When someone tells me they don’t enjoy cooking or baking, I often respond with “is it the cooking and baking you don’t enjoy or is it the search for ingredients and the clean up?”

Often, the answer is “no, I don’t like cooking…”

But mostly, it’s the prep and the clean up.

In my quest to get you into the kitchen, I want to make sure we have good habits in the kitchen. I firmly believe that good habits equals a kitchen that feels a bit calmer, maybe even a little peaceful.

I plan to create weekly challenges for you, or give you tips or ideas to help make the experience less dreadful.

This week’s focus is on a clean kitchen.

Listen…my kitchen is far from clean all the time but it’s kinda close to being clean. I believe that your kitchen should be no more than 10 minutes away from tidiness at any given moment.

There are few things more disheartening than deciding to make dinner and walking into a kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes or messy countertops. Am I right? 

When I moved into my first apartment, I made a decision that I would never, ever go to bed with any dirty dishes. That was well over 20 years ago and I can tell you that I’ve been pretty faithful to the promise to myself. And that’s all it was, it was a promise to myself. I did not necessarily grow up in a super tidy home but I knew that I never wanted to wake up to dirty dishes.

So, if this is you…make the promise to yourself that you won’t do that anymore and stick with it. Share this goal with your entire family. Let them know that placing something in the sink and walking away is not okay. (unless they’re three, then its ok…)

If you have a dishwasher? Run it. Every night. Then, each morning, empty it…BUT SHARE THIS RESPONSIBILITY. This should not fall all on one person, unless you live alone. Kids are great at unloading dishwashers…yes, even before school! Once upon a time, this was Anna’s job. She was in middle school and every morning, before having breakfast, when it was still dark outside, she unloaded the dishwasher. And guess what?

She didn’t hate it.

Now you have an empty dishwasher which means dirty dishes can go straight into the dishwasher.

IF you’re one to let dishes pile up, day after day after day, please take this task day by day by day. It feels like a big task when we talk about doing something for the rest of our lives but all we’re doing is creating a space that feels good to be in the following day. And that does take some effort. Let’s say goodbye to spending hours and hours at the sink and start saying hello to waking up feeling BETTER.

IF you already to do this? ROCK.ON. Keep up the good work!

Cheers to clean sinks!