Our Kitchen

 

By far the busiest room in the house, and my favorite, is our kitchen.  We have a very small galley style kitchen with counters on each side and pathway that goes straight through.  You can access from either the front entry way or the dining room.  Not too long ago I did an upgrade which was to reconfigure a couple of cabinets which allowed me to get our microwave up off the counter and gave us back a previously unused cabinet where our range hood was "vented".  If you are interested in how that went you can click here.  After that little project was completed the girls and I painted all of the cabinets and then the walls.  Over the years I've done a lot to this little kitchen in order to maximize storage and efficiency.

 

As you can imagine it doesn't take long to clutter or mess up the kitchen and if you have all three of us working in there it could easily get chaotic, but we employ a very simple process of clean as you go in order to stay on top of things.  Dishes are done daily and I also do a complete wipe down of all the counters, stove top and microwave to keep them nice and tidy as well.  At the end of the day I walk through and make sure everything is put away and the dish cloth and towel are deposited in the laundry basket.  I get out a fresh set in the morning.

 

On a weekly basis I choose something to give a deeper clean whether it is the cabinets, appliances, kitchen sink window , walls or floors and I don't spend more than fifteen minutes on this task.  That's it.  By staying consistent and rotating these tasks using my checklist I'm able to make sure everything gets a good cleaning on a regular basis.  I no longer have marathon cleaning days to get things clean nor do I ever have colossal messes to contend with.  It is always clean.  My daily cleaning is only a few minutes as well.  I love that.

 

It feels so good to wake up each day and walk into a clean and orderly kitchen.  I know that whenever I am ready to prepare a meal my kitchen is always ready for me to do that.  The pots and pans are clean and waiting for me, our dishes are clean and ready to serve our meals.  And the bonus is that no matter who stops by for a quick visit I don't have to worry about the state of my kitchen.  Best of all, I don't have to spend a lot of time to have this.  I think my kitchen is wonderful.