Refresh Your Kitchen Habits for the New Year
There is no better time to focus on health and wellness than at the start of the New Year. The following tips have been carefully curated by the Brightland team to assist you in better organizing your kitchen, preparing more healthy meals, and helping you feel ready to take on the year ahead.
1. Keep Cooking Essentials Front and Center
Declutter your cooking space by storing anything not used on a regular basis, like extra spices or bulky kitchen utensils. This minimalist approach will keep only the necessities in view, making it easier than ever to prepare meals and assist with cleanup.
This photo from @taylor__kitto is our inspiration for a cleaner kitchen space. We love how Taylor keeps essential spices and frequently-used pans front-and-center. Brightland’s ALIVE olive oil is also prominently on display in a gorgeous ceramic platter, to make for easy drizzling.
2. Organize Your Kitchen to Be More Productive
Here are a few simple changes we’ve implemented in our kitchens to make it fast to prepare healthy meals:
- Clean and organize the pantry with these comprehensive tips from Camille Styles. Grouping kitchen supplies by product or meal type will make prepping a cinch.
- Use drawer dividers to keep spatulas, whisks, and more in order. We love this expandable, customizable drawer divider from Crate & Barrel.
- Keep knives secured and easy-to-grab with a chic knife block like The Stand from Material Kitchen. To help you focus on meal prep in the year ahead, our friends at Material Kitchen are offering 20% any purchase on their site in the month of January with code BRIGHTLAND20.
3. Make Your Kitchen More Inviting
ean into kitchen chores by making your space more inviting to the senses. Our Atelier Saucier x Brightland tea towel add a functional pop of color to any space. Between meals, light a kitchen candle (like our neroli-scented DIGESTIF) to set the mood and banish any lingering cooking smells.
4. Meal Prep to Spend Your Time More Efficiently
Busy schedules during the week can make it difficult and time consuming to prepare nutritious meals. We recommend meal prepping every Sunday to ensure healthy meals are ready to go for each day of the week. Here are some of our favorite meal prep recipes that are anything but ordinary:
- For easy workday lunches, try this Orzo Salad with Dill, Dates, & Feta.
- Keep a quick dinner on-hand all week long with a pot of Garlicky Cannellini Beans that can be spruced up with a side of toast.
- Nothing could be easier than a sheet pan meal that keeps well, and we love this Moroccan Spiced Sheet Pan Dinner with plenty of flavor.
5. Buy Fresh, Local and Equitably-Farmed Ingredients
For us, eating healthy is less about counting calories and more about being selective with the ingredients we use. Support local agriculture by shopping at a nearby farmers market (or online with merchants like Misfits Market), buy small-batch, regeneratively-grown spices such as those offered by Diaspora Co., and adopt a superfood self-care routine with Golde’s tea and latte blends.
Photo by Marissa Guiang.
