How To Build a Living Kitchen
When it comes to kitchen work and meal preparation, you may have negative images in your head and heart about feeling as if you are the one who ‘has’ to buy produce, prepare meals, and clean up after the meals because the rest of the family is too busy with their lives. If that’s the case, you may end up feeling resentful, and unappreciated.
If the above rings true for you, then it’s definitely time to toss those negative thoughts and feelings — You need to feel comfortable and relaxed in your kitchen, and create it into a sanctuary for you and your family.
A healthy kitchen is a living kitchen, and a living kitchen is a manifestation of truly believing that specific appliances and loving attitudes will actually make your kitchen, your food, your attitude and your life comes alive!
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Chop wood, carry water is a big part of our living kitchen. Chop wood, carry water is a Zen-like approach towards learning to love the discipline and patience it takes to embrace something we need to do everyday of our lives.
Let’s face it, we have to face our kitchens more than once, if not twice or three times daily. We are responsible for nourishing ourselves and our family’s health and wellness. Chop wood, carry water means practicing something on a daily basis with virtues such as patience and respect, reliability and perseverance laced with love and appreciation, so that in time we become ‘ONE’ with ourselves and our relationship to our kitchen instead of seeing our kitchens as this defunct and dysfunctional daunting responsibility.
Create Your Own Living Kitchen
Here are some ideas you can start practicing to create your own living kitchen:
Keep your kitchen clean on a daily basis.- Keep your kitchen spices, pantry and refrigerator organized.
- Supply your kitchen with appliances that support the preparation of living foods.
- Keep your refrigerator filled with living foods and greens so you’re prepared for juicing and making super-salads.
- Light a candle in your kitchen to give reverence and gratitude to Mother Nature, your loved ones and your own divine self.
- Place flowers from your garden or from the florists on your kitchen island or near your sink along with photographs of those you love.
Get Organized
On a Saturday, when most of us want to sleep in or go shopping… why not play some of your favorite music, light a candle and re-do your kitchen? Clean out the pantry and the refrigerator, wash the floors, buy flowers — or better yet — pick some fresh herbs from your garden or buy some to make your kitchen smell fragrant. While you are working in your kitchen, you can clean and store your greens for the week and cut your carrots and beets for either juicing or super-salads.
Relax into the chop wood, carry water principle. Create presence in your kitchen by following these rituals twice a month to ensure your relationship with your kitchen is alive and well, and you’ll be on the road to loving your living kitchen. With consistent dedication laced with love, devotion, and persistence, your kitchen will start to take on a new face, and you will start to resonate more with seeing it as a sanctuary rather than a place of dis-connection, drudge or duty.
Once you get your kitchen nicely organized, you can then start to think about replacing some kitchen appliances that do not support health-living with those that empower and support a healthy life. Then, you will start to wake up to the fact that juicing daily, blending green smoothies, eating super-salads, and maintaining a beautiful kitchen is absolutely transforming!
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Stay tuned for our next segment on How To Create a Happy & Healthy Kitchen. Part 2 will discuss more tips on how to transform your kitchen to support a healthy body as well as happy and healthy mind.