Kitchen Cleaning Tips and Tricks
Once you have decluttered your kitchen, it is time to do some kitchen cleaning , after which you can start organising.
When cleaning the kitchen, this can be done with:
Regular maintenance (daily cleaning)
A big clean
The latter is most important, considering we use the space frequently.
Daily Kitchen Cleaning
Here are some ideas to help you keep your kitchen clear and clutter-free daily without putting much effort into it (gotta love that):
Wipe as you go
Put items away while you wait
Kitchen Cleaning 101.
Wipe as you go
One of the key ideas kitchen cleaning and having and organised kitchen all the time is super simple: wipe as you go.
If you see some crumbs or a mark, wipe it while doing something else, like making breakfast, coffee, or getting a pan for food preparation.
It is a great little trick that really makes you feel good. Instead of seeing those crumbs again and again, you wipe them away there and then.
The next time you are in that area, you will have a smile on your face because there are no crumbs and nothing to annoy you. There will also not be a thought like, “I need to clean this whole kitchen up,” which saves incredible energy in the long term. It is amazing how often we have internal dialogues about how we need to clean something up, someday.
The whole process of wiping as you go takes less than 30 seconds. Results don’t have to be perfect. You can consider it a success if the space looks better than before you started.
Kitchen Cleaning without a dishwasher
If you don’t have a dishwasher, extend this practice and wash it up as you go. When my family and I travel and are in the unfortunate position of not having a dishwasher, we activate this practice. Everyone washes their dishes as we go through the day this means a tiny load of washing after dinner and no hour of work on the end of the day.
Kitchen Cleaning 102.
Put items away while you wait
Without realising it, we wait quite a bit in the kitchen. We wait for the kettle to boil, our coffee machine to heat up, the microwave to finish or the potatoes to cook. This is hidden time in the kitchen to do some quick kitchen cleaning in which you can wipe surfaces or put clean items away all whilst you are waiting anyway.
Quick kitchen cleaning examples are:
Empty the dishwasher until the kettle has boiled.
Put items away from the kitchen bench until the rice or potatoes have cooked.
You will be amazed at what you can do in a few minutes.
This kitchen cleaning tip means that you don’t have a stack of dirty dishes on the counter. Instead dirty items can now be placed in an empty dishwasher ready for a new load, it becomes a cycle of easy, fast and automatic kitchen cleaning.
Wait time in the kitchen
But why stop at the kitchen cleaning while you wait, once your kitchen is spick and span, you can also run around the house and put homeless items back in their spot. I love this trick as you don’t have to allocate time for this, but suddenly your house (almost) cleans itself.
The key is that you don’t spend too much time on this, you simply use wait time in the kitchen as an unofficial timing or productivity tool.
Kitchen Cleaning 103.
Making sure you do some Kitchen Cleaning regularly
Every week, I quickly wipe down dusty and obvious things, I wipe down the finger marks, on the top of the stove. A quick wipe over and inside the microwave - I don’t need to tell you the longer you wait the less fun this is to do.
All this won’t take me longer than 15 minutes. I put the timer on so as not to spend too long on this. Improvement is good, perfection is never-ending and exhausting don’t worry about having it perfect.
Depending on how dirty your floors become you can either do them daily (quickly only the obvious marks) or weekly.
My view regarding kitchen cleaning is that:
Big cleans can be good.
However, the real secret to organising the kitchen is simple, quick maintenance of your kitchen spaces daily.
Like learning about this?
You’ll enjoy the course on How to Organise your Home.
Doing a bigger (yearly) kitchen clean
If you are looking at a kitchen overhaul, you need a different approach, here I have broken it down in:
Task cleaning
Area cleaning
Kitchen Cleaning - Option 1 Task cleaning
This means you only do one thing at a time. To illustrate with an example, your task can be to clean benches first. You do this all around the kitchen. Then you move to the second task: wipe the outside of the cupboards. Again, go all around the kitchen. Finally, you vacuum the floor and mop it.
I suggest you start in one corner of the kitchen and work your way around clockwise.
Kitchen Cleaning - Option 2 Area cleaning
The other way to clean the kitchen is to stay in one area and do this from top to bottom, declutter, clean and organise. It will be very clear where you are up to e.g. the second cupboard.
Pros - It is easier to start and stop, so could work for small pockets of time over say a week or two.
Con’s - It is less effective, as you do three tasks in one area rather than one task throughout the whole kitchen. But if this makes more sense for you, go with the area approach.
I like the first option better when doing a big clean, one task at a time.
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