Kenmore Genius Tip: How Did I Save Dinnertime?

So how did I do it?

I delegated! I put dinnertime in my kids (apparently very capable) hands. I know. You think I’m crazy. My kids may be only 7, 5, and 3 but they can really be a HUGE help when I let them be.

Now I’m a big fan of letting kids actually help cook dinner – but that honestly isn’t a huge time saver for me with the ages my kids are right now. I have to save all the “helping” for when I have a bit more time on my hands.

What does save me time, is having my kids help choose what I’m cooking for dinner each night. I get stuck in such a dinner rut trying to come up with meal ideas every single night of the week and I end up wasting so much time meal planning.

I pulled out a stack of cookbooks and set my kids loose. They each picked 1-2 meals they wanted to try out of the cookbooks I had and my oldest wrote down the ingredients I needed to buy to make the meals (which was fantastic writing practice and he didn’t even know it).

The result? My kids were thrilled to death to try some new recipes because they had helped pick them out and I didn’t have to spend the time to plan my menu for the week. We’ve even taken it one step further and assigned each child a day of the week to choose dinner. They LOVE the fact that they have ownership over that night and they are much more likely to try new ingredients if they are in a recipe that they picked out themselves.