Kitchen Patrol: Dirty to Clean in 10 Minutes

The summer after my Freshman year in college, I worked at a summer camp as a "kitchie". KP duty for a whole month. While it wasn't the most glamorous job- it taught me a lot. The kitchen was huge and had to be kept very clean and very organized. We ran a tight ship and meals and clean up were always really efficient. I loved that everything had its place and that there was a process and procedure for everything. It fit well with my Type-A tendencies.

I'm far from my college days but a few lessons from that summer have stuck with me.

Despite my best intentions, my kitchen now goes from nice and neat to chaos in the blink of an eye. With 4 people in and out all day it doesn't take long before my kitchen looks like this:
**Warning: It's about to get real!

This is what breakfast, lunch, and baking a snack looks like in my world!

This would logically be a major cause of stress. However, I have a few tricks that help me turn that mess into a clean kitchen in 10 minutes. Here's how:

First, I unload the dishwasher. This is made easier by the Pampered Chef Tool Turn-About. I don't have to sort cooking utensils or shove them into drawers. They quickly slip into one of the compartments and I'm done.

My cast iron skillet lives on my stove. I cook with it almost every day. There's no sense in burying it in a cabinet. Speaking of cabinets, I make sure my kitchen cabinets are organized efficiently.

After I unload the dishwasher, I re-load it. Shocking, I know. The important note here is that I only un-load and re-load once a day. Yep, that's right. I don't like to do this chore, so I do it daily and I let the dirty dishes pile up on one side of the sink. Sometimes not everything fits, so the "extra dishes" stay on the right side of the sink waiting their turn. I realize that this won't work for everyone but it's one of my sanity saving tricks.

Loading the dishwasher typically clears 1/2 of my counter space. The other 1/2 is cleared by putting things in their place and throwing away trash. I'm not sure how so much trash ends up on the counter- mere feet from the trash can. It's one of life's mysteries.

I save time putting things away because I keep my most used stuff on the counter. My tool turn-about, my canisters, knife block, etc. This eliminates the step of having to pick them up and put them away- it's more efficient. Now I don't take this too far. There are a lot of things that are still out of sight, what you see are the things I use daily and they are pretty :-)

Once everything has found its home and the dishwasher is running, I take the last 45 seconds to wipe the counters down with Clorox Wipes. Man, are these things amazing! They make quick work of stuck on food, crumbs, and spills. I love how they go from counter to sink to stove. This is the real secret to how fast I can clean my kitchen- they just make it so easy!

So there you have it. 10 minutes, once a day, clean kitchen tips and tricks. Once a week I clean the floors and sink to stay on top of things. But I love having a clean kitchen every evening!

What's your secret to a cleaner, more efficient kitchen? I'd love to know!