Better Meal Prep & Easier Clean Up

Enjoy Better Meal Prep and Have More Fun in the Kitchen

Do you ever get to the end of a long day and just feel too tired to cook dinner? Or walk into your kitchen, look into the fridge or pantry, and give up?

If you find yourself getting take-out more than you want to, it can be detrimental to your health and your budget. And the problem might be with your kitchen itself.

If your kitchen is outdated, cluttered, or badly laid out, meal prep will take much longer and be less enjoyable. Maybe it’s time for a change.

Read on to learn about 5 ways that a remodel of your Tallahassee kitchen can help you enjoy preparing meals in your home.

remodel for retirement - meal prep

McManus Kitchen and Bath is a full service remodeling company with an in-house design team and showroom right here in Tallahassee, FL. 

We work exclusively with homeowners to help them remodel using a design-build approach that saves time, avoids confusion and creates better results. 

Why You Don’t Cook

There are a variety of reasons that your dated or poorly-designed kitchen might make take-out seem like a better option than meal prep or a home-cooked meal. 

Ineffective Storage

It’s hard to get to your pots and pans because they’re stuffed in the back of lower cabinets.

You can’t get your drawers to open easily because they’re old and misaligned, or stuffed too full.

When you open a cabinet, things fall out. There’s not enough storage in your space.

Bad Layout

You and your family are always bumping into each other in the kitchen. You can’t easily move from stove to sink to fridge because something or someone is in the way.

You spend so much more time on cooking tasks than you need to because of poor organization and difficulty in cleaning up.

Worn Out Materials and Appliances

It’s hard to keep your kitchen clean because of ditry grout, worn countertops and cabinets.

Your appliances are the builder-grade quality ones that came with the house, and they don’t work well.

It’s Not Enjoyable

Your kitchen is not a place you want to be. It’s not a reflection of your style, and it embarrasses you when you have people over.

A Kitchen Remodel Can Help

The good news is, these problems can be solved! A kitchen remodel can make being in your kitchen something you look forward to at the end of the day, instead of something you dread, and save you a lot of time, too.

Kitchen food preparation - meal prep

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How A Kitchen Remodel Can Help With Meal Prep

There are a lot of reasons people remodel their kitchens. Often they are focused on the look of the kitchen or resale value but the real value in a kitchen is in how it makes our day to lives better. 

Not only making meal prep more efficient but making clean up easier, and making entertaining and family time more enjoyable. 

New Appliances Make Cooking Easier

A remodeled kitchen with new appliances will save you so much time.

Consider installing a five-in-one oven, which gives you access to a convection oven, a toaster oven, a warming/proofing oven, a precision cooking oven, and a microwave, all in one appliance.

Or if that is more options than you need, maybe a three-in-one is more your speed, giving you a microwave, convection oven, and air fryer.

These combo appliances cook food faster than traditional ones. Because they combine multiple ways of heating food (microwaves agitate water molecules, while convection ovens blow hot air over the food’s surface), they cook with less energy usage and more speed. And the multiple cooking methods ensure that the food will taste amazing!

Another time-saver is an induction cooktop. These sleek cooktops look like their glass counterparts but produce heat differently. Rather than heating an element, they electromagnetically heat the pans themselves.

This means they cook your food much faster. They are also very energy efficient, easy to use, and give you a lot of control over the temperature. And because they have glass tops cleanup is a breeze. 

Custom Remodeling, Cooking in Kitchen with Kids

#2. New Organization Will Save Time and Hassle

Layout

A well-designed kitchen has a great layout. If your kitchen currently isn’t laid out well, you’ll be amazed at how much a remodeled space will improve your experience.

We like to consider work zones when we design a kitchen. You want your kitchen to have a prep zone, a cooking zone, storage zones, and even sitting/relaxing zones. Thinking of your space this way might give you some ideas about how to improve your kitchen’s layout. 

Kitchen designers also often consider the work triangle. This is a common idea that states that your sink, range, and refrigerator should be fairly equally spaced and form a triangle.

This allows for ease of movement between areas for food prep, cooking, and cleaning up. If your kitchen’s work triangle is too big or too small, or if it’s laid out with all elements along one wall, it will feel “off,” even if you don’t know why. A remodel will help with this problem as well.

Storage

The type and amount of storage you have in your kitchen can make or break it. We recommend five essential kitchen cabinets to ensure you have enough storage in all the right places.

These cabinets provide the foundation for kitchen storage, and then we add to it from there to customize it to your needs. If your kitchen is short on space or has the wrong kind of storage in the wrong places, a remodel will greatly improve your ability to get things done in your space.

custom remodeling for a First Time Homebuyer

#3. A Place for Everything Will Help You Find What You Need

Speaking of cabinets, having the right ones for the job will not only increase your storage, but help you find the right place for your kitchen tools and dishes.

We love deep drawers instead of lower cabinets because it’s so much easier to lift pans and mixing bowls out of them.

When you think through your specific kitchen needs, you can make sure you have a big baking cabinet if you love making cakes, or a coffee bar for your espresso enthusiast.

Having a designated place for each item you use will help you find it quickly and put it away easily.

#4. Easy Clean-Up Will Save You Time

A bright, spacious, new kitchen is so much easier to clean than an old and cluttered one. Not only will a remodeled kitchen have more and better storage, but it’s easier to wipe up a sticky mess or scrub a sink clean when those items are new than when they’re worn. And with proper care, you’ll be able to keep them fresh and easy to clean for a long time to come.

#5. You’ll Want to Spend Time in Your Kitchen

While this reason technically doesn’t tell you how a new kitchen will save you time, it does point to another huge advantage: you’ll love spending time in a newly remodeled kitchen. With a fresh layout, new appliances, great lighting, beautiful floors and countertops, and perfectly designed cabinets, your kitchen may well become your favorite room. You will love gathering there with family and friends, cooking together, and spending time together.

#5. You’ll Want to Spend Time in Your Kitchen

While this reason technically doesn’t tell you how a new kitchen will save you time, it does point to another huge advantage: you’ll love spending time in a newly remodeled kitchen. With a fresh layout, new appliances, great lighting, beautiful floors and countertops, and perfectly designed cabinets, your kitchen may well become your favorite room. You will love gathering there with family and friends, cooking together, and spending time together.

We’re Here to Help

If you’re ready to make your kitchen work for you, save time on meal prep and clean up, and enjoy the process, contact us today. We’d love to help you give your Golden Eagle, Southwood, or other Tallahassee area kitchen a new lease on life.