How to Have a Cleaner Kitchen

In this busy world, it can certainly be difficult to spend as much time cleaning our homes as we would like, especially if those homes are full of kids and spouses with a talent for messing up. A messy house is a drain on the brain, and can make you and your whole family more tense. It’s like there is a giant cloud over the room. A mess means that you can’t find what you need and can’t walk comfortably through a room. It can also remind you that there is a lot of work to be done. This does not make for a restful environment, which is what your home should be. And for some reason, the biggest, most daunting messes always seem to be in the kitchen.

Therefore, if you make sure to keep your kitchen clean, you will find that your house simply seems to be a more comfortable place. But how in the world can you keep a clean kitchen with so many hungry people living in the house and so little time to deal with it? The answer to that question is the same as the answer to this one: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time.

Even though it may seem like it did, your kitchen didn’t become messy all at once. It happened one dish at a time. Someone ate a bowl of cereal and left their bowl and spoon on the counter. Someone drank a glass of juice and left the glass in the sink. An hour later, they came back and got more juice, in a different glass, and did the same thing – left the glass in the sink. After a few hours of this, you can see how the dishes would pile up. Can you imagine how much better your kitchen would use if Cereal Boy had washed his bowl and spoon, and if juice girl had cleaned her glass and then used the same one for her second helping?

If you can see what a difference that would have made, then you have figured out the first step, and that is making a new rule: Whoever uses a dish washes it immediately after.

It’s a wonderful rule. If it is followed it will not only mean that you avoid having large piles of dirty dishes; it will mean that your kitchen is almost always reasonably clean, instead of clean only right after some long-suffering person washes dozens of dishes. The trick will actually be to implement it. In the event that people don’t actually wash what they use, you may need to take matters into your own hands. If that is the case, simply wash a few dishes every time you think about it while you are home, maybe five at a time. If you discover that there are actually only ten dirty dishes, then you can have the kitchen clean in no time.

Another good rule is washing the dishes from a meal right after everyone is finished eating. Don’t leave the dishes for the next day, but take care of them immediately. This will ensure that you don’t have food stuck on your dishes, and you don’t have to waste time soaking them in hot water before you can even wash them.

Many of the most difficult dishes to wash after a meal are the dishes used to cook the meal. With just a little skill at multitasking, you can actually have most of those (if not all of them) washed before you are even finished cooking. How? It’s simple. Just wash every piece, even if it’s only a spatula, as soon as you are finished with it. Nothing needs stirring continuously, and so you will have a few seconds downtime here and there while you cook. Use that time to clean up, and you will be surprised how much time you save and how much stress you save yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to avoid having a pile of pots and pans to wash at the end of every meal?

What this amount to is giving up procrastination. Use your spare here-and-there minutes when you are in the kitchen to do a few minutes of cleaning. Look at it like this: If you do this three times for ten minutes each, you have just done 30 minutes worth of cleaning. And you didn’t even feel it happening. If you can get your whole family in on the plan, you will never have a messy kitchen again.