The Liberated Kitchen, redux

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I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. A lot of time. I think fully half of my personal Facebook posts are food related. One of my friends recently commented, "Do you ever get out of the kitchen?" To which I replied, "Sometimes I go to the bathroom!" I was joking. Kind of.

Being a homemaker is my full time job. An apron is my uniform. My job responsibilities include cooking food from scratch, keeping up the house, doing laundry, and taking care of my kids and my animals. In addition to my full time job, I am also currently working on a Masters of Arts in Teaching at Open Original Shared Link here in Portland. This means that some day, my full time job is going to be outside my home! How will we survive!? Eat packaged crap? Wallow in our filth? Get rid of my chickens?!

No, no, and no! We can't survive like that. But we're going to have to figure out how. To this end, I'm taking on the 40 Hour Work Week Challenge beginning Sunday, June 19, and going through Saturday, June 25. The rules of the challenge are simple:

1. I will prepare three meals and one snack for my family per day.
   
2. Monday through Friday, I can only cook food for our family from 4:30 pm to 7:00 am. This means no chopping, no starting soaks, no starting ferments, and certainly no using the oven.
   
3. Saturday and Sunday are free days - the kitchen is open to me all day and night.
   
4. I may not clean up the house, aside from my own mess, during the time I would be working (M - F, 7 am - 4:30 pm). No doing laundry, no sweeping, no wiping. (This is the hard part!)
   
5. Other members of the household are allowed to cook food for themselves at any time, but I may not partake of this food.
   
6. I will post every day, sharing how the day went, what state the house is in, and whether or not we've starved to death yet.
   

I think with a very clear plan and some delegation, we'll be able to make it work. I'm looking forward to this challenge. Wish me luck!

What are your biggest challenges and best tips for balancing your work and home cooking?

Note - this post is written by my partner, Kelsy. She also writes lots of the food posts on our blog. If you look at the original blog (linked from my profile) you can always see who wrote the post. There are often extra links included in the posts as well!