Tips for keeping your kitchen clean when you cook
A kitchen is both one of the dirtiest areas of the house and one of the two areas, along with the bathroom, which we must keep clean for our health’s sake. Here are some of the tips to help keep the kitchen clean during the preparation of food.
A kitchen is for food preparation. Try to keep the kids and everyone other than cook out of the kitchen, especially at cooking time, but at other times also. If possible, arrange traffic patterns around the kitchen not through it. The kitchen floor is hard to keep clean when the only thing you do in the room is cook. Letting the kids use it to change from boots to shoes adds mud to the equation.
A kitchen table is for eating. It is not a good place for homework and bill paying. For one thing, homework and bills will always get left (and lost) in the kitchen area. Or soiled. Or both. Keep the kitchen empty except for cooking.
Now for the arrangement of the kitchen. Keep track of the utensil you use most and where you use them. Stove utensil you use all the time should be near the stove or hung near them, perhaps on peg board or from a utensil rack from the ceiling. Utensils used rarely can be stored in drawers.
In general, keep things you use everyday right at hand. Need to pack lunch for the spouse or the kids? Keep baggies, twisties, marker and paper lunch bags in the handiest drawer or cabinet. Put the holiday jello mold someplace else – perhaps in a closet with all the other holiday stuff.
Kitchen knives go into a knife holder to keep them sharp, not in a drawer. The holder may stay on the counter, near the area where you cut vegetables and meat, but keep the counter as clear as possible. The counter is for preparation, not for storage. Staples such as flour, sugar, and pasta, should be kept in cupboards in plastic bins made for them. Buy bins to hang under the cabinets if you are short on cabinet space. If you can keep the counter clear of clutter it is a better work space and easier to clean. Nothing gets stored on the top of the refrigerator. It won’t get stored there – it will get lost there.
Related posts:
