10 Minute Clean Up: Kitchen Tip
Your kitchen is a mess and you are exhausted or you have a million other things vying for your attention. What do you do?
Try asking yourself how much time you think you can give to cleaning up. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? Whatever little amount of time you have, commit to giving your all to the task during that time.
Then set a timer and get to work. You will probably be surprised at how much you can get done during a short amount of time.
Even if your kitchen is not perfectly clean, it will be greatly improved, and there will be less to clean up later.
Do you have a kitchen tip on your blog (or not) to share? Fill out my Kitchen Tip Form to submit it.
Happy Valentine’s Day!!
Clean Spills as You Go: Kitchen Tip
This week’s tip is from Margaret. She says,
Keep a wash cloth handy when cooking. Wipe up splatters as they occur, before they get cooked on. When boil ups get down into drip pans, I spoon on some baking soda, let cool and set them to soak and wash right away.
I love this idea of cleaning up messes when they happen. I don’t always do it, but Margaret is right. It’s easier to clean before the spill gets cooked on or even before it sits and dries out.
If you would like me to link to a kitchen tip on your blog, or if you have a tip you would like to share here, fill out my Kitchen Tip Form.
Guest Post: 5 Reasons To Eat Clean For Life
Looking for motivation to eat clean? Post these reasons on your fridge and carry them in your purse for motivation while grocery shopping. While it is a lifestyle adjustment, you’ll realize the benefits of eating clean very quickly. Remind yourself of these reasons to eat clean whenever you feel your motivation waning:
1. Live Longer
A myriad of health problems—from cancer to heart disease and obesity—are linked to the consumption of processed foods and foods exposed to pesticides. To reduce your vulnerability to health problems, eat as cleanly as possible. Those who eat clean have:
- Lower incidence of cancer (1/3 of cancer incidences can be linked to poor diet)
- Lower incidence of diabetes (over ½ of diabetes incidences can be linked to poor diet)
- Lower incidence of heart disease (doctors recommend dietary changes to heart patients because they know diet and heart disease are scientifically linked)
2. Protect Your Children
In particular, you’ll want to protect your children, who are more vulnerable to the effects of pesticides, preservatives, and other chemicals often found in unclean food. Children are innocent, and you are shaping their eating habits for life. If you bring them up living on chicken nuggets and french fries, they’ll have much harder time training themselves to eat healthfully in the future. Help them develop a taste for healthy, whole foods, and protect their vulnerable bodies from the influences of chemicals and processed foods.
3. More Energy
When you eat clean foods, you have access to more nutrition, better digestion, and lasting energy. You’ll experience fewer blood sugar spikes (which are often associated with processed foods, especially those high in sugar or simple carbohydrates), which means you’ll feel fewer spikes and crashes in energy throughout the day.
4. Better Skin
Clean foods support healthier skin, hair and nails. Want to look great? Munch on a carrot stick instead of Snicker’s bar and drink a glass of water with lime instead of a soda full of chemicals and sugar, which can aggravate skin.
5. Lose Weight
Clean foods fill you up, meet your nutritional needs, and help reduce sugar and fat cravings. You won’t want to eat junk once you’ve gotten used to living without it, and you’ll find it easier to say no to temptation.
The bottom line is this: If you want to live longer, feel better, and look better, you’ll eat clean. Keep your motivation cards where you can see them and make the change to clean eating. You won’t regret it!
About the author:
Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for CollegeGrants.org. She has a Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Delaware, and has recently finished research on education grants for adults and scholarships and grants for single mothers.
Eating Clean with Children
Question of the day: What are some really good starting out eating clean recipes for toddlers and family of 4?
Clean Eating is not as daunting or difficult as it may seem. In fact, once you start living this life style and slowly changing your eating, clean eating helps to simplify your meal time! 
Now remember – clean eating has many definitions depending on who you ask. To me it simply means: To eat from the Earth. But can it really be that simple while still pleasing a family of 4?
Yes. But transition slowly. Introduce new foods at every meal, and help your family become educated about their food choices. By showing them hard facts about the ever so “popular” foods they are used to consuming they will start to appreciate the simplistic foods we all often forget about. Like carrots, beets, baby spinach and beans.
When a person wants to start eating clean, the first piece of advice I give them is to make sure you have enough information. Read and research until you are blue in the face! This will help anyone understand that Eating Clean is not a diet. It’s a lifestyle change. It’s not about deprivation, counting calories or having cheat days. Clean Eating changes the way you look at food, and helps you to understand that healthy, wholesome food is as much of a necessity in our life as the air we breath and the water we drink. 
You can read my entire Clean Eating Philosophy here.
I love Tosca Reno’s books. They are much more than cookbooks; they are a guide to help this journey be painless and enjoyable! She describes the foods we should be eating and the poisons we need to be eliminating. You will be surprised at how easy the recipes are, how delicious they can taste and how simple this way of life is.
Kids can be the worst critiques, though. Believe me, I know first hand! A few simple moves can warm your children to the idea of no more fast food and (gasp) more veggies!
- Get them involved. Help them create the grocery list or give them a few items of their own to shop for. Children love to help! and the more they are involved the better they will be willing to accept something new.
- Inspire the “little chef” inside of them. Look through cook books, have your child pick a recipe, then get cooking! You will be surprised at what your child really does or doesn’t like as far as food. When they make choices and decisions that shows them you have trust in them, and they will feel proud that they were able to help feed the entire family.
