Anyone who has been doing it for long enough knows that maintaining a household can take up a lot of your energy and time, often to the point that it can be hard to improve your productivity in other parts of your life while taking care of this. This is especially true of the kitchen, which one of the most highly-trafficked and mess-prone rooms in the home. However, there are ways to decrease the amount of time you spend cleaning up and organising your kitchen, as we’re going to explore here and now.

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Be clever with storage

One of the big issues with a kitchen is that if you want to eat a healthy diet, you’re likely to put together quite the collection of tools and appliances. You also have your dishes and cutlery to worry about, not to mention those ingredients you need to keep close at hand. It’s very easy to end up having to contend with clutter. For that reason, it’s always a good idea to look at ways to improve the storage capacity of the kitchen when giving it a makeover. Thinking vertically is often the answer, whether it be by adding a magnetic knife holding strip to the wall or adding mug hooks and storage trays to the inside of cupboard doors.

Know which gadgets can help you save a lot of time

If you’re looking to spend less time in the kitchen in general, then you should take note of the tools, mostly appliances, that can make certain processes way easier. There is all manner of options, such as the Kenwood Multipro Food Processor that can help quickly process a wide range of foods into ready-to-cook ingredients, slow cookers, one touch can openers, small choppers, and the like. Find out which appliances you’re likely to rely on more than the others and consider adding them to your arsenal. Of course, you don’t want to add too many tools all at once since this can give you more to have to find the right storage space for.

Choose mess-free materials

After you’re done cooking, you need to clean up any remaining mess that might be left after. Similarly, the kitchen sees more spills and splotches than any other part of the home, and cleaning them up can be a chore. This is why it’s essential to choose materials that make it easier to clean up after yourself. Rather than wooden countertops, for instance, a new top from Granite Transformations Colchester can make use of the smooth, clean finish of granite, which is a lot easier to wipe clean with a cloth. Similarly, tile floors can be a lot easier to wipe clean than lino. Aside from cost-effectiveness, start thinking about clean-effectiveness when it comes to materials used in the kitchen.

The same goes for appliances too

When you think of designing a mess-free kitchen, your thoughts might primarily be on materials like the counters, the floors, and the backsplashes. However, easy-clean appliances can save you a lot of heartaches as well. Stainless steel might be a lot more convenient on average, but finger-print and smudge resistant stainless steel are going to be a lot easier to keep sparkling. Take a look at some of the suggestions at Ovenclean to see what kind of materials are going to be much easier ot keep clean. Take a closer look at places where you’re supposed to touch the appliances, such as handles, dials, knobs, and buttons and ask yourself if it would be easy to keep them clean.

Give yourself a prep station

If you’re looking at changing your countertops, then you might also want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth out of any renovations you’re planning in more ways. For instance, if you don’t already use your under-countertop storage space in any meaningful way, or you use it partially as wastebin storage, then you might want to look at creating a slide-out food prep station. You can build a butcher block board into the drawer with a hole going through it leading directly to the bin. As such, when you need a place to chop and dispose of food at the same time, you can just slide it out. Keep some wipes nearby to quickly clean it after you’re done and you have a super convenient prep station.

Be open to multitasking

When you’re cooking a meal, you want to make sure that you’re giving every step of the recipe the proper level of attention to ensure that you’re not likely to make any messy or unfortunate mistakes. However, at the same time, you should know when you’re spending time actively working and when you’re spending time simply waiting for the next step of the process. This is often the case if you already have something in the saucepan or the oven. Use an egg timer to keep track of those things so you don’t have to be on constant standby, allowing your multitask and take care of things that demand a little more active attention.

Clean as you go

If you want to make sure you’re not spending as much time cleaning after yourself following a meal, then you should do your best to make sure that you’re cleaning as you go. Once you put one ingredient away, give the counter a quick wipe. Not only will it reduce the clean-up time after the cooking is done, but it will also make sure that you’re avoiding the cross-contamination that can lead to food poisoning by ensuring there’s no food residue left between different steps in the recipe. In that same vein, instead of having to get out a new ingredient with each step, bring out all of your ingredients and get them in reach at the start of the recipe.

The kitchen will always require a bit of additional care compared to other rooms in the home. However, with the tips above, you can ensure that you’re giving yourself a bit of an advantage by making it much easier to give it said care.