Unless you insist on absolute freshness at all times, which is pointless IMO for most dishes, you're probably making small portions which is a ton of busy work

Unless you insist on absolute freshness at all times, which is pointless IMO for most dishes, you're probably making small portions which is a ton of busy work in terms of shopping, prep and cleanup as you noted. For many dishes, you can cook them up in larger batches and either eat leftovers for a while or vacuum seal[1] and freeze leftovers, which are often good for at least months. I personally prefer freezing most things as I get tired of them after more than a couple/few times in a week. If you go the vacuum seal route with half a dozen, or more, of your favorite main dishes then you can pretty much get away with cooking no more than 1-2 days a week to either make things that don't freeze well (depending on your tastes, you'll have to experiment to see what does and doesn't work) or restocking things as you run out of frozen portions. If you do this with enough different dishes[2], you can have an insane variety to your meals with minimal effort. The more complicated the dish, the bigger the payback for this approach. An added bonus: if you do this you're also prepared for pandemics/shortages... pretty much everything other than extended power outages. [1] This is critical for long term storage to avoid freezer burn. [2] Pretty much anything you've ever seen in a grocery store's freezer isle and a lot of things you haven't.