Keeping Your Kitchen Clean [When You Cook All the Time]

Today, I'm sharing the first in a short series of posts all about Spring Cleaning, specifically relating to the kitchen! While I don't claim to be an organizing or cleaning expert, I do know a few tricks that help me feel better about the way my kitchen looks and serves my family. Positive headspace when cooking is one of the most important catalysts for wanting to continue to do it. The kitchen is also the center of most of our homes, so having that space look fresh just helps everything else feel cleaner.

Guys, I'm coming at you from a very real place when I tell you that dishes almost ended our marriage.

No, I'm not joking.

OK, I may be exaggerating...a little.

Ryan grew up in a family with a matriarch that did all the dishes and cleaned up after her boys. I, however, grew up in a family where the person who cooks the meal is not responsible for doing the dishes. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this...

Ryan's point was that I actually like to cook, and when I do cook, I make a huge mess. So why should something I love to do anyway produce a chore for him? Now, please don't think of my sweet, loving husband as some kind of Neanderthal anti-feminist. This was early-on in our relationship, and he did have a point. I do tend to make a huge mess when I cook. In those days, we didn't have a dishwasher, either. That was probably more the source of grief than anything else -- having to hand-wash all that crap.

Eventually, we came to an unspoken agreement where he would "help me cook" by actually cleaning around me, as I went. That was nice, until we had kids. Now, one of us has to maintain the Crazies while the other is in the kitchen, and I'm sure you can guess who typically does what.

Even as a right-brained person, I thrive in a clean space. I think everyone does. There's just more visual openness, and it makes you think more clearly and breathe a little better. The kitchen is no different--if there's clutter or dishes consuming the counter space and sink, it's so much harder for me to find my groove and truly love my work. Don't get me wrong, I like to cook and will, even in a messy kitchen. But it's just so much more relaxing and enjoyable when it's clean.

So, I set out on a mission and polled my Facebook friends to see what their advice was about maintaining the dishes. I got a lot of really great advice! Here are some of my favorites:

“Everyone gets one plate and one cup for the day. Rise after each meal and put in a dish rack next to the sink. Also, I usually try to instantly wash and dry cookware and baking sheets.” –Kara

“The biggest thing is we just committed to cleaning up whatever we didn't get to during the day right after the kids are in bed.” –Matt

“I do 99% of my cooking in the same cast iron pan- baking, roasting, sautéing, and since I use it so much, it stays seasoned which makes it super easy to wipe clean.” –Laurie

“After visiting my mom recently, I learned a few things from her: always have a dish rack or mat in the sink or next to it, then as dishes are used, train everyone in the house, even the kids as young as 3, to rinse them and put them in the rack.” –Natalie

I put most of these into practice for about a month leading up to this post, and what resulted was what's working for us, currently.

1. I purchased an attractive dish drying rack with good reviews on Amazon. So far, we love it! I also got a drying mat for when we have lots of big stuff (pots and pans, mixing bowls and cutting boards). The dish rack stays out all the time, and gets put away when we have people over. The mat stays folded up under the sink until we need it, and gets put right back when we're done with it.

2. We follow Kara's plan of each getting one set of dishes and utensils for the day that each one of us is responsible for, ourselves (with the exception of the 18-month-old).

3. I am training Julep (3 years) to be responsible for her own cup, plate/bowl and spoon. We aren't fully there yet, but I see progress being made. She's learning to pull a chair up to the sink and rinse her little bowl out with the water on warm (I taught her how not to get the water too hot, since we have our hot water heater turned up pretty high -- I think this is a really important point if you have small kids and a single handle faucet). She doesn't always do THE BEST job of getting all the crud off of her dishes, but they are her own dishes and she's a lot less of a germaphobe than I am. Also, if I ever have to, I don't mind going in after her and rinsing a little more thoroughly. My thought process is that she tried, she took some responsibility, and that makes me so much more willing and happy to help her out.

4. This is the biggest one, and It has to be a rule. It has to be doctrine. It has to be a habit that you just DO. If the dishwasher is full, you wash or rinse your dish/pot/utensil/whatever you just finished using by hand and put it in the drying rack. If the dishwasher is empty, it goes directly in there. Nothing is allowed to sit in the sink. Every dirty dish either gets washed by hand or put immediately into the dishwasher.

5. Follow-up on number 3 (we're still trying to make a habit of this one): Load the dishwasher at night, empty it in the morning. That way, you'll have an empty dishwasher at the start of the day that you can load as you go throughout the day of cooking. This, done in addition to the "everybody gets one plate/bowl/set of utensils for the day" trick that Kara mentioned, is incredibly effective way to keep visible dirty dishes to an absolute minimum.

6. Finally, something we've found to work really well when we ever start to get off track: Run the dishwasher, even if it isn't full. If you've managed to empty the sink and there's still room in that thing, it doesn't matter -- run it, anyway. No, this is not the most water-conservative advice. But it is sanity-conservative and, in this house, that will always win out.

Here are the products I mentioned in this post! We seriously love this drying rack. The stool is one I'm probably going to order for Julep in the next week or so. We'll add little rubber feet to the bottom so she doesn't have to worry about the dining chair sliding away from the sink.

I truly hope this was helpful to you in some way! We aren't perfect at keeping up with it, but this really is the best we've ever done with staying on top of the dishes, so give this method a try! I would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, and any extra advice you may have on this topic. Please chime in with a comment to our tribe on Facebook!