It’s the one thing nobody ever warned us about as kids. That as you get older, and live in your own house, you’ll have to cook dinner. Every. Single. Day.
While this is a funny meme on social media, the reality of it is draining. The figuring it out day after day. And it only gets harder when you have others in your house just as hungry as you, but more helpless than you when it comes to the kitchen.
I do remember a time when this didn’t seem so exhausting. Making dinner felt like a novelty and something so fun. My niece just moved out on her own for the first time. She’s so excited to cook and sends us pictures of the most amazing meals. There was a time where I remember feeling like that too! It was exciting to find new recipes, figure out the ingredients, and see it come together.
Life got busier, which meant my energy had to go elsewhere. Work became more demanding, my family started to grow, and my energy was lost somewhere in the midst of it all. Cooking became less of something that I wanted to do, and something that I had to do. It started to feel more stressful because I would think about it through the day – starting to think about what I could make for dinner, but not remembering exactly what was in the fridge to make it happen.
Before long, cooking turned into a never-ending chore that just took the energy I didn’t have. And maybe I started to resent it a little bit.
Deciding What to Cook: Why It Steals Your Energy
Honestly, I think there are a few reasons why deciding what to cook feels like such an energy vampire – and most of them have nothing to do with dinner itself.
For one, we make thousands of decisions every single day. I’ve read that it’s estimated that we make as many as 35,000 decisions! By time we get to dinner, we’re just done. Making one more decision feels like climbing a mountain in flip flops.
Maybe it’s because deciding about dinner isn’t just thinking about dinner. It’s making a decision that has layers. It’s figuring out what meets the needs of your family – making sure that you make sure everyone’s voices are heard so it’s something that they’ll like (and, well, so you won’t hear the complaints of ugh, this again).
It’s looking at what’s in the fridge and in the pantry. Making a mental list of what needs to be picked up at the next grocery run, mentally figuring out what you could pull together for a meal.
Let’s not forget the added pressure of making sure your dinner feels “good enough” to serve. Because if it were just me, I’d have a solid rotation of girl dinners for every single meal.
When you pull all of that together, it’s no wonder dinner feels like more than just dinner. Because it really is.
Side Note: It’s Not the Recipes
Growing up, my parents had a solid slate of dinners on rotation – mom tacos, spaghetti, stir fry, hamburgers, the Sunday pot roast, and a chicken noodle soup thrown in here and there. Nobody was bored. If anything, I remember being so excited when it was stir fry night because my mom would put some little corns in it and I would try to steal all of them.
But, today, dinner has evolved. Suddenly it has become something where recipes can’t be repeated. That we just need “one more recipe” on our Pinterest board to help us feel inspired.
The recipes don’t help. They make it feel more complicated because now there’s more decisions thrown into the loop. If anything, they add to the decision fatigue – more things to go through to try to figure out what to eat.
Sometimes it feels like if we had a “better” recipe, it would make dinner so much easier. Maybe it’s because life is busier, but maybe it’s because figuring it out has become too complicated.
Dinner Panic Doesn’t Start at Dinner
At 3 p.m., an internal bell goes off and the texts begin: what’s for dinner? Your brain’s already spent two hours on it by the time you’re cooking. We built the 3 p.m. audit to find out.
Six quick questions, a score that will make you feel seen.
What’s the Solution?
When it’s time to decide around what to cook again (which is like, every four hours), maybe the answer isn’t finding another clever recipe to save.
Maybe the answer is deciding ahead of time so that version of you that shows up at 5 p.m., exhausted and drained from the day, has exactly what they need.
For me, the shift that saved my sanity around having to cook every single day wasn’t because I learned how to cook faster or found a recipe that could be cooked in under 30 minutes.
It came down to having a simple rhythm. Something like what my parents had for us when we were kids – a rotation of meals that kept is simple.
For me, a few things really made a difference:
- Giving days categories. Taco Tuesday, Pizza Friday – these were core to my childhood memories! And it makes it easier for everyone. You know what’s coming so you can plan better. It makes it easier for your brain.
- Keeping a roster of favorites. No, you don’t need a new recipe tomorrow night. Or the night after that. Figure out the favorites that your family loves and knows and get it into Weekly Table to make it even easier to track and plan.
- Let the deciding be done for you. Using Weekly Table means that you can spend a few minutes on Sunday morning and make your plan for the week. A plan that can be updated as life changes; but a plan that separates the decision from the cooking to make it easier.
And most importantly? Give yourself the permission to make dinner boring – there are thousands of meals to cook in the future, so keep it simple for your sanity.
Ready to get a system in place to make meals easier? Start your free trial of Weekly Table today.
