Ayn-Monique Klahre

So, your garbage may not smell like roses, but it doesn't need to take your breath away.

Are dish gloves worth it or should you leave them hanging high and dry at the store?

When you have a big mess, it's tempting to want to bring out all of the big guns and throw at it every cleaning product you've got. But don't!

For one thing, don't use a dirty sponge.

Because sometimes bohemian maximalism is downright refreshing.

Ants tend to pop up in the spring and can linger through summer, foraging through your kitchen for food.

I’m always surprised by how finicky knives are. You’d think that a blade that can slice right through meat or cleave a squash in two would be pretty much impervious to any kind of wear! But if you — like me — have a habit of neglecting your knives, they can dull and rust pretty quickly. And sadly, rust is a frequent visitor in my kitchen. That is not OK, considering a good knife can cost more than $100!

If you’re like me, then about half an hour before any house guests arrive you frantically run through the living and dining room, sweep any evidence of actually living in your home off of your surfaces, and jam all that crap into the nearest drawer/cabinet/closet to create the appearance of cleanliness. I would literally sweep clutter under a rug, if I could! Unfortunately, it would probably look lumpy under my flat-weave carpets.

Your kitchen is the workhorse of the home, and the items you store in it — serving pieces, utensils, and all that cookware — are among the toughest items in the whole place because they have to stand up to daily use. And even though these items are super-durable, if you store them incorrectly, you could potentially damage them (or, at the very least, waste space you could be using for something else). Here are five kitchen items you may be storing the wrong way.

When we think about big cleaning seasons, spring usually comes to mind. But winter is actually a pretty good time to do some serious cleaning. I mean, think about it: Soon we’ll be stuck inside, staring at the walls, and we won’t mind working up a sweat. Here are five projects to tackle the next time you’re faced with a gray wintry day. This time of year is peak baking and roasting season.

I’ve struggled with finding a truly functional dustpan and brush combo. Too often the bristles don’t pick up all the debris, and dust gets caught under the lip of the dustpan, leaving that frustrating line of dirt behind. It makes me crazy! I finally found the right dustpan and brush combo, and it’s great almost all of the time.

Dead skin cells, soap scum, random food scraps, human hair, pet hair, and just regular ol’ dirt—these are all the things you regularly wash down your sink or tub’s drain. And if they sound gross now, image how much worse they are once they’ve congealed into a stringy, slimy ball of gunk inside your pipes. Yuck! You want to prevent any of this gunk buildup before it becomes a real problem—especially in homes with older pipes or large families.

Now that my oldest is in school, we have discovered the joys of packing her lunch. Beyond the list of banned foods we need to be careful about (last year it included peanut butter, strawberries, and shellfish—as if I would ever send her to school with shrimp cocktail!), there are her ever-evolving and contradictory preferences we had to remember and adjust to. But you know, you do it. Five days a week.

Freshly grated mozzarella (or any cheese!) is an amazing addition to all kinds of foods, but the process of grating it can be a pain. And we’re not just talking about the actual work of running it across the grater over and over again—without, hopefully, cutting your fingers!—but also the actual cleanup. That soft, fatty cheese can get stuck inside the grater’s holes and you can tear up your sponge (or really injure yourself!) trying to get it clean.

This quick trick instantly delivers more space—just by raiding your utensil drawer.

Bleach is a strong cleanser that, when used properly, can be a safe and effective option for sanitizing various objects and surfaces in your kitchen, in the laundry and around your house. “But it’s not an all-purpose cleaner,” says Nancy Boc, senior vice president of education at the American Cleaning Institute.

Despite the fact that the sole purpose of the refrigerator is to keep your food safe—by chilling it enough to slow bacterial growth and rotting— it can actually pose some hazards to your health. When you think about it, it makes sense: It’s one of the few places you go in and out of multiple times per day. And when you do, you’re typically moving around food, in the middle of cooking (hello, bacteria on your hands!

Kitchen counters are clutter magnets—plain and simple. As I look at my own countertops, I see seven-ish different piles in the works (kids’ art, unopened mail, recyclables on their way to the bin, etc.). It’s never-ending. And despite being a fairly organized, clean-surface kind of girl myself, and literally interviewing dozens of experts on the subject, there are only two times my countertops ever get clean. Oh, is it midnight the night before an article is due?

In my experience, there are two kinds of dishwasher users: people who have figured out the right way to load the dishwasher, and people who really don’t care. Also in my experience, those two camps of people tend to marry each other and spend the rest of their lives complaining about the other’s method of loading or critiquing the other’s loading technique (sorry, husband of mine).

As anyone with kids—especially babies and toddlers—knows, all that feeding gear seems to come with tiny bits and pieces that need to be disassembled and individually sanitized. When you’ve got a newborn, buying a sterilizer might feel like it makes sense, but by the time your kids are older, you’ve moved it out of the way to make room for other gear.

Recently, I was talking to Melissa Maker, author of Clean My Space. While I consider myself pretty neat and tidy, she’s made a career out of being a bit of a clean freak—she ran a cleaning company for 11 years, has her own line of cleaning products, and for-real washes her kitchen towels every day! And there’s one common cleaning tool she just loves to hate: paper towels. “Paper towels are the worst!” complains Maker.

Besides, you know, cleaning your dishes, your dishwasher can do a few other fun things.

You know how to clean a kitchen. So do I. But there are things we learned from our parents, shortcuts we developed ourselves, and just straight-up habits that may make our cleaning, well, less than optimal. Heck, half the time I research a story, I learn I’ve been doing something wrong my whole adult life!