I Just Discovered This 75-Year-Old Housekeeping Rule, and It’s Been a Game-Changer

Every couple months or so, I try to give my kitchen a good deep clean. Without fail, I always end up wondering how it ended up so dirty in the first place. The random sticky spots, hidden spills, a confusing number of crumbs — it never made sense considering how thoroughly I thought I’d been succeeding at “closing down” my home every night. There had to be a reason (and, even better, a solution).

Enter: this comically simple housekeeping rule I discovered during a late-night scroll through Apartment Therapy. All it takes is one simple step: never, ever leave your drawers open while doing anything — such as cooking, eating, and even cleaning up.

According to the writer of that story, by ensuring your kitchen drawers stay closed as much as possible, you minimize the risk of rogue debris taking up residence inside them. If you can do that, you’ll end up spending way less time emptying the drawers, wiping them down, and putting everything back. The logic is definitely solid, if not completely obvious.

It’s embarrassing to admit now, but I’m constantly guilty of leaving my kitchen drawers open. Cooking is far from my forte, so when I do it, I’m usually stressed with my head focused on a million different things. Something as simple as closing a drawer just doesn’t come to mind. Unsurprisingly, my five-year-old also forgets to close it when she takes something out for a snack or meal. Even when I’m cleaning, I’m usually multitasking and emptying the dishwasher at the same time.

Retraining my brain to perform a task that takes less than a second has already been well worth the hours I’m going to save every year. It’s also been the best incentive to hold my daughter accountable and make sure she does the same. It’s always going to be easier and more effective to solve a problem before it starts versus after.

Closing my kitchen drawers hasn’t solved all of my problems — I still don’t know where the sticky spots or hidden spills come from. What I can tell you, however, is that my kitchen drawers have literally never been more consistently clean than they are right now. I’d like to think this habit will start to extend to kitchen cabinets (another danger zone) and the bathroom (don’t even get me started). After that, the question is, what are other no-brainer ways to keep a clean home that I’m missing?