A lot of times, I am doing something else that I much rather do, like writing this blog, than cleaning the kitchen. So, I do my cleaning in bits, with time built into what I want to do in between those bits.
Today, I'm going to actually do this. So right now I'm blogging, and having a good time, but you saw my messy kitchen, and it needs attention, so I'm going to go clean one section, set the timer for 20 minutes because I'm going to want to get back to this blog after I clean that section, and then when the timer goes off, I'll clean the next section.
It doesn't matter where you start, whether it's the dishes, taking out the trash, cleaning off the table, or cleaning one section of the counter top, just start somewhere. I 100% guarantee you that your kitchen will already look better and you will feel better after taking care of that one first thing that you have chosen.
Today I'm going to start with the section right next to the refrigerator. Here's the before picture:
And the after:
Now if you want you can set the timer for 20 minutes and go do something else, something else you have to get done, like call the credit bureau, which I have to do now to cancel a membership they charged me for that I didn't want, or play on Facebook for a while, and when the buzzer rings, come back to do the next section.
Next section before picture:
And this section took me only 1 1/2 minutes: Here's the after:
I had to take another picture of the after of this second section because I couldn't find the original file. The fail is you see that you see the after of the next section too! LOL!
Now onto the center countertop. Here is the before:
And the after:
So far we have spent eight minutes cleaning the kitchen. In this section, I also vacuumed the floor because it was screaming at me at the moment. You could say, "Well, I'll keep the floor for last, but there is not system to this "clean by section" approach. If something is screaming at you, why not take care of it while it's there?
Next is the messiest part of the kitchen, the area around the sink. Here is the before:
And the after:
I wanted to take my time on this section to give the reader a realistic timing of this because interruptions are inevitable, and that's exactly what I had interruptions. I had a really nice conversation with my 19 year-old son, who will be "flying the nest" soon, and my 11 year-old decided he wanted to use my faucet to wash his hands while I was doing the dishes. All in, it took 13 minutes to clean up this area which included carrying the trash out to the trash can in the garage.
The entire kitchen took 21 minutes. That's not bad at all!
So, now we have illustrated that a large kitchen like mine can be cleaned in several sections totaling up to 21 minutes, and if you are having a busy day, and don't have a chunk of 21 minutes together, you can take a 1 minute section here before heading off to the cross-country meet, or dance lesson, and another 2 minute chunk just after lunch, and another 13 minute chunk before bedtime, and by the next morning, before breakfast, you know that you had a clean kitchen for some hours in the middle of the night and that your kitchen got cleaned everyday.
You also know that if you have decluttered your kitchen and your Aunt Jane calls and says she's coming for unexpected visit, you can have the kitchen cleaned in 21 minutes of non-hurried, relaxed cleaning time.
The key is to minimize what items you are storing in your kitchen so that you can easily put them away, don't have to many extra dishes on hand, so they don't pile excessively high in the sink, and take one section at a time.
Okay, enough said. Here is the before and after pictures of the entire kitchen and guess what? A friend just called and asked if she could come over and now my kitchen is clean and I have no worries!! Who would have guessed?
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