Cleaning your Kitchen: 3 Steps
Do you wish your kitchen was clean more often?
While I still have not found a way to keep the kitchen clean without cleaning it, these steps help the task not to seem daunting or endless! If you want a clean kitchen, decide that it is a priority to clean it quickly and immediately. It still takes work, but these steps make it as easy as I can imagine. The following three steps tend to be good landmarks such that, if you think in terms of these procedures, it really works.
I have seen this concept function with numerous friends with busy households, and I learned it from my mother originally. Some friends have said that I am one of the cleanest cooks they know, which is a lovely compliment—but you can be one too, if you would like to be.
1. Thoroughly scrub every surface in the kitchen with hot, wet, soapy washcloths, a scrub/cleanser, and other non-toxic cleaners. Start with a clean slate, literally. Wash everything: behind countertop appliances; the backsplash; the fridge; the oven; the stove-top; the sink; the soap dish; the floor. (Hint: It is so much easier to keep it clean it after every meal if it was sparkling clean only one meal ago.) My unproven theory is that dirtiness tends to migrate, so to speak; if the soap dish is dirty, the sink will soon become dirty, too. If the counters stay dirty, the floor will soon be dirty.
In addition, wash all kitchen linens. While you are cleaning with soapy water and lovely-smelling products, put a load of laundry in the wash, also. Wash all kitchen linens that aren’t in your towel drawer. Wash the washcloth that is at your sink, any towels in sight, the dish-draining mat, all of your fabric hot pads/potholders, the table runner, and anything else that is made of a textile. Then, ask yourself, are the clean towels and washcloths in your drawer looking stained or faded? Buy some new ones that you love, wash them, and start rotating them every one or two days in your kitchen, utilizing the clean look and feel of thick, new towels and cloths.
2. Clean up as you cook. Congratulations! Your kitchen is now clean. Now you get to keep it orderly and de-cluttered by cleaning as you go. After preparing one dish, put all the ingredients away and wipe off the counter before starting on the next part of the meal. A clean counter makes clean bottles and containers going back into the fridge or pantry. Give dirty dishes a quick rinse-off as you stack them all in one place by the sink after cooking, so that the food does not get crusted on and so that all the dishes start to be collected into one area. (This goes a long way toward the kitchen seeming and smelling clean when your family or guests are around, and it leads toward faster cleanup later.) Use the dishes you need to during preparation of a meal, but also be mindful of how you can be efficient and not dirty extra utensils or appliances during the process.
Then, once the meal is on its way to completion on the stove-top or in the oven, and if the table is set and side dishes have been made, hand-wash any dishes that will not be going in the dishwasher later (such as large or fragile items). Wash these quickly while the meal finishes cooking. Usually, in preparing the last meal of the day, I have at least five minutes of “down time” that is perfect for hand-washing dishes and getting the sink area cleared for the dinnerware that will inevitably be appearing after the meal. “Cleaning as you go” takes a fraction of the time that it would after food is crusted on, after you have relaxed at dinner, after you’ve been distracted by the next activity in the house, or after dishes start to pile into an overwhelming mountain.
3. Finish the cleanup before you leave the kitchen. Or, at least, do it in stages. And have a process that you do the same way every time. Habits eliminate the daunting nature of the task, if it gets to that point. Just jump in and do the next thing in your process. Washing dishes is one of my favorite things to do, unless I am exhausted. In that case, I am very thankful to have a process in place that saves thinking. (Theoretically, most of the kitchen counters and cooking dishes are on their way to being clean, due to the step above.) This is my process after a meal is finished:
Clear off the table. Shake crumbs off of place mats and wipe the table. Put leftovers away in lidded containers in the fridge. Consolidate dirty dishes next to the sink. Load the dishwasher (if using). Hand-wash all other dishes. Rinse out the sink. Scrub sink with a separate sponge if any thing is stuck to it or if raw meat was used in the preparation of the meal. Run the garbage disposal. Wipe the counters, wiping under the edges of anything nearby like soap dishes or paper towel holders. Wipe the stove. Sweep the floor if needed.
If you have move on to something else before this all is finished, after a meal, it helps to do at least the first four items (the table and wiping it; the leftovers and stacking the dishes) before leaving the kitchen. Coming back into the kitchen later and having all the dishes next to the sink is better than having them strewn over the counters and the dining table. Hopefully you’ve washed or at least rinsed all the cooking dishes while you were cooking, so that those are not getting crusty and sticky.
With these steps, you should have a fed family and a clean kitchen and hopefully you will be happy too!
Bonus ideas:
Make your kitchen beautiful and appealing to you in its arrangement, colors, and organization, and you will be more likely to enjoy spending time there and keeping it clean. Honestly, I have an incentive to wash my painted ceramic dishes that I love looking at, since they look so pretty in the dish drainer! If cleaning is daunting, ask yourself “why?” Is the dish drainer too small? Is there not enough room on the counter next to the sink or stove? Figure out how to make your kitchen serve you, in order to make any less-desirable tasks more pleasing.
If you tend to create more dirty dishes than you want to spend time cleaning, try to plan one-dish meals. Use good-quality pots and pans that double as serving dishes and can be transferred from stove/oven to table for serving. Fresh toppings and creative garnishes go a long way toward dressing up one-dish meals and making them look elegant and appetizing!
With children that I have nannied, I encourage them to eat carefully and cleanly during their meal. I enlist their help with clearing the table, then give them a specific task to do (like sweeping or practicing the piano) while I start to put food and dishes away. I explain that I am going to do some cleanup in the kitchen before doing such-and-such activity that I promise. If I know they are waiting for me to read them a story, I have a great incentive to finish quickly in the kitchen, and the time goes smoothly for everyone involved.