6 Simple Steps to a Tidy Kitchen

A clean and nice looking  modern kitchen always adds an wow factor in our cozy home. If you have a open concept floor plan for living space, dinning area and kitchen, and kitchen remains messy and dirty, the entire house will earn some bad impression from your visitors. Even if the layout is not open, still we need to keep our kitchen clean and organized for our own convenience and satisfaction. The following is a list of factors that are very important for me to keep my kitchen clean, organized and beautiful:

An organized kitchen: If you do not have an organized kitchen, you or the person who cooks for the family needs to spend some extra time, effort and energy to find stuffs that he needs for cooking. Often it costs patience too. With an organized kitchen you can reduce the amount of time you spend in the kitchen. See more...

Dirty dish free kitchen sink: Kitchen sink should be free from dirty dishes. Instead of cleaning a single dish, we often keep building up the number of dirty dishes in the sink so that we do not need to wash dishes several times a day. But cleaning those dishes take a long time which can be reduced by cleaning those immediately after each use. Also, try to clean kitchen sink at least once a day.
However, if you have a dishwasher and if you usually use that, in that case, instead of accumulating dishes in the sink, keep putting those in dishwasher, sink will remain dish free.

Clean countertops: A kitchen does not look good if you have too many stuffs on countertops. With clean countertops, a  kitchen look nicer and bigger. Make use of kitchen cabinets and drawers and keep the countertops free from stuffs. Having a pantry is a good idea too. If you do not have any of those, try to use shelves and some nice storage boxes.  In order to get rid of dirty residue and to add some shine in your kitchen, wipe off  countertops as often as you feel like cleaning is required.

Clean backsplash: Kitchen backspash get dirty with oils spills and spices very quickly if you prepare fried food regularly. It is a good idea to wipe off backsplash immediately after frying something so that oils and spices do not build up over there. Tiled backspash is lot easier to clean. However, if yours one is not tiled, try to protect it by putting a fire resistant cover.

Clean floor: Try to broom your kitchen floor immediately after cooking. Mopping should be done at least every second day.

Clean kitchen appliances: Maintaining clean appliances (e.g. stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave oven) not too easy. Its costs a lot of time. However, by cleaning the exterior with damp cloth, paper towel/ wipes every day and cleaning the interior with a certain interval will make the kitchen look sparkly from inside and out.

However, it is very difficult for a single person to do and maintain all the work in a kitchen all by himself. On the other hand, keeping the kitchen beautiful  will become lot easier when other family members will get involved to help and share the workload.  Thus, everyone in the home will be able to share the pride for their beautiful kitchen.

Secrets of My Cozy Home

Home is the place where people want to come back, spend time and rest after working outside for whole day. It feels really great to return to a clean and tidy home. To Keep my home tidy I often follow few rules:

1. Avoid buying unnecessary stuffs: I do not buy too much stuffs for my home. I know, sometimes it is really hard to control ourselves from buying things that we like, specially if those are on sale. However, we should buy items only if those are necessary. I believe, the less item I have at my home will cost me less time to maintain. Also, with few items specially, with a less number of room furniture, kitchen supplies and decorative accessories, my house look tidy and specious. 
2. Getting rid of unused items: I often look around  and find stuffs at my home that I have not used for long time. These items are usually either donated or dumped.
3. Getting organized at home: Each and every stuff in my house has its own place. So, if I move something from it's place, as soon as I am done with it's use, I try to put it back to it's own place. I know, If I am not wrong,  it is not easy for most of the people, who are single unless they are extremely organized. But with some practice it is not that tough. And if someone has got a family to live with, it is always better to keep this practice running among all the members. This really reduce a lot of work when I clean the entire house during weekend and allow me to spend time with my family. 
4. Maintaining cleanliness: I maintain schedule of different household works (dusting, mopping, laundry, bathroom cleaning, kitchen cleaning etc) in different days. It helps me to concentrate on a particular work and do it perfectly.
5. Handling mess from kids: I have young kids at home. For kids, by nature, it is not possible to play without making mess. However, they are not allowed to touch the walls with dirty hands, draw/paint on walls, play with play doughs on carpets, etc. And, always after playing, I ask them to help me to keep their toys in proper places so that they learn to love and maintain the coziness of my home.