This past week we completed the room refresh of the office. Now it’s time to move on to the pontentially hardest working room of the house – the kitchen!! With that, we’ll just jump right into it!

The Kitchen

• Clear off the kitchen table and kitchen island if you have one.
• Empty out all the cabinets, drawers, and countertops.
• Set up your piles – “keep”, “donate, “sell”, “discard”, and “remove”.
• Sort everything into your piles including duplicate appliances, utensils, and or uni-tasking kitchen tools you don’t use regularly.
• Questions to consider while editing:
  • Do you need it?
  • Do you have duplicates?
  • What is the worst thing that can happen if you get rid of it?
• Uni-tasker kitchen tools only have one specific function. Unless you use it regularly it can take up valuable real estate in your kitchen.
• Duplicates might not necessarily be an issue if you utilize all of them regularly, but it’s always good to evaluate your supplies.
• Check expiration dates of any food items. Get rid of any old, expired, or no longer used items.
• Thoroughly clean the kitchen and your appliances.
• Categorize the rest of your items and determine what you might need for storage containers.
• Only items that you use on a daily basis should be allowed back on the counter. For example, the coffee maker, cooking oils, etc.
• Next, clean out your refrigerator and freezer.
  • Get rid of old/expired food or items that you don’t plan to eat.
  • Give your refrigerator and freezer a good scrub.
  • Create zones for your food and organize your food storage
• Lastly, remove everything from under the kitchen sink
  • Get rid of anything you don’t use or is old.
  • Create categorize and organize your sink cabinets.
• Anything in the “remove” pile should be redistributed to the correct rooms or area.
• If you have items left over from last week’s “sell” pile that you ended up not selling, then it needs to go into the “discard” or “donate” pile. Dump the “discard” pile and take your donation pile to where you plan to donate them. You need to remove the pile from your home as soon as possible. 

Tips

• Labeling containers is a great way to help family members identify the correct zones to put their items in, especially if the categories aren’t immediately apparent to them!

The Sweep

Don’t forget that we aren’t exactly done with the challenge! The goal of this challenge is to create functional spaces and establish better habits and routines. So far you have completed the laundry room, the mudroom, drop zones, and the office area. Now you need to evaluate your systems and make regular cleanup a routine.

Before bed (or at the most convenient time for you) go to your refreshed rooms with a basket. Look around the room and throw anything that does not belong in the room in your basket. Take care of anything that is out of place. Then take your basket and go through the house putting the items that don’t belong in the laundry room in their proper place. This should be a quick pickup and should not take long. Clean anything that looks physically dirty. Remember your family is there to help you as well.

The nightly “sweep” will also be a good time to evaluate the effectiveness of your systems in real time as you may notice different trends occuring. Does it still look as good as it did when you completed the room? Are there things out of place or items that don’t belong? Do the systems you have put in place seem to be working? Determine what is and isn’t working and make adjustments to your system as you see fit and continue to evaluate changes each night as you go through the house.

Next week we tackle the pantry!