Cleaning my kitchen | North Central Alabama Family Photographer
| North Central Alabama Family Photographer |
:How I took my kitchen from catastrophic to amazing & KEPT it that way!:Welcome to my tiny, dirty apartment! Has your kitchen ever looked like this?
I needed help cleaning my kitchen & This is my story.I doubt most folks my age have ever experienced adult life without a dishwasher. This blog post will demonstrate how I took my tiny, no-dishwasher-kitchen from catastrophe to clean,AND KEPT IT THAT WAY!!! I bet you guys have trained your children, by now, to clean up after themselves and keep tidy 24-7! No? Me either! That's right! I am a total slacker mom who has fun with my kids, makes messes & then wonders why the house looks like it does when Papa Bear gets home from work. 'What? What is that look for?' ... "What did you do all day, Jami?? Good grief!"I finally got tired of my house running me & this is how I fixed it! How exactly did I turn that train wreck around, you ask?
Firstly, I put Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on, so I had t least..... 5 uninterrupted dish-washing minutes! yay! The sequel is on Netflix, in case you're wondering, and personally, I like it better than the first!
C'mon, Watermelephants are presh(side-note: Never use this word, again!).
Okay, so, I have a few minutes to scramble and come up with a game-plan! I went running for the hills........... of dirty cups and popcorn bowls in my kids bedrooms... hiding, inconspicuously, under their beds, never to be found by Boss-Mom(my personally appointed nick name)! Let me give you one more tip that is quite obvious, but I tend to forget it 50% of the time. Laundry does itself! Throw a load in the wash and start it while you work on the dishes, and tend to it the whole time you are 'chore-ing'.From multiple small, stinky piles of dishes to one HUGE foul-smelling pile in the sink, we went! But, with four bellies to fill, I have a LOT of dishes(I'm working on getting rid of everything except the dire necessities, to cut down on dish-clutter! I have one-too-many Chuck E Cheese cups!!). I'm not gonna lie, you guys.... This is totally redneck, but it really works!!! I took about 80% of my dishes & piled them in the bath tub(YES, the BATH tub! Remember, Jami doesn't have a dishwasher * real tears *), leaving 20% in the sink. That's totally some psychology, right there! In increments of 20%, the clutter is way less overwhelming, easier to tackle, and you feel like you are getting more done as they start disappearing. I filled the bath with scalding water and dish soap, to let those puppies soak up lavender-fresh scent while I scrubbed mindlessly, in the kitchen! WOAH, that was one heck of a run-on sentence!
Making some progresssss!
As I clear out the sink, of the first load, those crazy boys decided they wanted to help. Noah paused Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (How does a 6 year old know how to operate a smart tv?!), and they came running, right up under my feet, < sarcasm >my favorite place for them to be! < /sarcasm >I put some clean towels on the floor and gave each of them a hand towel, told them to 'get to drying', and started putting up the remainder! So, I washed, rinsed, & repeated until every dish was clean, dry, AND OUT OF MY TUB! Yay! I also bought some hooks from Walmart to hang attractive things from & wiped off all the visible surfaces :). Now, I can finally shower..... at 3pm.
Look at this masterpiece!!!!
.....shower, shower, shower, interruption from 3 year old, get a new roll of tp for 3 year old, shower, shower, shower....AHH! Clean hair, fresh armpits! Anyhow, moving on to the part of how I am KEEPING my kitchen clean, so that I never have to follow the directions in this post, ever again! I am not going to toot my horn and tell you that you can wash each and every dish immediately, after you use it & keep a tidy kitchen. That's just NOT humanly possible.... Unless you're not a human! In that case, please please tell me HOW you do it! It's actually quite simple! Easy dishes, like..... cups of water or juice or anything that hasn't been sitting for eons (aka: since breakfast) can be quickly rinsed out, dried, and put right back in the cabinet! BAM! But, the harder things, like pancakes-n-syrup plates, old chocolate milk, ravioli bowls, yada yada.... Fill those with scalding water & leave those suckers right in the sink! By the end of the day, all the crap will have loosened and it will be SUPER simple to wipe clean! For the dinner dishes, I fill one side of the sink with scalding, dish soap water and leave them to soak, overnight. The beauty of this is that I am too tired and lazy, by the end of the day, to even THINK about scrubbing fried rice out of a pan! No way! So, when I wake up, I just rinse and wipe the dinner dishes out, then dry & put away. BOOM! That's it! That. Is. It. And my kitchen stays, mostly, spotless! Okay... that was a lie. But it's a whole hell of a lot cleaner than it was, before! What are your best chore tips? I am genuinely interested and open for new ideas!!!
Thank you for reading ;)
