This is Day 59 of the Green in 365 series!
It’s the last day of February and we’ve been greening our homes for two months now! I hope you’ve been enjoying this series so far!
As I was getting ready to write this post, there were so many more things that I wanted to cover about going green in the kitchen, so I think we’ll revisit the kitchen with even more green living tips and ideas in the fall. Until then, take the ideas from this month and make small changes to green your kitchen one step at a time!
As an encouragement and reminder, we are each on our own journey toward green and natural living. We (or at least I!) don’t do every green living thing perfectly all the time – far from it! We are each making the changes that are best for our family and our situation, and not feeling guilty about the rest.
So, take the time to enjoy your family, invite your children to help you in the kitchen, prepare your food together in love, and gather around the table to share not only meals, but memories. Studies have shown that families who eat dinner together around the dinner table on a regular basis have children who eat more healthy foods, do better in school, are much less likely to engage in risky behavior (like experimenting with drugs) and are more connected to the family.
The kitchen is the heart of the home, and while making green changes is important, it’s much more important to have a family-centered kitchen, where the members of the family are loved and nurtured. So work on making these changes together as a family, but don’t sacrifice the family relationships just to have a more eco-friendly kitchen. It’s through time spent together as a family that lessons are taught and lives are impacted, and those are the things that truly change the world.
For more on an Eco-Friendly, Family-Friendly Kitchen, check out these posts:
- 5 Ways Clearing Off My Kitchen Counters Changed My Life
- Saving Time in the Kitchen (with kids!)
- Deep Clean Your Kitchen The Green Way
- Managing Kids in the Kitchen
- How Real Food and Green Living are Connected
- Toddler Boredom Busters from Your Kitchen & Homemade Play Dough Recipe
How do you foster a family-friendly kitchen in your home?
Find all the Green in 365 posts.
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Congrats on hitting the 2-month mark, Emily! We celebrate a family-friendly kitchen in two ways: (1) we involve our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter in cooking whenever we can and (2) we eat dinner together as a family every. single. night. Sure, there is the occasional exception. But 99% of the time, we are together, at the table, no TV, just us and a conversation about our day. Unfortunately, I think it’s a tradition that has become lost in so many busy lives, but that daily family time is incredibly important. To find it over a wholesome, home cooked-meal is even better!
One thing we did to make our kitchen more family-friendly was to give our child “his” drawer that he can easily reach, which contains some cups and plates so that he can serve himself a drink or snack without climbing on the counter. One thing that makes this eco-friendly is that all of our plastic cups are reused from restaurants that give kids plastic cups (we try to avoid these by asking for “a real glass” but it’s remarkable how often they “forget”–at least reusable plastic cups are better than Styrofoam!) and all of our snack plates are either reused plastic plates from frozen foods or metal pans from supermarket pies–we never buy those, but when people bring them to serve at church I nab the pans before they can get thrown away!