Best ways to keep your kitchen in tip-top shape

Amess in the kitchen can be demoralising. I can’t cook in a dirty kitchen, and having to clean it up before I can even get started drains my energy. So the kitchen needs to stay in a basic and general state of cleanliness and order. As the hardestworking room in the house, and the place where the messiest messes are often made, this is a feat that’s best accomplished with some principles that are kept firmly in place. Here are some of the best ways to keep your kitchen in perpetual tip-top shape.

1. Clean as you go.

The concept of cleaning as you go is fundamental to maintaining a clean kitchen. It means that you clean up as you’re cooking or using the kitchen. Examples of this idea in action include wiping up spills on the counter right away, putting ingredients back when you’re done with them, and washing dirty dishes while dinner is in the oven.

5. Make the refrigerator clean-out a regular task.

Yes, you’ll still have to deep clean your fridge every once in a while, but if you want to maintain a clean kitchen, you’ll need to regularly check for produce that’s going bad and leftovers that need to be tossed. Tying this inventory-taking to your grocery shopping trips will remind you to do it and will also help cut down on wasted food and unnecessary spending.

2. Do a nightly counter sweep.

Paper and other clutter tends to collect on kitchen counters. When it’s left out, it multiplies. Make sure this doesn’t happen by clearing off your counters and putting things where they belong every night as part of your “kitchen shut down” routine.

3. Wash these three tools immediately after using them.

Don’t let cheese graters, strainers, or chef’s knives sit before being cleaned. Cleaning them right away means you won’t have to deal with the arduous task of scrubbing dried-on food from these tricky items.

4. Organise the cabinet beneath your sink.

Having your cleaning tools and products accessible is key to maintaining a pristine kitchen. You probably store a majority of them in the cabinet under your sink. And that’s great — you just need to make sure it’s organized, so that you can easily grab what you need, when you need it. 6. Create kitchen worktop zones. If you designate counter areas for specific tasks, you prevent all the worktops from getting dirty when you’re working in the kitchen. For instance, if you bake only in the corner where your stand mixer lives, you know you only have to wipe down that counter (and the area around the sink) when you’re done whipping up your cookies.

7. Run the dishwasher before it’s too full.

Chances are, you need to run your dishwasher more often than you think you do. If you put it off too long, and you can’t fit anything else in it, it no longer becomes useful and then dirty dishes have to sit (or get hand-washed!). Try to get in the habit of running it every night after dinner.

8. And empty it right away.

If you run the dishwasher at night, you can unload in the morning while you wait for the tea to brew. This way, you start the day with an empty dishwasher that can be loaded as dishes get dirtied.

9. Be extremely selective about what stays out on your worktops.

Crowded spaces tend to harbor messes more easily than empty ones. Counters that are kept clear offer no place for clutter and dirty dishes to hide. This means everyone in the house might be more likely to put their stuff away.

10. “Shut down” the kitchen every night.

Essentially, this means you never go to bed with a dirty kitchen. Ever. It’s most straightforward to shut down your kitchen as you clean it up after dinner, but sometimes you may make the next day’s lunches after dinner or prepare an evening snack, so take that into account if you need to. Shutting down the kitchen means that all your daily kitchen must-do tasks are completed, including running the dishwasher and emptying the trash, for instance.