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The kitchen is one of the places in the home that is most
used and because of that also one of the most abused places.
Because it serves as meal-making central, it is vital that
this area of the home stays clean and organized. A day or
two of chaos here can mean hours of cleaning and organizing
time. Here are a few ideas to help you get the worst of your
kitchen organization problems under control.
I know that a problem in my own kitchen is making sure that
everyone cleans up after themselves. To help with this, we
have a house rule: If you make a mess in the kitchen, you
clean it up. This applies to food-related messes as well as
other messes in the kitchen. So if you bring a stack of
schoolwork or mail into the kitchen in order to do homework
or pay bills, make sure that you bring it back out of the
kitchen as well. In order for your
kitchen organization to go smoothly, you will
also need to make sure that cleaning up counters and putting
dishes in the dishwasher is part of this rule.
But as is the case with any house rule, making it is never
the problem, enforcing it is. An appropriate consequence for
not following the rule could be that whoever does not follow
the rule gets stuck on kitchen cleanup duty for a week. To
help make sure that everyone knows what the rule is, post it
on a brightly colored piece of paper in the kitchen and make
sure that you clearly define what defines a mess and what
appropriate cleanup is in your house. In order for kitchen
organization and cleanup to be part of your house rules,
clean needs to be defined clearly and consequences for not
following the rule need to be in place.
Make sure that everything has a place in your kitchen and
that everyone in your house knows where that place is. If
things do not have a specific place in your kitchen, it is
going to be hard to get anyone in your home to put things
away. Part of this means making sure that similar things
“live” together in your kitchen.
My one caution in this is that different people have
different definitions of what “like” things are. If you are
the one who has done the initial kitchen organization job,
make sure that everyone in your house is clear on what your
definition of “like” things is. So if you have organized all
of your daily use items together, make sure that everyone in
your home knows that and knows where those items are. If you
have organized all of the cups and mugs in one area, make
sure that everyone in your home knows where those items
are.
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