Tips to keep your kitchen clean while cooking

Love cooking but hate the clean up?

A lot of us love to experiment in the kitchen and create wacky and wonderful dishes for family and friends but cleaning the kitchen after can be a real drag.

We’ve put together a list of things to do while you’re cooking to keep your kitchen clean and ensure it doesn’t look like the kids had a food fight a few minutes previous.

1. Keep a garbage bowl handy: Instead of having to walk back and forth to your bin, keep a bowl on the counter where you consolidate all of your cooking waste – this will also stop you from dropping handfuls of scraps on your journey to the bin!
2. Line your cutting board with a mat: How often do you cut up all your vegetables and then have to walk over to your pan with a big cumbersome cutting board, dropping half of them in the process? Using a cutting mat on top alleviates this, and keeps your cutting board cleaner, making it easier to wash!
3. Put reusable cutlery into a cup: When I cook, I’ve been guilty of almost using a whole set of cutlery! I’ve found putting the cutlery I can reuse (e.g.: measuring spoons etc) in a cup means I won’t forget about it and get out a new one – this can save a lot of clean up at the end of the process!
4. Clean as you go: This sounds like a no brainer but many of us don’t do it! Ensure your dishwasher is empty or your sink ready for dishes and wash utensils as you go to ensure the clean-up at the end isn’t too daunting.
5. Use a Stove Splatter Guard: I’ve only recently purchased one of these and wish I’d done it sooner – trying to get my stove grease and splatter free after a cooking session is probably the most time-consuming part of my clean up – definitely invest in one!
6. A bottle of soapy water: Have a bottle of soapy water or your favourite surface cleaner on hand while cooking so you can wipe those unexpected spillages away immediately.
7. Cook slowly: Probably the biggest way to avoid a big clean up – prepare and cook slowly. Sometimes we are in such a hurry that we throw, drop and spill things everywhere, this just leads to a much longer clean up at the end.