I hope these small suggestions help your new journey to eat healthier! I wish you the best of luck and years full of good eats!
Keeping a Clean Kitchen: Walls & Doors
I’m going to give you a heads up now that there will be no kitchen cleaning task for December. We all have enough going on with the holidays and will likely be doing extra cleaning anyway.
November’s task is to clean your walls, doors, and door frames.
A funny thing happens when I’m getting ready for company. I suddenly notice dirt that I don’t notice any other day. The walls and doors in particular are a place where I notice it.
If you have kids, you know how easily walls get dirty. There are hand prints and smudges, dirt from shoes and feet, and food. Even with bigger kids, I am sometimes amazed at the places on the wall (or ceiling) where I find food. I find myself wondering, “What were they doing!?!” But that’s life with three boys!
Even if you don’t have kids, kitchen walls get splashed and spattered on when we cook and clean. And if you have pets, they can leave their own mark on the walls.
Let’s Get Cleaning:
- Use a good grease cutting cleaner like
- Focus on problem areas such as hand level for kids, body level for pets, backsplash areas where you cook, and door handles.
- If a little extra help is needed you can try using a
Disclaimer: I am compensated for purchases made through the affiliate links in this post.
Clean Kitchen Update: Microwave & Toaster Oven
October’s Clean Kitchen Task:
Cleaning the microwave is something that needs to be done on a regular basis. I don’t actually use the microwave very much because I prefer to heat leftovers in my
To keep spattered food from building up and getting baked on, I try to clean the microwave often. Covering your food when you heat it also helps to keep down spatters.
One of the areas that I find most difficult to clean in the microwave is the top part on the inside of the oven. Since my microwave sits above my stove, reaching and applying enough pressure to the top is just a bit awkward. Here is a picture of some of the grime I found on it this week.
I gave it a good cleaning and used a toothpick to remove gunk from the groove of the large circle and the little circle. After I had it looking nice and clean I snapped another picture only to see in the picture that I still hadn’t gotten it all! Maybe the camera is a good tool to use when cleaning. It has a way of magnifying imperfections.
Anyway, I went at it again and finally got it all clean.
Keeping a Clean Kitchen: Microwave & Toaster Oven
October’s clean kitchen task shouldn’t be too time consuming. All you have to do is thoroughly clean any small ovens you have such as a microwave oven, toaster oven, or other countertop oven.
I do not have a toaster oven, but I do have a
Most of us own a microwave oven, so here is what I recommend when cleaning it thoroughly:
- Remove the glass plate and wash it thoroughly
- Remove the loose piece with wheels (if yours is loose) and wash that thoroughly. Otherwise wipe off the wheels as best you can.
- Use a natural cleaner such as
- If your microwave sits on the counter top, unplug it and pull it out. Clean the back and underside of the oven.
- If your microwave hangs over your stove, be sure to clean the underside well.
- You might want to use a toothbrush to clean areas where there are grooves or vents.
Clean Kitchen Update: Floor & Baseboards
September’s deep cleaning task is to
I think I’m going to look for a colored sealer that I can put on it that would be slightly darker than what it is now, not show the dirt as much, and clean up better. Any suggestions?
So, I scrubbed half of the grout and the other half will get done this week. I still need to give the baseboards a good cleaning. I have a long rectangular kitchen which I split in half lengthwise to clean the grout. In this picture you can see that the grout on the right side has been cleaned, and the grout on the left has not.
Keeping a Clean Kitchen: Floor & Baseboards
I’m sorry I’m a few days late getting September’s cleaning task out to you. This month we will focus on cleaning your kitchen floor and baseboards.
Depending on your kitchen, this might be really easy or quite time consuming. For me, it’s time consuming because it means
My tips for this task:
- Get on your hands and knees. Mops are great, and I love them, but I don’t think they do as good a job as a hands & knees scrubbing.
- Use
- Use a scrub brush to get dirt that a mop misses.
- Clean your baseboards while you’re down there.
- Give your baseboards a paint touch-up if needed.
- If you have a large kitchen, clean the floor in sections if it’s too much for one day.
Remember, this is meant to be a deep cleaning. Take your time and do it really well!
Clean Kitchen Update: Inside Lower Cabinets
I forgot to give you an update last week, and now August is almost over. I know some of you really enjoy these cleaning challenges, so I want to encourage you to keep going with it.
For the most part, my lower cabinets tend to stay pretty neat and clean, so this wasn’t a difficult month for me. There is one double cabinet, however, that contains a mixture of items and tends to get messy.
I have a large shelf that goes across the top of the cabinet and down below I have two pull outs that allow for easier access to items in the back. One pull out contains my grain mill, some rice for milling, and a couple of dog supplements. I know the dog supplements seem random, but that’s where I had room for them.
The pull out on the other side contains gluten-free goodies. That part was established after my son went gluten-free. It helps to have cereal, crackers, and cookies in a place where he can easily find them.
The shelf contains mostly baking pans and a few other miscellaneous items. It also seems to be a place where I shove things to get them out of the way.
So mostly I worked on organizing this cabinet. It doesn’t really look a whole lot better in the “after” photo, but that’s because you can’t see into the cabinet well in these photos. It doesn’t help that my photo is blurry either. Just trust me. It really is better organized.