How can I streamline meal planning and preparation if I have arthritis?

The kitchen is often the busiest room in the house. It becomes a hotbed of activity when you’re preparing and eating meals. Organizing your kitchen is but one part of streamlining the everyday activities that take place in this room -- and meal planning, meal preparation, serving and eating a healthy diet are vitally important to people living with arthritis.

Begin by building more time into your schedule to prepare and eat meals. Make the kitchen or dining room a calm, low-stress environment by playing soft, relaxing music while you cook and eat. Do as much planning and preparation as possible while seated at the kitchen table or at a stool pulled up to a countertop.

If your energy or medication’s effectiveness waxes and wanes, prepare meals when your energy level is high, and reheat food and serve it after you’ve had a chance to rest. When eating, sit close to the table and place all food and utensils within easy reach. Expect and encourage other family members to be part of meal preparation.

It’s not anyone’s sole responsibility to make dinner; give others tasks to do and accept their participation, even if you could do it faster and better. As they get older, and with practice, children will learn how to fill the dishwasher correctly, wipe off the counters better and sweep the floor properly. Be patient with children and adults; they will improve.

In our home, we had this mealtime rule: Everyone helps prepare dinner, and no one leaves the kitchen until everyone leaves. Even when our children were in elementary school, they understood our family rule. With each passing year, their level of involvement grew, the quality of their help improved and the faster we were all out of the kitchen.

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