Erin is the mother of five children. She home schools them and homesteads in her free time! She makes a lot of her food from scratch also. On top of all this, she keeps a very clean home. She learned how to clean from her mother. {It is SO much easier to be a good housekeeper if you were trained as a child, rather than having to train yourself as an adult! Do your children a favor and train them as children.} I think the greatest obstacle to keeping your home clean is clutter; get rid of it! Erin sounds like a Proverbs 31 woman to me. I love learning from godly women. We need role models in our life and she seems to be a good one. Here are her instructions on how to clean our kitchens ~
Cleaning the home starts with organization. When there is clutter and disorder there is chaos. Order is the KEY to the simple life. When you have a system in place, anything is doable. The trouble is that in order to get the this point, it will take some work and dedication.
The good news is that you can get there one day at a time. One drawer at a time. One cabinet at a time. Trying to conquer the entire home is an unreasonable expectation for any person. It can be done over the course of several afternoon projects. This is not a session that is meant to overwhelm you. Please do not expect this to be an overnight thing. I want to take you on a journey through my home, room by room.
If you take one lesson at a time you can get this under control. Every thing in your home MUST have a Home of its own. Each thing in its place will make keeping your home a breeze. I spend only 20 minutes or less each day in keeping up our home. It is so SUPER EASY, I am just so excited to share something that may ease your burden and make keeping your home such a joy! Once you have a place for everything and you have all the clutter dealt with, it will save you so much time.
Today I will show you how to get started. I like to start with the kitchen because it is the HEART of every home. It is the place where food is prepared and where family will gather to eat a meal together. The first step is to get the cabinets in order. This is cause for some decision making. You need to figure out the best places for your kitchen equipment, dishes, and food items. After you figure that out, you simply take everything out of one cabinet and begin the deep cleaning process.
Because the kitchen is a place where things are cooked, there will be a presence of grease on most every surface. I like making a simple degreasing solution that is both effective and inexpensive.
1 squirt of dishwashing liquid + 2 quarts of hot water = degreasing solution
After you empty the contents of one kitchen cabinet or drawer, you need to decide what stays and what goes. There are many times that I have found outdated things that were growing in my cabinet that needed a one way ticket to the trash can! Sometimes you will find things that you have not used in years. Perhaps it is time to donate it to the local thrift store. Now that the cabinet is empty and by using the degreasing solution, take an old rag and begin wiping down the entire inside of the cabinet, inside the face of the door, the outside of the door, and the door knob of the cabinet. Focus special attention to the knob and around the knob where the finger touch. Fingers not only carry plenty of grime and oils, they carry pesky germs as well. I routinely wipe the knobs in my kitchen which is a very quick job that only take about 4 minutes a day! We have white cabinets and the grime is visible, so I like to stay on top of it. It is not a big deal, you do not have to feel like you must do this each day, but I would recommend doing it occasionally throughout the year.
For fun, I like to put all my spices in glass jars. It looks so nice! I made labels on a piece of card stock with a black pen. To make the labels have a more old fashioned "Grandmother" look, I use cursive writing. Grandma always wrote cursive on all her recipe cards and I have them in my recipe box now since she has passed away. What a special keepsake. After I wrote the spice names on the paper, I cut them out in the same size rectangular pieces. Once I had them cut out, I stuck them on the glass jars with a piece of clear packing tape. Now I can wipe them clean without spoiling my cute labels!
Before returning all the items to the cabinet, give them all a little wipe down with a damp cloth. Place things on the shelf that go together. For instance, put your spices for cooking on one shelf and your baking spices on another. That way you will know just where to find them, thus saving time! Really, all that organizing does for you is save time in the future. I hate wild goose chases! I have wasted many hours in my life looking for things that were put in the wrong place. When you have everything in its place you can find it right away and get to the business you were ready to do.
Stand back and look at your cabinet. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done! A cabinet in the kitchen should only take 10-20 minutes of your day. If you have an hour to dedicate each day, you could get up to 10 cabinets done! That is a really great accomplishment. Soon you will be ready for the next lesson.
She looks well to the ways of her household,
and eats not the bread of idleness.
Proverbs 31:27
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