The kitchen is one of the most important places in the house. It’s where meals are made! Meals are a vital part to our health so we should want to make sure we have a nice natural kitchen to help keep those meals and our bodies healthy!

To help you live a bit more naturally, here are 10 easy ways to go natural in the kitchen!

Ditch the Paper Products

Paper towels, napkins, and plates create a lot of trash and waste your money. Disposable paper products are not something we, as a society have had for very long. Disposable products are the new thing on the scene. Instead of paper products, try using reusable alternatives such as towels or even unpaper towels, cloth napkins, and real plates… just like people did before there even was a disposable option.

Clean Green

Choosing green cleaners is one of the easiest ways to go natural in the kitchen. Just swap out the all purpose cleaner for vinegar and the soft scrub for baking soda! Seriously, vinegar and baking soda are really all you need to clean your kitchen! It’s also very frugal and vinegar and baking soda cost practically nothing.

Remove the Plastic

Plastic isn’t anyone’s friend. It doesn’t help the environment at all when it’s being made, it’ sits in landfills for ages, and to top it all off plastic can leach chemicals into your food. This is the one area that might seem daunting because odds are you’ve got quite the collection of plastic in the kitchen. However, it really is easy. Pick up some pyrex to replace the tupperware, mason jars are a great storage solution as well. Choose a reusable water bottle instead of using plastic ones.

Ditch the Teflon

Everyone loves a non-stick pan to cook in but that teflon is harming your health. If they warn you to not keep birds around when cooking with teflon, it’s probably a good reason to toss the teflon out of the kitchen all together! Instead, choose stainless steel, cast iron, or even ceramic pots and pans.

Buy Real Food

What we eat has a huge impact on our health. Buying and eating only real food goes a long way in keeping us healthy. Not sure what “real food” is? Think of it this way… if you could not (at least in theory) grow it or make it yourself, then it’s not real food. Even if you can not make everything from scratch, if you try to buy foods that only have 5 “real” ingredients or less you will be doing great.

Stop Buying Canned Food

Canned food is convenient and affordable. However, those cans have a danger to them. Almost all cans are lined with BPA. This is a hormone mimicking chemical that can really effect your body! While there are some canned foods that are not lined with BPA, you need to ask what the cans are lined with instead because unfortunately the alternative is not always safer.

Switch to Healthier Fats

The world is finally coming back around to the fact that fats are not the evil food group that we’ve made them out to be. Fats are good for you and are a needed part of your diet. However, not all fats are equal. Stick to the healthy fats such as butter, coconut oil, ghee, and olive oil.

Recycle and Compost

Many towns now have curbside recycling and curbside compost is growing in numbers as well! Decrease the amount of waste you contribute to landfills by recycling and composting. My family has dramatically decreased the amount of trash we make since we really started recycling and composting!

Unplug Appliances

Appliances use electricity and thus energy; we all know that. However, we often do not realize that these appliances still use energy even when not in use. Save some energy and money off your electric bill by unplugging all appliances when not in use. Now I’m not suggesting you unplug your dishwasher or any of the big appliances; just all the smaller ones like the blender or toaster.

Meal Plan

Meal planning is a simple way that you can make sure you eat healthy, save money, and produce less waste. Meal planning is not hard to do and it can make your life a lot easier! When you know what meals you will be making during the week, you no longer need to order take out because dinner crept up on you and you had nothing to make. When you meal plan, you are better about using all your food in your kitchen and therefore you aren’t throwing away food that has gone old.

photo credit: Chiot’s Run via photopin cc