The average modern adult spends about an hour in their kitchen each day. With a clean and organised kitchen, you can focus on clean and healthy eating from breakfast right through to supper. By creating order and practicing good and regular kitchen hygiene, you’ll be inspired to work in a fresh and functional space. Cleaning boasts therapeutic benefits and comes with a feeling of enormous accomplishment and satisfaction. It’s an excellent way to exercise and keep you moving, boosting both your body and mind.
Here are ten tips to help you ensure your kitchen stays in order while keeping you refreshed and focused:
1. Repack Food Sensibly
Wash out and re-use old glass jam and mayonnaise jars to store nuts, seeds and dried fruit. Keep cereals, flours, rice, salt, sugar and pasta in airtight glass containers so you can clearly see the contents. Pack your pantry according to your non-perishable food’s expiry dates and stack tinned items of the same kind together.
Separate potatoes and onions in your vegetable rack to prevent the naturally occurring ethylene gas from spoiling them too quickly. If you know you won’t use food up before it expires or spoils, chop, blend or freeze it wherever possible. The last few slices of a loaf of bread can be turned into breadcrumbs for your next spaghetti and meatball dish.
2. Label It All
Label all your pantry items with permanent markers, stickers or chalkboard labels for quick and easy identification. This also helps when refilling your jars or for grabbing a quick snack.
Struggling to keep your upperware together? Colour code the bases and lids to ensure they’re stored in their sets. When packing your pots and pans, keep the lids turned upside down in their respective pots to save space for stacking.
3. Ditch The Duplicate
A small kitchen won’t have enough space for duplicate kitchenware. If you have two food processors and you haven’t used the older one for some time, either store it outside your kitchen, take it to a second-hand store or sell it online.
In the same way, test and evaluate all your kitchen appliances and gadgets to ensure none are redundant or require repairs. Got too many glasses and coffee mugs? Recycle any broken or chipped ones and donate or repurpose the rest for storing pens, toothbrushes or arts and crafts supplies.
4. Pick Your Pots and Pan
You actually use fewer pots and pans than you realise. While the number you need can depend on what you’re cooking and how many people you’re cooking for, pick a few medium and large sized items. They’ll be sufficiently versatile to suit most of your daily cooking and dishwashing, plus they’ll take up less space in your cupboard than numerous items of multiple sizes.
5. Review Your Refrigerator
Regularly wipe down your fridge’s shelves and inside doors. Try to group your food items on separate shelves, such as dairy, fruit, meat and vegetables. Store raw meat in a sealed container on the lowest shelf so it can’t drip down and contaminate any other food inside your fridge.
Raw chicken, ground meat and seafood can stay in your fridge up to two days. Other uncooked meats can last between three and five days. Keep leftovers in your fridge for a maximum of four days and if it’s expired or spoiled, throw it away.
6. Sterilize Your Sponge
Dishwashing sponges are a breeding ground for bacteria. If you keep yours clean, you’ll buy less and save money. Wet your sponge and pop it in the microwave on high for two minutes to kill off any germs and you can reuse it for a bit longer.
7. Throw Out Your Old Dish Towel
Take a look through your dish towels and only keep the ones you need or use. Turn older dish towels into rags for wiping down your countertops or washing your windows.
8. Collate Your Cookbook
Have you been collecting cookbooks for the past decade? Type or write out your favourite recipes and store them in a box, flip file or ring binder in plastic sleeves. Donate the books to charity or pass them on to a friend. Tear out the best recipes from magazines and then recycle the rest.
9. Plan Your Meals and Weekly Menu
Pin a meal prep planner and your kid’s school schedule on your fridge for easy viewing. Create your weekly shopping list according to the ingredients and snacks required and cook some meals in bulk to enjoy the convenience of heating leftovers on a busy day.
10. Simplify Your Countertop
A cluttered countertop can cause unnecessary anxiety and stress. File unnecessary papers and pack away small appliances and miscellaneous items you do not use daily. Keep things simple by only using decorative accessories you absolutely adore.
As little as ten minutes a day is what it can take to have a clutter-free and clean kitchen. It’s a fantastic way of keeping a positive mindset and your cooking area in tip top shape, plus you may even burn some calories along the way. Start the year out fresh to appreciate and enjoy a happier and healthier environment that will hopefully spread into every room of your home.
Date Published: 22 January 2021
