Hate Cooking at Home? Practical Tips for Doing It Anyway

The more you make a recipe, the easier it will become and the less mental resistance you’ll feel when you think about making it.

Identify 3-5 recipes that are fast to make (30 min or less), relatively healthy, and reasonably edible. Fall back on these recipes as often as you need.

When taking on new endeavors we often skip a critical first step: figuring out how we’ll make time for them.

To make room for cooking, you’ll need to say no to other things. Time block meal prep on your calendar and keep that appointment with yourself.

You can motivate yourself to start cooking by putting on your favorite podcast or an audiobook.

Psychologists call this strategy temptation bundling – pairing a thing you like to do with a thing you don’t like to do. It can be a powerful way to jump-start any habit.

A sharp chef’s knife will save you time, frustration, and possibly even fingers.

You don’t need a lot of gadgets to cook at home, but investing in a few basics will go a long way in making cooking easier and far more pleasant.

A cluttered fridge filled with foodstuffs in various stages of rot makes it harder to find what you need which in turn makes it harder to start cooking.

Just set a timer for ten minutes, go through your fridge, get rid of anything that’s going bad, tidy up what’s left, and remind yourself what you need to use up soon.

You don’t have to go from getting takeaway for 90% of your meals to cooking 90% of your meals at home.

It’s ok to start by committing to cooking just once a week. If you find you can handle one night, maybe add a second. The routine you’ll actually maintain beats the perfect routine every time.