How to Create a Healthy Kitchen

Helping your family be as healthy as possible is no easy job. There’s certainly plenty to consider. Improving the health of your family involves preparing nutritious meals. It also involves encouraging healthy everyday choices. But have you considered your home environment? The kitchen is often the hub of your home. So it follows that it’s a room that plays a huge part in keeping your family healthy. After all, this is the place where you prep and store food. 

There’s no doubt that your kitchen is central to the health of your family. But how can you create a healthy kitchen? Maybe you’re planning to completely revamp your kitchen space. Or, perhaps, you just want to give it a simple makeover. Whether you’re planning something ambitious or basic, making changes to your kitchen can be super beneficial. So, if you’re keen to create the healthiest possible kitchen for your home, these tips should help:

Have a Kitchen Clear Out

When your kitchen’s busy, it can get cluttered really fast. Trying to work in a kitchen that’s untidy and full of clutter is tough. You’ll probably find it pretty hard to find what you need and spend a lot of time searching for items you want to use. This can get pretty frustrating. But this clutter can bring some added problems too. For a start, you’ll probably find that your kitchen is hard to clean. Secondly, this will make your kitchen a stressful place to spend your time. Additionally, your kitchen will probably then be full of things you no longer need. This often includes ingredients and food that have passed their expiry dates. 

About three years ago, I finally took this task seriously and spent a weekend decluttering my kitchen. It was amazing! I went through every cabinet, held every plate, bowl, and random leftover mason jar and did the Marie Kondo thing. “Does this spark joy?” If the answer was no, I set it aside with gratitude.

I listed the things that weren’t total junk on my local Facebook Buy Nothing Group (look it up!) and had a series of neighbors pop by and pick up my discards. I felt good knowing so many things were going to new homes where they would be used!

I did need to end up replacing many of the things I got rid of, but it wasn’t too expensive. I replaced my old, beloathed dollar store plates with a pretty set of mix-matched plates from Amazon. I got rid of some worn out silicone cooking utensils and replaced them with pretty, hand-crafted wooden ones. You get the idea. I gave away old cookbooks and only kept my favorites, moved my spices inside a cabinet, and cleared out enough space in my cupboards to put my least used kitchen appliances so they no longer took up valuable counter space.

Now my countertops are clear, it’s far easier to clean, and I love literally every tool, dish, and spoon with my whole heart!

Setting aside some time to go through your kitchen and decluttering it is time well spent. This may seem like a daunting task. However, it can actually be pretty satisfying. If working on decluttering the whole kitchen is too overwhelming, simply start small. You could begin by clearing out just one cupboard at a time. It may take a little longer to do it this way, but it’ll certainly be more manageable.

Once complete, you’ll be left with a kitchen that’s simply full of things you actually need and use. 

Let the Light Into Your Kitchen

If you spend a lot of time in your kitchen, making it healthier is even more crucial. Letting more light into the room can really help with this. Using natural light as opposed to artificial light brings a host of health benefits. It’s also a great way to reduce your carbon footprint and energy bills!

Using more natural light in your home can help to improve your mood, boost vitamin D levels, and help you sleep better. So, there’s a ton of reasons to add more natural light to your kitchen. One excellent way to do this is by installing a lantern window in your kitchen. Online stores, such as https://www.clearambershop.com/, have the materials you need to create your own lantern window at home.

Natural light can really add to the appeal of your home. With more natural light entering your kitchen, you’ll want to spend even more time in your favorite room! 

Find the Perfect Storage Solutions

You may have already decluttered your kitchen and introduced more light, but what next? Ensuring that all the things you want in your kitchen are stored currently is a must. Finding the perfect storage solutions for your pantry can make a massive difference to your kitchen. When your ingredients are stored correctly, you’ll save time and money. 

Ingredients will last a whole lot longer when they’re stored in the right containers. You’ll also be able to find what you’re looking for far more quickly. This means less money spent on duplicated ingredients and a lot less food waste. 

Also be sure to organize your pantry so that everything’s easy to find. Making sure that you use airtight containers to store everything is also essential. This’ll help ingredients to last longer. Be sure to label everything, too.  This will help you benefit from fresh ingredients, and healthier meals, while also saving money.

Improve Your Ventilation

Your home’s indoor air quality is so important. This is something you really need to consider when you’re trying to create a healthy kitchen. All buildings need the correct level of ventilation to be healthy, and your home’s no exception.

You may think that using your cooking equipment correctly means it’s safe to use. But cooking appliances, as well as oils and fats used in cooking can create air pollution at high temperatures. Indoor air pollution can cause many health problems. People with health conditions such as respiratory illnesses like asthma can be worse affected.

To avoid the health issues that can be created by indoor air pollution, you need to take action. Increasing the ventilation in your kitchen plays an essential role in this. Being sure to use your range hood is essential. But you’ll need to be sure that the range hood is working correctly. If your kitchen hood isn’t extracting indoor air pollution efficiently, you may need to upgrade it.

Opening windows and letting it fresh, outside air can be a huge help. But what can you do if opening windows isn’t an option?

I’ll tell you what I settled on: plants and an air ionizer/ozone generator. Plants not only brighten up the place, they are also great and cleaning indoor air. I opted for an ionizer/ozone generator rather than a purifier for a couple of reasons. 1) I don’t have to replace expensive filters frequently, and 2) it works! Ionizing the air helps drop particulates in the air (like dust, hair, smoke, etc) onto surfaces where you can easily swipe or mop them clean, and occasionally using the ozone generator helps restore the balance of ozone inside the home to those matching the outside (and it has the added benefit of getting rid of odors!).

This is the ionizer/ozone generator I use.

This is where I bought my idiot-proof indoor plants. I love it because the plants came already potted in pretty living-room-ready pots, and I didn’t have to do anything except water them and occasionally fertilize them. Three years later, and the plants I got are still thriving and healthy, despite my total lack of a green thumb!

Final Thoughts

Preparing delicious meals packed with nutritious ingredients is so beneficial to your family’s health. However, there’s more to do to create a healthy kitchen. From transforming the design of your kitchen to making small changes, you can completely overhaul your kitchen space.

Making improvements to your kitchen space brings a host of benefits. You’ll soon be able to interact with the space more easily and ensure that everything in your kitchen is kept as fresh as possible. All these changes really enhance your experience of using the kitchen. It will soon become an even more pleasant space to spend your time while nourishing your family.