The kitchen is one of the places in the home that is most used and because of that also one of the most abused places. Because it serves as meal-making central, it is vital that this area of the home stays clean and organized. A day or two of chaos here can mean hours of cleaning and organizing time. Here are a few ideas to help you get the worst of your kitchen organization problems under control.
I know that a problem in my own kitchen is making sure that everyone cleans up after themselves. To help with this, we have a house rule: If you make a mess in the kitchen, you clean it up. This applies to food-related messes as well as other messes in the kitchen. So if you bring a stack of schoolwork or mail into the kitchen in order to do homework or pay bills, make sure that you bring it back out of the kitchen as well. In order for your kitchen organization to go smoothly, you will also need to make sure that cleaning up counters and putting dishes in the dishwasher is part of this rule.
But as is the case with any house rule, making it is never the problem, enforcing it is. An appropriate consequence for not following the rule could be that whoever does not follow the rule gets stuck on kitchen cleanup duty for a week. To help make sure that everyone knows what the rule is, post it on a brightly colored piece of paper in the kitchen and make sure that you clearly define what defines a mess and what appropriate cleanup is in your house. In order for kitchen organization and cleanup to be part of your house rules, clean needs to be defined clearly and consequences for not following the rule need to be in place.
Make sure that everything has a place in your kitchen and that everyone in your house knows where that place is. If things do not have a specific place in your kitchen, it is going to be hard to get anyone in your home to put things away. Part of this means making sure that similar things "live" together in your kitchen.
My one caution in this is that different people have different definitions of what "like" things are. If you are the one who has done the initial kitchen organization job, make sure that everyone in your house is clear on what your definition of "like" things is. So if you have organized all of your daily use items together, make sure that everyone in your home knows that and knows where those items are. If you have organized all of the cups and mugs in one area, make sure that everyone in your home knows where those items are.
As with many things in life, making sure that kitchen organization is part of everyone's routine in your home is about communication. You need to make sure that you appropriately communicate your expectations of what a clean and organized kitchen looks like. For more ideas to get your kitchen organized, go to http://www.yourhomeisorganized.com/KitchenOrganization.htm
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