Kitchen Cleaning

In the age of trendy multitaskers like concentrated cleaners, staying eco-friendly and saving money are, understandably, top priorities. If you can have one product that does a lot of things well, why spend your whole paycheck only to waste plastic and take up hard-fought storage space? Which begs the question: Do we really need both dish soap and hand soap in the kitchen if just one could do the trick?

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

I hate to toss around tired old adages, but the truth of the matter is that taking care of a problem when it’s small is far easier than addressing a bigger problem once it’s grown. “Stitching in time” is particularly relevant when it comes to home-keeping—where procrastination, like not sweeping dirt from hardwood floors, can lead to major tasks like eventually refinishing your scratched-up floor.

Q: Hi all! We are renovating a town home and I have a question related to our kitchen renovation. With the new layout the sink needs to be in a center kitchen island which faces our main kitchen/dining area, as opposed to against a wall. Are there any solutions for drying dishes (e.g. draining pans) that somehow hide the dishes that people have had success with?

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).

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

Here's our fail-proof, get-it-done method for getting your kitchen back in shape so you can relax.

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!

Sometimes, unknowingly, we get so stuck in the intended purpose of something that we never realize how useful it could potentially be. That’s why discovering a new cleaning hack is so universally tantalizing; it jolts us with a zap of “Why didn’t I think of that?” and snaps us out of that humdrum rut of using things merely for their intended purpose.

Forgive my hyperbole, but I firmly believe the very best thing you can do for your home is to clear the kitchen each night. It’s the heart of your home—and the place you’ll make your coffee in the morning—so you want to keep that heart healthy and happy. Sometime after dinners have been made (and a few bites of ice cream have been taken straight from the freezer), but before you turn in for the night, take a quick 20 or so minutes to clear your kitchen of its daily mess.

Welcome to Apartment Therapy’s Chore-Free Summer. Every weekday until July 20, we’re arming you with time-saving shortcuts and hacks that’ll help you work smarter, not harder, when it comes to homekeeping this summer. Because cleaning doesn’t have to be a chore. Not all kitchen messes are created equal. But whether you’re a dedicated home cook or somebody who has local takeout joints’ phone numbers saved as favorites, you still have to clean up after yourself.

I’m not swayed by inner satisfaction or the captivating sparkle of a spotless countertop. No—my main motivation for cleaning my space is almost always making sure that the people who see it don’t think I’m gross. (Even if those people are just the UPS guy and my local Thai place’s delivery driver.

If you’re a practical person and invested in high quality tableware in classic white, good for you! Your dinner guests will have to look long and hard to spy those tiny chips your plates may have accumulated over the years. For the rest of us who opted for brightly colored vintage dishes that we have to constantly protect with our lives — we need all the help we can get to keep our priceless pieces looking pristine. So what help do we offer? What ingenious tip have we? Ready for it?

We’re living in a world where anything is possible. I can talk to my light bulbs. My plants water themselves. There’s an electric car floating out in space somewhere right at this very moment. The sky’s the lim— ok the sky isn’t even the limit anymore. Mind-blowing technological breakthroughs are happening across every industry every day, proving that anything we can dream up is possible.

For such an unassuming object, kitchen sponges are kind of rock stars. In addition to being responsible for getting our dishes and utensils clean, these thirsty squares can be repurposed in ways we haven’t even thought of yet. But, rest assured, the ways we do know of prove pretty darn ingenious.

Until you know how to harness its power, you won't appreciate this mysterious concoction for all it can really do.

Car wax can fill in tiny scratches and dings in a car’s clear coat. It can also keep away finger-print smudges and make it easier to clean the dirt and grime off of a car’s surface. All this while giving the exterior an attractive shine. Don’t these all sound like achievements you’d like to unlock all over your home, too? Turns out car wax is great for all sorts of household hacks. Here’s why you should keep a tub in your kitchen.

It’s finally the weekend! Whether you’ve been doing the Cure for a week or a decade, you know that weekends on the Cure are about two things: Treating yourself to flowers and taking the extra time to tackle a big (but necessary) job. So that’s what we’re doing. Today’s “big job” target is the kitchen — which I know is a capital-b Big Job.

I love finding ways to use things I already have in new life-hack-y ways, like removing labels on jars with coconut oil and baking soda. Like toothpaste: It’s something we all have in our bathrooms. But here are a few reasons to keep a tube in the kitchen. Gently rubbing non-gel toothpaste on water rings can remove them from a wooden table. Scrubbing chrome fixtures with a dab of toothpaste will make them gleam. Rub the toothpaste into the chrome with a rag and then buff with a clean rag.

Nothing says “c’mon let’s eat” like offensive smells in your kitchen. Kidding of course! Yet there are several spots that naturally get ickier than others, where gunk, dried liquids, and food bits combine to form a low-grade yet persistent maelstrom of malodor. This weekend, we’re going to take care of that. All during October, we’re tackling your home’s “scariest” tasks — the dirtiest, foulest, most dreaded jobs on your to-do list.

Do you follow the FlyLady? If not, here’s a little backstory: the FlyLady is a site dedicated to organizing and cleaning your home, started by Marla Cilley. The site gets its name from Cilley’s old username from her first online endeavor, and is equal parts an homage to her love of flyfishing and an acronym that means “finally loving yourself.

If you pride yourself on keeping a tidy home, there’s stuff around the house you want to do. Like buying an organizer for the junk drawer. That right there is like a drug to Monica Geller types. But no matter how much you enjoy cleaning up, there are still some chores that are, well, chores. Cleaning the fridge coils is one of those things.

You probably do the dishes often—even more so if you lack the luxury of a dishwasher—but how often do you clean or replace your kitchen sponge? (Or any sponges in your home, for that matter?). The dirt on sponges (pun intended) is that they can get really gross, really quickly—more gross than you might realize. According to Huffington Post, it’s the dirtiest thing in your home, even worse than toilet seats and garbage cans.

Happy Friday! Weekends on the Cure mean two things – that it’s time to pick yourself up some new flowers and that you have three days to complete your assignment. So, armed with lovely blooms, you have some extra time to tackle this weekend’s focus room, the kitchen. Now, before you run away screaming, just hear me out. The goal is to get your kitchen to a cleaner, better state by Sunday night, while not burning out on the overall Cure on your way there.

Nobody likes to throw away money. Even though kitchen sponges are, like, 50¢ a piece, there are still some small, simple habits you can do to squeeze more mileage out of your most hardworking kitchen tool. Ta da! Instantly, your tools last twice as long. Chances are, a smaller sponge can still tackle all your normal use with finesse. In fact, it might make it easier to get into tight nooks. Get yourself a sponge holder that will keep your sponge upright and let air flow all around.

The difference between an organized fridge and a messy, stinky, ugly one is simple: Focus, discipline and a strong foundation of good ideas. We’ve collected ten excellent guiding principles for keeping your refrigerator clean, healthy and happy, and they’re all right here for you to implement at home. Set your refrigerator’s temperature to 40°F (5°C) or below. If it doesn’t come with a label, give it one. Add dates for extra credit.