Peaceable Kitchen

“The heart of the home” is how many describe the kitchen, where family, friends, and children gather around a table to laugh, eat and enjoy a warm meal.  You can smell the mingling of flowery smoke from a lit candle and the wafting cinnamon scent from fresh-baked rolls.  Your eyes wander to the piles of lunch boxes, boots, coats, homework, keys, purses, books, dog snacks…you get the idea.  How do we manage the natural accumulation of items in our most-used area of our homes? 

First, you need to discern what level of clutter you can manage in your kitchen.  Perhaps, such as in the first photo, a vase of flowers or small container of your child's African dwarf frogs is fine but more is not tolerable.  Some may choose to leave out all useful items such as the toaster or coffee pot while others hide them in cabinets.  This is your own choice.  Decide what feels right and try to keep it at that level.  The second photo shows a typical kitchen after the family has tromped through it. 

Once you assess the amount of clutter you can tolerate, you can use the idea of “one small, clean spot” to start reducing clutter during clean up.  In our first home, which had an L-shaped counter with limited space, I used this idea of “one small, clean spot” to manage a clean-up from a meal.  The clean spot was the counter over the dishwasher, to the right of the sink.  Once the counter was wiped clean and awaited my clean pots on a dish rack, all the dirty items could be placed on the left side of the sink or in the sink.  As the dishwasher filled with dirty dishes and the clean pots piled, I could continue to move items to where they needed to be instead of walk in circles wondering where to place things.

In completing a cleaning up session, you can group all the items bound for the refrigerator in one cluster so that you can put them away at one time.  You can increase the scope of “one small, clean spot” by moving outward, wiping off dirty surfaces in the dining room, kitchen table, and other counters further away from the sink.  Thorough cleaning under all the small appliances once a week or so should make the rest of the days easier because the crumbs and crud do no accumulate as much.

Remember the “everything-needs-a-home” idea as well when you organize or clean your kitchen.  The ability to have counters empty enough for your sense of well-being requires somewhere to place everything.  You can store holiday-themed items, large lobster pots, huge platters, popcorn makers and other items in the pantry, if they fit there, or in another spot not too far from the kitchen to make room for the necessities of life.  Even better, you can donate items that you have not used, like that bread maker you received as a gift six years ago! 

Being honest with ourselves about how much we really need is helpful to make room for what we truly do need and use.  Regularly cleaning out the refrigerator and recycling old containers will free up space.  Throwing away out-dated staples will do the same for cabinets.  Sams Club and Costco are wonderful ideas but do we really need to store eighteen rolls of paper towels which leave no room for our cereal boxes?