When I was a child I hated cleaning the kitchen. I can remember sitting on my knees on the folding chair/stool we had. I think it was from the 50s and it got the same home in every kitchen we moved to; folded up behind the trash can.
My mom never used a dish washer to wash dishes, it was always extra storage and even then it hardly had anything in it. She learned the hard way that it still needed to run about once a month or so or it would dry up and stink.
Even after I got married I still didn’t much care for cleaning the kitchen. As the children got old enough to help I realized I didn’t have a method for cleaning the kitchen, not one that I liked. Mom had taught me how, I spent time in so many commercial kitchens I understood the idea and I had even been in 3 years of home ec in middle school. I knew how, just didn’t like it.
When we moved to Deer Trail, Jack of All Trades and I really learned to cook and I finally found a way to clean the kitchen that I liked. Because we were eating almost only what was cooked at home, we learned ways to cook to make things easier to clean up. I can now have a counter full of dishes, in less than 5 minutes have it organized and then another 20 all washed and drying. I haven’t used a dish washer in nearly 5 years and I don’t miss it. Actually I wonder how we ever filled it enough to justify running everyday.
Like I said, I organize my dishes. I’m not going to share how, that’s for each of you to decide. While I’m all about conserving water in pretty much every other situation, I’m one of those who run the water while doing the dishes. Not always full on but enough to do what I need. I don’t fill a sink. If something needs to soak, add soap to it and let it be what the water runs into while washing a few dishes before it.
Another thing that made me happy to clean the kitchen is having different things to clean different things. None of this cross contamination stuff. It took a little education of those that I live with to get the memo but mostly if I’m in doubt about how the rag was used, I just get another.
In the photo above, the rag isn’t pictured but my other scrubbers are. Starting in the bottom right corner, the silver scrubber is for drinking glasses only. Our drinking glasses are glass and I drink tea so there are stains if they aren’t scrubbed with this guy. The bronze scrubber is for glass baking dishes and tough charring on stainless steel pots and pans. The green is a Scotch-Brite pad that is used on the stainless steel after the purple scrapper. The rubbery green fingered guy can be used on anything as needed.
The first 3 scrubbers are replaced on the first Monday each month, the purple scrapper is washed off when used and as needed and the green rubber scrubber goes in the wash with the kitchen linens on that Monday.
These guys are all I need to get all the dishes clean. Like I mentioned earlier I don’t soak in a sink, I also don’t make everyone rinse everything, saving water there. The routine I’ve got I enjoy seeing the progress of the kitchen get clean and the dishes drying on the counter.
The last thing I do after the dishes is wash the counters and the kitchen table. For those of you with larger families or larger dining tables that get used often, when you wash the table each day, wash one of the chairs too. Make it a different chair every day and those chairs will stay clean without you doing too much extra work.
Once a week I wash the counters on one side of the kitchen and the following week I wash the counters on the other side of the kitchen, with baking soda and vinegar. This has been a game changer for me.
We have an area of the kitchen counter that is larger and not used a lot and it gets sticky dirty. Not like sugar but more like grease; it is not by the stove. Adding this sort of washing to the routine has helped to make cleaning that up easier. It’s just enough that a wet rag with soap just won’t work. Every week I do the same thing to the glass top stove.
I sprinkle on some baking soda, then spray the vinegar and wait. Try not to inhale all of this too much it will make you light headed and please don’t add salt to mix as that can make it all into a chemistry experiment. Let it sit for about 15 minutes. I use a dry rag first to get all the baking soda off and then a wet rag to complete the job. The stove gets scrapped with a straight edge before the dry rag and finished off with glass cleaner and a coffee filter.
To get all of that white off I have to ask Jack of All Trades to really scrub it. I’m not sure what it is but you can’t feel it and if the stove is wet you don’t see it either.
Last tip, for the stainless steel pots and pans, cover the bottom with water and put on a burner on high until the water is boiling. Shut off the burner, bring the pan or pot to the sink, use the purple scrapper to scrap as much out as you can. Follow with the Scotch-Brite and should be good to go. There isn’t much, except burnt pudding, that doesn’t come off that way.
Happy making!