How to Make Your Kitchen Feel Like It Cleans Itself!

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Oh, girl.  If I could just cross my arms and blink my eyes and have my kitchen clean, I’d probably do just about anything.

• Dye my hair blue? Check.
• Wear a chicken costume to church? Check.
• Run a marathon thrity-three days in a row?  Ummm….. maybe not that, but I’d cheer you on!

But let’s face it.  The kitchen has gots ta be cleaned and honestly, if the kitchen is clean, then the whole house feels better.  Amiright?

(You know I am.)

So, there are a few tricks I keep up my sleeve to make my kitchen feel like it cleans itself.

Do the dishes before you go to bed.

Honestly, when the sun goes down, so do my eyeball covers.  I’m slappped out tired at night, so generally Morgan will do the dishes for me after dinner.  But I can’t stand waking up to a sink filled with dirty dishes, so if one thing gets done before I go to bed, I want it to be the dishes.  If the sink is clean, yo, everything is bliss.

If you have a stainless sink, here’s how to clean it. 

And here’s how to make that puppy shine.

Swipe the counters everyday.

After you’ve done the dishes, give the counters a quick swipe.  This isn’t a full-on detail cleaning.  It’s just a short burst of swiping.  If you do this every night, you’ll be less likely to keep junk lying around.

If you have granite counters, make your own cleaner for practically nothing with my recipe.

Deal with the paper clutter immediately.

Once the paper thinks it has a window, it will take over.  Rebellion of the junk mail and homework sheets. There’s nothing like it!

So, if you deal with it immediately, you’ll be the boss. Or you can do what I do.

Keep 2 baskets for your paper clutter. One marked Shred and one marked Recycle.

I just throw it in one of the two baskets right away and then deal with it on Fridays. Yes, the baskets take up a little space on my counter, but it looks neat and organized. Otherwise, certain people go get the mail, open it and then just leave it on the counter to start collecting fellow recruits and organize said rebellion. Not cool.

Clean the fridge out the day before you go shopping.

Plan a day to shop and then the day before do a quick fridge raid.  Clean out all the expired junk and leftovers and then give the surfaces a quick wipe down.  You can probably do this in all of about five minutes.  Be the Speed Racer of Fridge cleaners.

Mop carelessly.

I’m serious.  There’s no reason why a quick swishin’ around one or two days a week can’t make your kitchen floors shine.  Keep a swiffer vac on hand if you need to pick up crumbs, and then do a super quick mop up.  Three minutes.  Drop the June Cleaver attitude of having to get into every nook and cranny, girl.  Just swirl that mop around and get up the most noticeable spots.

You can even do this everyday for a minute and after a few days, it’s like you did that detail cleaning, but it looks clean every day and not just once a week (ahem… or month) that you psyche yourself up to do it.

Here’s the real rule of thumb.

If you do these things everyday for just a few minutes, things will never get grossly dirty.  It’ll make your kitchen feel like it cleans itself. It’s so much easier to just clean a little bit everyday that it is to have to do a major session of deep cleaning. The more you clean, the less work it really is. Words to plaster on your face and live by, methinks.

So tell me, are you a light-weight-everyday-cleaner or are you a put-it-off-till-I-aboslutely-have-to cleaner?

xoxo

Gwen