From Chaos to Clean: Mastering Kitchen Cleaning Tips

For the longest time I struggled with keeping a clean kitchen. It was either clean, which meant I wasn’t cooking or using the kitchen, or it was messy, but that meant I was cooking many homemade meals. There was no in between.

What Changed?

I honestly don’t know. This last Christmas, I had the time to detail my kitchen, and work on a routine on cleaning it, which ensures an empty sink most nights and clean counters most days as well, but extra prep work on weekends. I can handle that!

I once hated doing dishes by hand. With a passion. But now that I have help from a countertop dishwasher, which, can’t fit much, but it still helps if you have a good routine down.

1. Clean from Top to Bottom

This ensures that any dust or dirt, ultimately, will be swept and mopped up when you clean the floors at the very end. This is a trick I learned back when I worked for an office cleaning company.

2. Coffee Maker Deep Clean

Run your coffee maker with just water and vinegar. A 1:1 ratio works jut fine for this. Your gonna wanna follow this with a just water run, about twice to ensure there is no leftover vinegar taste or smell. This will get the hard to reach places cleaned up so your coffee maker stays nice and clean. After all, who on earth can clean without coffee? Now there’s a world I don’t wanna be in!

3. Clean as you go

Embrace the ‘Clean as you go’ mentality. It saves you a LOT of dishes at the end of the day. And if your waiting on something but its not going to take long enough to leave the room, just wash a few of the dishes your done with! I wasn’t all for this at first, but the older I’ve gotten, the more I understand it, but most of all the more I embrace it!

4. Maintain a Routine

This is the most important and most difficult one to accomplish. If you can do it though, it will save a LOT of work in the long run. For example, once a week, I get on my hands and knees and get the hard to get gunk off the floor. Sure, I sweep every night, and I mop every other night, but sometimes at the end of the week you’ve accumulated some gunk on the floor, and once a week I get on my hands and knees and get that gunk off. Or maybe for you its that you totally empty out your fridge and wipe it all down once a month. You do it the way that works best for you.

5. Keep Supplies Stocked

There’s a few things that your always going to want stocked in your house to maintain a good cleaning routine. These are the things that you use for cleaning regularly, or are good supplies to use regularly.

Some things I always keep stocked include:

• Vinegar
• Baking Soda
• Dish Soap (Dawn platinum for the win)
• Sponges
• Hydrogen Peroxide (although I find myself slacking on keeping stock of this one)

6. Baking Soda Paste

This one, is one I’m listing, cause I honestly forget to do it. I’ve heard it works well on your ovens, and I’m hoping they’re right cause my oven is gross. The one downside to using this to clean your oven is you need to plan ahead and make sure you don’t need your oven for anywhere from a few hours to overnight. The recipe:

• 1 Cup Baking Soda
• 1 TBSP Water
• 1 TBSP dishwashing soap

And its like a marinade according to the blogger I watched. The longer you sit, the better it will look. I’ve also used a baking soda paste on other things that have been hard to clean, like my countertops for example. But I’m really hoping this works for my oven. It doesn’t have a self cleaning mode (and honestly I wouldn’t use it anyway. Where I live the one time my mom used it, her utility bill skyrocketed). Weather or not this paste worked for my oven, will more than likely become its on post in the future.

7. Trashcans need love too

Yeah, I get it, its where the trash goes. But there’s no reason why it has to be disgusting. Once a month (unless its really bad) I will detail the outside of my trashcan. Cause lets say your kitchen is fairly clean, and then you have the trashcan that looks just filthy gross. Typically I’ll detail this around the same time I also detail clean my fridge and other appliances.

Do you have any tips that helps your kitchen stay clean? I’d love to hear them!