Random is not the best for the kitchen

Consider the direction of your cleaning process

{No voice over until next week, sorry! I’m visiting my daughter and her family!}

If cleaning your kitchen seems daunting all the time, older children are allergic to it, and it’s all taking forever, perhaps it’s because you need an overall flow, establishing a pathway for clean-dirty-clean that works in your situation.

Only you can figure it out!

Thinking about the big picture of the kitchen, what you don’t want is clean and dirty pots, pans, and dishes mingling with each other.

The sink is the center of the process of the clean-up. Dirty things need to approach the sink on one side and clean things need to be put on the other side. If you have a dishwasher, the counter above it needs to be a clean zone — nothing dirty can be put on that side. If you don’t have a dishwasher, you decide which way things flow.

If you have the choice, storage for dishes should be on that “clean” side so you aren’t crossing back over — but it’s not always possible, and the priority needs to be to keep the area above the dishwasher clean. Your dish rack for hand washed items will go there.

In my kitchen, the dishwasher is on the right of the sink. So all dirty things go on the left and all clean things on the right. (My friend who doesn’t have a dishwasher has her dirty things staged on the right and the clean things in a rack on the left.)

The most important step for implementing this plan is to inform everyone of its existence! It will take about a week of vigilant enforcement to establish it firmly in everyone’s mind. After that, kitchen cleanup will be much easier.

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My book on how to live with the Liturgical Year: The Little Oratory

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As with everything here at the SFH, the best thing is for you to take my ideas, coming from my experience of 45 years of marriage and raising seven children, and apply them to your situation with discernment, prudence, and confidence — and a sense of humor!