2 Weeks: The Kitchen

Duhn, Duhn, Duhnnnnnnn!  (think cheesy horror film music)

The kitchen is supposed to be the heart of your home, your home's ultimate work space, and of course, the ultimate big mess area.  My kitchen is...(big swallow and fake smile inserted here) lovely.  It actually is really beautiful, aside from the mess, and the fact that it's still under construction, but honestly, I will love it much more when it's finished and when it's clean.  Yay for this project then.

The kitchen is also the most difficult area of your home to keep clean, simply because the whole thing you do in the kitchen is make a mess.  So, now seems like an appropriate time to talk about clean cycles, and the whole insanity of the phrase "keep it clean".

Everything in our home goes through what I call "cleanliness cycles".  Take the bathroom, for example.  You clean the bathroom and it's spotless, but then you go in and brush your teeth, and you get a splatter of toothpaste on the mirror.  Then your husband goes in and takes a shower, and then one of your kids goes in and brushes their hair.  So, toothpaste splatter, bathmat on the floor, and hair on the floor.  Although your bathroom isn't necessarily dirty, it's on it's way down to the bottom of the cleanliness cycle (picture a circle).  Once your bathroom is so dirty you have to clean it (or whenever you've scheduled that into your routine) then your bathroom is at the very bottom of the cycle, and as you clean it, the bathroom ascends back up to the top of the cycle to "clean".

It is this way with everything in our homes, and unless you clean your house top to bottom constantly, every place in your home will be at a different point in it's own cleanliness cycle at any given moment.  Some cycles move very fast, and some much slower.  The kitchen is an example of a fast moving cycle, but the office may move much more slowly.

Understanding these cycles can help us to schedule our days and weeks to keep each of the cycles moving.  The worst thing that can happen is for one or more of these cycles to stop moving and sit at the bottom, i.e. the dirty spot.  So, as I write and try to work through my own home of messiness and stagnant cycles, understanding the speed of my cycles can help me schedule a regular cleaning routine to maintain my home.

Okay, now to cleaning the kitchen.  Oh, boy is it a mess.  I think I will skip the supplies list, since you know you'll need things like dish soap and a bucket to clean your kitchen.  So, let's just jump in and get started.

First off, get your dirty dishes clean.  I have the luxury (thank you MIL, Cathy) of having a dishwasher in my kitchen.  Yay!  Usually, the dishes in my dishwasher are clean, and the dishes in my sink are dirty.  I hate unloading the dishwasher, and while living with my mom, she spoiled me and always unloaded the dishwasher before she left for work in the morning.  Now I have to remember to do it myself.

So I'm putting away all my clean dishes, in their proper and orderly places (one thing to keep you sane is having organized cabinets) and then loading the dishwasher with dirty dishes.  All my dirty stuff doesn't fit (shows how great of a housekeeper I am) so I have to hand wash some stuff.  I usually just hand wash the big stuff and put all the little stuff in the dishwasher.  It makes life easier.  Since my dishwasher is full, I will run it while I work on the rest of my kitchen.

Okay, clean stuff away, dirty stuff washing.  Cool!  One trick for making your home look cleaner is to eliminate clutter.  This rule still applies, even in the kitchen.  Do your best to clear as much up off the counters as possible.  I have tons of stuff on my counters right now.  I have tons of cabinet space that's not being used, so I will use my cabinet space to neatly store my "stuff".  If you don't have any cabinet space left and your counters are quite messy, you may want to go through your cabinets, see what you can eliminate from your home, eliminate from your kitchen and store elsewhere, or what things could be stored in a more efficient manner.

Another thing that can help is investing in some cabinet accessories, like a spice rack that screws to the wall or the inside of the cabinet door.  This will free up shelf space.  My mom has this really cool little lazy susan in her spice cupboard and it has 2 tiers.  she organizes it by like things, and it keeps her spice cabinet tidier.  Bed, Bath, and Beyond or other stores like it are a great place to get cabinet organizing "stuff".

Now that everything is put away all neat and tidy, you can work from top to bottom, wiping down the cabinet faces, the top of the range hood, the inside of the microwave (you know how nasty that can get) and then the counter tops.  One quick tip for the microwave.  There's often lovely stuck on food on the inside of the microwave, so before you put the dishes away, put a bowl of hot water and lemon slices and a couple teaspoons of baking soda in the microwave to "nuke" for a few minutes, then sit for a few minutes.  The lemon will freshen, the baking soda will deodorize and the water will steam all the stuck on stuff, so it's loosened up before you start scrubbing, saving you some elbow grease.

Clean your range by wiping up spills.  I even went so far as to take apart my stove top and clean the drip pans, and lift up the top to clean inside.  I also used Easy-off (I know, not very Eco-friendly, but it works well) to clean the inside of my oven.

Once all that is complete, go ahead and sweep and mop your floors.  Then you're done.  If you've got extra time, clean out your refrigerator.  Wash the spills off the shelves, and toss old yucky food.  Organize your shelves by like items so things are easier to find.  I had lots of milk drips in my fridge that were making the fridge smell a little off.  And I had some old yucky produce in the drawer.  Now my fridge is sparkling clean.  Yay!!

One last tip for the kitchen is that Mason Jars are a fantastic and very inexpensive organizational solution.  I use them for everything, from fresh berries and pineapple in the fridge, to granola and dried cranberries in the pantry, to laundry soap and baking soda in the laundry room.  I love mason jars.  If you're looking for high quality storage solution, pick up some mason jars and let them be your inexpensive, eco-friendly, BPA and Phalate free solution for your home.

My kitchen is so much cleaner.  How about yours?

Good Luck and Happy Cleaning!


Kristin