding how I can fit more into my day. I want to find ways to tackle what needs to get done as efficiently as possible so I can free up as much energy, mental bandwidth & room for what actually matters to me instead.

And I can’t imagine I’m the only one feeling this way.

When I look over survey results from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, we’re spending over an hour a day on this combined effort. And honestly? I’d argue that’s being conservative. The average trip to the grocery store takes 46 minutes. I know for me, it’s 30 minutes just to get to/from my store. Do that twice a week (hello, poor planning) & we’re talking at least 2 hours spent just buying food. That’s not even accounting for making the lists, prepping food & cleaning up after meals which accounts for at least another 8 hours a week.

And that doesn’t even begin to account for the invisible stress so many of us feel to get our kids to eat, offering healthy choices & doing our best to help them have a healthy relationship with food.

The cumulative effects are exhausting, to say the least.

So how do you strike a balance? How do you put ‘enough’ time toward meal planning & prep without burning yourself out? How do you make sure that you’ve put in enough intention so your family is eating healthily? But how do you also have a system in place to make sure it’s sustainable enough that you can keep it up even when the inevitable curveballs of mom life get thrown your way? And how do you do it without all the overthinking or succumbing to decision-fatigue?

So I want to start breaking down all of this by sharing what’s working for me right now, in hopes it gives some helpful insight or inspiration that in some way makes all of this a little easier for you, too.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to share the exact ways I’m handling my family’s kitchen rhythm to save my sanity. We’ll talk about automating the grocery inventory, planning without the overthinking & how I’ve ditched the big Sunday prep entirely. I'm also going to share my cleanup systems and how I’m unlearning the pressure to 'make' our kids eat, focusing on connection at the table instead.

I didn’t want to overwhelm you this all on you at once, so I’m going to roll out the components—the templates, the lists, and the philosophy—right here for paid subscribers over the next couple of weeks. This way, we can tackle this one piece at a time without the overwhelm.

We are starting today with the biggest hurdle—how I’ve streamlined my weekly grocery shopping.

Talk soon,
Erin

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