Weeknight Kitchen Cleaning Tips

Oh, please! Who can actually manage to keep their kitchen this clean? They must not cook! We all want to keep up with kitchen cleaning so that the room is as beautiful, comfortable, and useful as possible. But through the hustle and bustle of the work week, it can be tough to keep up with our own expectations. Though we never quite feel out from under it until the weekend, here are some things we do to help:

Stick to simple meals on as many weeknights as possible. One-dish dinners help keep reduce dirty pots and pans that can eat up post-meal time in the evenings.

A chore a day spreads out kitchen cleaning tasks so it never all catches up with you at once. It's easy to add one cleaning task each night to the dinner cleanup routine: Try sweeping one night, countertops and sink the next, then appliance fronts, and so on.

Clean as you go. We employ this as much as possible in an attempt to free up some after-dinner relaxation time. It means washing pots and pans while our husband puts the food on the table. Or wiping down the cutting boards and countertop right before dinner comes out of the oven. This just leaves us with our own plates and utensils to take care of after dinner.

Use multi-purpose tableware for prep and serving. We love our oven-safe dishes for this purpose and serve from Pyrex bowls when it's just us for weeknight meals. Get a set with snap-on lids and you can even store leftovers without ever transferring containers. Going from kitchen to table in the same dish can greatly reduce dishwashing after dinner.

Let's hear how you keep up with kitchen cleaning on busy weeknights!

(Image: Carlos & Debbie's Ultra Contemporary/Apartment Therapy)

Comments (11)

I clean while I am waiting for things to cook. 5 minutes browning? Wipe down the counters or windex the glass cabinet doors. 30 minutes baking? Sweep floors and organize tupperware. 10 minutes for water to boil? Clean up all dishes and load dishwasher.

Really, my kitchen stays pretty clean, and I never feel like I have to work that hard. But I would never in a million years choose to have that white kitchen. That's masochism.

I employ the clean-as-you-go method, or, rather, the clean up as HE goes because he is one of the messier cooks I've ever met. Really.

Yes, I also use the clean-as-you-go technique. Partly because I can be an impatient cook--I get fidgety waiting for the onions to brown or that sauce to reduce, so loading the dishwasher or wiping down the counters helps ensure I don't jump the gun!

I would add...don't forget about cleaning after other meals too. Trying to clean up dinner plus whatever is leftover from breakfast and lunch is just awful. I guess this could be an add on to clean as you go.

I do it cause I have to... we had major mice problems in our apartment for a while. Everything gets washed and sprayed and wiped and swept. It's always seems like a daunting task, but I find it's over and I'm back on the couch in no time.

The other suggestions are great too. Clean as you go, and use tupperware/take out containers as serving dishes. I've never had someone, "ugh plastic?" It's always been, "oh, smart!"

I make sure there are no dirty dishes left at the end of the day. I usually wipe counters as well. Where I live we get ants this time of year so a clean counter is a good defence! I would like to add more daily habits to make a routine but I love to relax and play with my dogs too!

My mom has always said she can't go to sleep with a dirty house. I always thought that was a little crazy, but alas, waking up to a clean kitchen is so nice, it's worth staying up an extra half hour to clean up.

I am also a practitioner of clean-as-you-go. I have been trying to get my husband to join the club, with mixed success.

Thanks to my downstairs neighbors, I've had a roach problem- they're gone and so are the little beasties. Still I have a clean sink every AM.
Now about that kitchen in the picture- I thought I had an ugly kitchen but you bested me. It looks unreal and not used for real cooking. Mine might be untidy but clean and definitely looks like a working kitchen

My man and I trade off: chef and sous-chef. Chef cooks and directs. Sous-chef chops and does the dishes, counters, sweeps.

This is going to sound crazy, but every night, I wipe down my counters, my sink, and the counter of my bathroom. If I'm in a rush, I just wipe what I can see; if I have a bit more time, I move and wipe under stuff. In a real pinch, I just do the handle of the sink. I put dishes into the dishwasher and prep coffee for the next day. I probably spend less than fifteen minutes, but my kitchen looks clean and I don't have to try to make coffee when I first wake up :)