by Lisa Pearce

Created on: February 09, 2009

The evening went well. Dinner was perfect and everyone had at least one second helping. It's with a happy sigh that you finally close the front door behind the last guests as they depart. And then you turn back toward the kitchen and for a fleeting second consider joining kitchen-cleaners-anonymous, or worse! O the horror of the aftermath!

I have a little saying about my kitchen: a clean kitchen is a dangerous thing. It's just waiting to get dirty again! Clearly I needed some way to overcome my cleaning aversion so I've solidified three general rules to ease the burden of cleaning my kitchen:

1) Plan the sequence: if you're busy measuring ingredients, try to measure dry ingredients before wet ingredients. That way you can use the same measuring cup/spoon to measure different ingredients, instead of dirtying a number of cups/ spoons.

2) Clean-as-you-go: While I'm cooking I'm constantly rinsing out mixing bowls and cooking utensils and leaving them in the sink. This prevents clutter and prevents smells lingering in the kitchen. Dirty items destined for the dishwasher get rinsed and stacked there immediately. Also, I keep a cloth handy to wipe up spills as they occur.

3) Do it now: if a small cleaning chore needs to be done, I try to take the two seconds to do it, instead of leaving many small chores to become a mountain.

Not even the most disciplined "household technician" gets it right all the time, so what chance does a full-time career woman have? And I am no clean-house angel, trust me! So there are a set of plan B rules as well:

1) If all else fails, leave the mess to become a mountain. Then set aside only one hour to clean it and do the full monty. Make sure other home occupants are either out of the way or actively participating in the effort! When you start cleaning, stay focused and make sure you finish in the allocated time!

2) Start with one task, like collecting dirty dishes from rooms, and finish it before moving to the next task (rinsing out said dirty dishes etc).

3) Leave washing the floor for last until everything else is done.

Then there is my ONE GOLDEN RULE that can not be broken, no matter what. Let me first explain the origin of this ONE RULE. We are outdoorsy people who like to spend weekend afternoons around a braai (South African tradition quite like a barbeque!). When we run out of gas for the gas braai, or when it's only the two of us at home, we use an electric braai. The electric braai has an element inside a hollow drip-tray and a stainless steel grill on top. The drip-tray is filled with water and the height of the grill can be adjusted according to the heat requirement of the meat.

The electric braai is terrific if you just want to have a quick lunch or impromptu get-together with friends. It has only one drawback: the fat/ sauce from the meat drips into the water in the drip-tray nothing, but nothing, compares to the smell of a dirty electric braai left in the kitchen overnighthence the ONE RULE: empty the drip-tray before leaving the dirty kitchen for tomorrow!

Alas, even the best laid plans fail surprisingly often. I think God gave me a kitchen to keep me grounded! So I've learned to be a little kinder to myself and my fellow kitchen-users too. A little grace and humour goes a long way. Rejoice when your kitchen is clean: be thankful for the evidence of your well-fed clan when it's dirty. Take courage in the knowledge that a dirty kitchen is just waiting to get clean again!

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