Simplify Cleanup By Cleaning While You Cook
Posted on December 1, 2010 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Simplification
Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.
Did you ever finish making a meal, then look around the kitchen in despair because it would take so long to clean up? Or find that the food has hardened past the point of all return, and cleanup becomes an exercise with a chisel?
This is often the case with big holiday meals (like Thanksgiving). The single best thing you can do to eliminate this mess and minimize your cleanup, both time and effort is to clean while you cook.
The Sink of Hot Soapy Water
If you are lucky enough to have a dishwasher, it is very easy to dip dirty items in a sink of soapy water, swish it around, and put it right into the dishwasher. This load-as-you-go approach really does cut down on time later.
But this also works if you don’t have a dishwasher. The swishing through hot water will get rid of most of the food that might otherwise cement itself on and require major effort to get off later. So I swish the dishes and stack them up for the actual wash-up later.
The Scrap Bowl
As I am preparing meals, I generally have by-products of egg shells, vegetable peels and that sort of thing. As I am working, I have two containers within reach: my compost bucket and a bowl for garbage. Anything vegetable in nature goes into the compost bucket for later dumping on the compost pile. The garbage bowl collects everything else.
This saves time because I don’t have to stop and go to the garbage can every time I want to dispose of something. I also try to peel veggies right into the compost bucket to save the intermediate step of transferring the peels from something else.
The Drip Plate
Whenever I am making something that requires measuring, I set out a luncheon-sized plate where I am working. I place dirty measuring cups and spoons, spatulas and other implements on the plate when I am done using them.
This saves me a lot of counter clean-up time. All of the drips and spills end up on the plate, rather than on the counter.
Cleaning while I cook is the best way I know to speed up cleanup later. Do you have any suggestions? Share below.
Photo by ellie
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Comments (5)
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I have to wash up as I go but hubby does the washing up & does it each morning & refuses to do it after the evening meal. I’m happy with the arrangements apart from the occasions when he has cleared the table & there is no room for me to make the morning tea!
That can be very frustrating. To me, coming into a messy kitchen the first thing in the morning just sours my mood. Luckily my husband and daughter are good about cleaning up, and (thank goodness) we have the ultimate luxury of a dishwasher. I would probably cook a whole lot less if I had to hand-wash dishes.
I’m a big fan of cleaning up as I go. Somehow, that makes cooking more fun. =) I also use a scrap bowl – everything is collected in one place and not all over the counters. Thanks for the great tips.
I agree it makes cooking more fun. To me, very few things are more disheartening than cooking and observing a wreck of a kitchen. To me dirty kitchen = bad mood. So cleaning up as I go really does help!