How do you keep cooking at home when you're tired?

The problem on a tired evening is rarely skill. It is the size of the decision. Standing in front of the fridge at eight o'clock, cooking looks like a project: choosing, chopping, washing up. Ordering in looks like a button. The way to keep cooking is to make the home option look like a button too.

Lower the bar on purpose

Decide, while you are fresh, what counts. If "cooking" in your head means three components and a sauce, most weeknights will fail the test. If it means "something warm I put together myself", almost every night can pass. Toast with good tomatoes and olive oil counts. A bowl of soup from a tin with a handful of grated cheese and black pepper counts. A frittata made of whatever is left counts.

This is not giving up on cooking well. It is keeping the habit alive between the evenings when you have the energy to cook well. The habit is what matters; the menu can wait for Saturday.

Keep a no-thought list

Write down four or five dinners you can make half asleep, and stick the list inside a cupboard door. The point is that on a tired night you don't have to remember them; you just read and pick. Ours would look something like:

• Pasta with garlic, oil and chilli. See our page on aglio e olio for the version that doesn't burn the garlic.
• Eggs, any way. Scrambled on toast, fried on leftover rice, baked in a pan of tomatoes. More ideas in eggs for dinner.
• Beans on bread. Tinned beans warmed with garlic and rosemary, spooned over toasted bread.
• The cupboard soup. A tin of tomatoes, a stock cube, a handful of small pasta, cheese on top.
• Cheese, bread and something raw. A wedge of cheese, a good loaf, a crunchy vegetable, olive oil and salt. Arguably not cooking; definitely dinner.

Stock for the bad days

The list only works if the ingredients are there. Keep a small reserve that you don't raid for ambitious cooking: pasta, a couple of tins of tomatoes and beans, eggs, a hard cheese that keeps, garlic, a lemon, frozen peas, bread in the freezer. When you use something from the reserve, put it on the shopping list straight away.

Frozen vegetables, jars of pesto, shop-bought gnocchi and tins are allies here, not shortcuts to feel bad about.

Make the first step tiny

When you get home, don't think about dinner. Just put a pan of water on, or switch the oven on. That one small action often carries you the rest of the way, because once the water is boiling, pasta seems obvious. If you still can't face it after that, no harm done.

Cut the washing up

Half the reluctance to cook on a tired night is the clean-up that follows. One-pan dinners, cooking pasta in less water, eating out of the pan you cooked in when it's just you: all legitimate. Wash the pan while the food is still warm, and the kitchen is done when dinner is.

Let some nights be a takeaway

A takeaway on a Friday is not a broken habit. The habit breaks when ordering in becomes the default because cooking feels impossible. Keep it as a choice you make for pleasure, not a rescue. If one evening goes to the pizzeria, enjoy it, and cook something small tomorrow.