5 Simple Tips For A Sustainable Kitchen I Hill Country Homestead
The kitchen is one of the quickest places to make sustainable changes. I know for us, minimizing waste was the first step for bringing sustainability into our household. The goal for us is not perfection, but to live with awareness. These 5 simple tips for a sustainable kitchen was our entry into a sustainable life, and can can help you too.
Reduce Food Waste by Starting at a Baseline
Make a point to use up the majority of what’s on hand in the fridge or pantry. Then start from scratch, and be intentional about reducing food waste. Food saving and freezing leftovers before they go bad is a great way to get started and keeping a close inventory on what’s in the fridge will help too.
2. Get a set of kitchen towels and never look back
A great set of towels can quickly eliminate the need for paper towels *almost entirely. Keep a small hamper in the laundry room for said towels and if you have a really busy kitchen the towel bucket may need to be washed daily (like mine). The idea is to have stack of towels each day big enough to tackle all messes, hand washing and wipe downs. My favorite set of kitchen towels are from Grove Collaborative, linked below.
3. Switch to Glass
This one move has simplified so many things in the kitchen. Glass mason jars in various sizes can be used in a variety of ways, eliminating a lot of excess kitchen clutter. Large mason jars are used for food storage and leftovers, medium mason jars are used as drinking glasses and spice storage and the small mason jars are used for anything too small for the other 2 sizes.
4. Be Better Friends With Vinegar
Vinegar has about one million household uses and it can singlehandedly replace about every home cleaning product. Vinegar is the most effective remover of mold and mildew spores and doesn’t pollute the environment. Add in a little baking soda and citric acid and it becomes even more powerful for cleaning shower walls and toilet bowls. Prefer the house to smell a little less vinegar-y? Dilute with water and add essential oils.
5. Use mainly cast iron
Aside from a few larger kitchen tools, a good set of cast irons will serve most cooking needs and last a lifetime. There are also some positive health benefits from using cast iron for cooking, like adding iron to the diet. There are some not so pleasant things released into the food when cooking with pots and pans made without cast iron. Our ancestors cooked with cast iron for very good reason!
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