Work and Play

Assess your own style and discover the Art of Kitcheneering

Many of us think that work and play in the kitchen are mutually exclusive. If you are working, you cannot be playing and if you are playing you cannot work. We also have the idea that work happens out there in the real world, while play happens privately at home, or even in a dream world of wishful thinking.

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However, if you are a homemaker, full or part time, you will know the distinction is not so clear. Little junior comes into the kitchen and wants you to come and read him a story or look at the nunu (Zulu word for bug known by most little kids in our corner of the globe). You answer: "Not now, honey, I am busy." What do you mean? Are you working? Conversely, junior is deeply involved in constructing a phenomenal tower with his blocks and other items, or just watching a favorite TV program. You call: "Bath time!" or "Supper time!" and he either does not respond at all, or answers "I am busy". What does he mean? Is he working now, or would you call it playing this time?

If you are the person in the first scenario and you hate being in the kitchen, you would probably answer that you were working. It may be that you have just mustered all your energy for washing dishes, or you have humbly submitted to the grueling task of cooking, when Junior's interruption comes. In this case it would feel more like working. But, if you are the kind of person that loves being in the kitchen especially when you have time to cook something nice, or really work at a stubborn fruit stain and then Junior's interruption comes. Your hands are covered in pawpaw juice; it is running down to your elbows as you are cutting it up for a fabulous fruit salad. Or you are just about to give that stain the final rub and rinse before you can see if it is out or not. are you still working? This is much closer to Junor's tower construction scenario, but were you playing?

Even the act of eating makes the distinction between work and play become merky. Is it that you only relax when you are eating and then you wolf it down instead of focussing on the task as you would if you were working, savouring the moment trying out combinations for sandwich toppings or playing with the pasta shapes? And don't get me started on how we kerb our children's creativity and playfulness at suppertime because we want them to eat and get it over with instead of allowing them to investigate and explore the content of each meal... Yes of course there is a time and place for everything, but who do you think is going to suffer from indigestion after a fight about not playing with food? Where is the relaxing part of enjoying a meal now?

The Art of Kitcheneering

Here is what I think. When you have been granted, or have taken, the time to get really involved in what you are doing and you are being creative, yet you are challenging your own abilities, the line between working and playing disappears. It is serious and important like work, but it is also deeply satisfying, creative and even relaxing like play. Lucky is the person who can play at work and work at play! This site wants to maximize these kinds of activities for all who spend time in the kitchen to feed their families and eat together. The ability to organize activities and relationships in such a way that this can happen, is what I term the Art of Kitcheneering.

I think all of our activities, those in the kitchen especially, sits on two continuums. The horizontal one goes from not working at all on the left and working till the sweat pearls on the brow on the right. The second goes from having no play and no fun at the bottom, to only playing and fooling around at the top. Where are you most of the time in terms of feeding and eating activities?

People in the bottom left hand quadrant neither work nor play in the kitchen. Imagine for instance a student or bachelor who just goes there to fill his bowl with cereal in the morning, or boil water for his instant soup, or find a glass for his fizzy drink. He spends hardly any time there and even less time thinking about his activities there.
I find myself in the top right hand corner when I have so many little things to do with as many interruptions. I focus on nothing and do everything with a lack of seriousness and commitment. I am afraid to focus for the let down when I get interrupted and have to stop, so I potter and potter and potter. That includes grabbing something to snack on in between everything else and never sitting down to enjoy a munchy moment and indulge in a chosen goody. This is when things become untidy, messy and all over the place. Some people master this state of being and learn to truly multi task. For them, even these broken activities become very creative and absorbing and so they move to the top right hand quadrant and graduate to being a master Kitcheneer. My mom has mastered her art in this manner.
The person who hates cooking, but resigns to doing so nonetheless, will be in the bottom right hand quadrant. For him/her it is a chore to cook, not a game. It often takes hard planning and dogged determination to accomplish what is necessary and move on. I deeply admire my mother in law who has become really good at this. She would far rather garden or sew than spend anytime at all in the kitchen. In her ability to use her organizational strengths to minimize unpleasant kitchen time while maximizing pleasant times like family meals, she has moved up into the top right hand quadrant. She too has mastered the Art of Kitcheneering in her own way.
The goal for all of us is to work our way up to the top right hand quadrant like my two moms. We must learn to create more and more opportunities for ourselves to apply our strengths, become engrossed and creatively absorbed in our feeding and eating activities so we can enjoy them.

This site focuses on helping you plan and organize feeding and eating activities in such a way that the work becomes playful and the play so absorbing as to be deeply fulfilling, not just for you, but for everyone who has a relationship with you and your kitchen.

Together we will master the Art of Kitcheneering, whether we are cooking, feeding our house occupants, washing dishes, cleaning up, helping with homework, or sitting down with a cup of herbal tea and a magazine.

Petro Janse van Vuuren

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Petro Janse van Vuuren

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Work and Play

Assess your own style and discover the Art of Kitcheneering

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The Art of Kitcheneering

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