Keep an Easy-Clean Kitchen, No Rubber Gloves Necessary

Do you want to know how to keep an easy-clean kitchen
with no rubber gloves necessary?
Here’s some ideas we’ve adopted over time
that really work. (If we don’t slack off!)

 

Okay.

No one loves to clean, do they?

Well, maybe I know one or two people who seem to wear rubber gloves 24/7 and a dusting cloth as neckwear.

But most of us have a book full of ideas of important things to do before cleaning.

So let me tell you a secret.

Don’t have a weekly/monthly/yearly “cleaning day.”

 

Don’t schedule a kitchen cleaning day on your calendar.

Does this one surprise you?

It’s actually the key to keeping a kitchen that cleans itself. Or seems to, anyway.

There’s no roomba for kitchen counters or cabinets. Unfortunately.

So are we recommending spacing out and pretending your kitchen is clean when actually the Cap’n Crunch is stuck to the floor like liquid nails?

Never. No. Aggh. Gross.

 

Okay, so we are not Fly Ladies. Not even close.

My DBH (dear better half) ambles through the kitchen sometimes and offhandedly comments, “There’s always dirty dishes by the sink.”

Well, I’m here to tell you, that is not true.

Sometimes the dirty dishes are stacked inside the sink. And the counter looks clean.

 

 

Here’s the plan, then.

Since a kitchen doesn’t stay clean for more than fifteen consecutive minutes in any housekeeper’s lifetime,

forget the “once-a-week” deep-cleaning schedule.

 

How to keep an easy-clean kitchen –

Step One:

Don’t have, buy or acquire in any way, items that only do one job. Or none, because one day you had a brain blip with your credit card.

Admit it. We all have a gadget we bought on a whim that languishes in the cabinet over the refrigerator, never looked at, never used. And causing pain when we see it, reminded of our moment of insanity.

Get rid of it. And all its relatives hogging space in your kitchen.

Sell them, toss them, give them away. Don’t look back. Only when they’re gone can you keep an easy-clean kitchen.

 

Step Two:

Now that you’ve emptied a few cabinets,

take everything off your counter-tops and stash it in your newly acquired cupboard real estate.

Don’t keep anything on your counters except seasonal decor (limited to one area per 10 linear feet. Or something like that. It’s not science.) and, very important to complete this new kitchen look, your coffee bar.

Uncluttered kitchen counters equal easy clean counters. It’s the endless moving of small appliances and knick-knacks that makes you put off cleaning until there’s toast crumbs texturing the backsplash like a faux finish.

 

Step Three:

Make a cup of coffee or hot beverage of choice at your organized coffee bar, sit down at your uncluttered bar, relax.

And admire your work.

From now on, the hard work is over.

Keeping the counters clear will be a three times a day, or whenever food is prepared or eaten, quick clean up.

With no deep cleaning needed ever again.

 

 

Your keep an easy-clean kitchen plan

is for surface beauty.

This way of cleaning your kitchen keeps all surfaces beautiful and presentation-ready for Aunt Martha’s sneaky check up on your housekeeping skills.

You will still need to clean cabinets inside, scrub the refrigerator and turn the oven cleaner on.

But even those jobs will be easier if cleaning is regularly done on the fly. (See, maybe we are fly ladies, just in a different way.)

If you see a spill on the fridge shelf, wipe it up while doing the dishes.

The flour splash beside the canister (in the baking drawer) gets a swipe when you clean up after baking.

 

This sounds like kitchen paradise,
mostly unattainable to ordinary life.

But please believe.

It happened to me.

My esteemed SIL told me I changed since I first got married. That my house used to look like the aftermath of a Kansas tornado. Or something like that. She can be eloquent.

So if a backwoods farm girl can learn,

you can do it 10 times over.