Keeping up the Kitchen

A daily room pick-up should be achievable within five minutes. (This does not include doing dishes, folding laundry or paying bills – just putting items away that have been left out.) Every item needs a home! If you come across an item that you don’t know where to put, that is because that item doesn’t have a home; so take five minutes, determine what the item is and what it is used for and find an appropriate home. When something breaks, don’t put it back into the cupboard; throw it away and if you need a new one, write it on a shopping list. If you deal with each item as it creates a problem, you will avoid a long day of reorganizing. Throughout the year be working on little organizing projects. Create lists of tasks for a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly routine. Make the list practical and realistic. Schedule and plan out the time it will take to accomplish the tasks then write it down on the calendar.

Example lists include chores like:

Daily:

• Clear off the dinner table after each meal or at the end of the day (don’t leave empty baskets or dishes on the table that could collect odds and ends)
• Clean and put away dishes, including loading and unloading the dishwasher
• Wipe off stove, sink, table, countertops and any spills
• Add any food items to the shopping list that need to be replaced or bought
• Sort through the mail; throw junk mail, put bills and letters in assigned places
• Put “to and from” items like lunch bags and backpacks in assigned places
• Remove personal belongings out of kitchen and put them away

Weekly:

• Clean appliances like microwave, and toaster
• Sweep and wash the kitchen floor
• Take out trash and recycling
• Pay bills and answer unimportant mail
• Inventory needed grocery items for weekly shopping
• If a paper needs to be read by different family members at different times, put it in a “newspaper” basket; anything over a week old gets recycled

Monthly or yearly:

• Cleaning out the fridge
• Dusting tops of cupboards and other surfaces
• Reorganize the pantry and other areas of the kitchen; making sure everything is in it’s home
• Removing everything from the cupboards and clean off the shelves while sorting through items and throwing out any unused or expired items
• Wash curtains, walls, and clean behind moveable cupboards or carts