Falling In Love with Cooking - Tip #1

-A Clean Kitchen.

     Here is what I believe to be a major tip to enjoying cooking in your kitchen space.
   
     You are an artist, and an artist would never start with a messy canvas.  They start with a clear, white, and calm canvas.  Do not begin with chaos surrounding you.  It will just make you feel immediately defeated.  Try to clean as you go.  Years ago, Luke and I made it a habit to have the entire kitchen almost completely cleaned before we sit down for dinner.  That way, after dinner, we just basically have the plates, silverware, and glasses to put in the dishwasher, and the counters to spray and clean.
     
Side note-tip to feeling like a successful mom:  Go to bed with your house picked up each night.
You wake up and feel on top of your game rather than the poor, sad loser at the back of the race.  You go to bed with a peaceful house, and wake up with a peaceful house.
   
     Back to the clean kitchen: growing up, my dad, who is the most amazing and gifted administrator (however, the most irritating administrator when you are being constantly “administrated” or what I like to just call “bossed” by your dad) ran a very tight ship in our home alongside with my mother.   Now that I think of it....both my parents are bossy, extremely bossy!   But, we grew up in a beautiful, organized, clean, peaceful, and pleasant home where everyone wanted to come over and gather around our dinner table at all times!   Back to my dad-I heard at least 2,000 times growing up, “girls, clean as you go, clean as you go, it makes it so much easier.”  And you know what? He is right, it makes it so much easier!  And when entertaining, it is nice if you clean as you go, because when you guests arrive, they are not overwhelmed by a messy kitchen and secretly thinking in their minds, “Dear Lord, I hope this kitchen is sanitary now that I am about to eat the food that was prepared in it.”   And again, it brings them a feeling of peace as they prepare to dine at your house.
      You will notice, I will speak a lot about “peace”.   It is important to me.   A peaceful home is one of my greatest desires.  And as almost every mom can agree, it takes work to obtain peace, but it is a great desire for all of us in our crazy, errand running, diaper changing, baby feeding, toddler chasing, guitar playing, amp repairing, pedal board fixing, speaker cabinet drilling, travel gear case hammering,  craigslist trading- ok, wait, I just got lost in my “married to a musician world”- never ending daily lives.