Speed-Cleaning Your Kitchen

There are many shortcuts and extra efficient methods of keeping your kitchen spotless without spending too much time cleaning every day. This Real Simple magazine article recommends setting up three kitchen to-do lists: daily, weekly, and seasonally.

Daily chores include wiping down the sink, stovetop, counters, and sweep or vacuum the floor. They tally this up as taking 3 minutes and 30 seconds total.

Weekly, Real Simple recommends wiping down backsplashes, appliances, cabinets, garbage can, switchplates and phones. Also, one should mop weekly (about four minutes, the most time consuming of these quick tasks), and wash the dish rack. The weekly tasks add up to about 20 minutes.

Seasonal tasks include deep cleaning and scrubbing of the refrigerator, sink, and other appliances four times per year.

While cleaning isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, using these quick guidelines will decrease your cleaning time to minutes a day – the time it takes to brew your coffee.For motivation, Marla Cilley, author of Sink Reflections, recommended in the article to clean your sink first.

“A sparkling sink becomes your kitchen’s benchmark for hygiene and tidiness, inspiring you to load the dishwasher immediately and keep counters, refrigerator doors, and the stove top spick-and-span, too.”