The homey goodness of family life is most often nurtured in the kitchen. Here, we gather to savor delicious meals together and enjoy relationships that matter most important to us. Unfortunately, because the kitchen is Grand Central Station to both food and family, it’s one of the hardest areas to keep clean.
A chronically messy kitchen doesn’t promote peace and calm, and trying to cook among a clutter of dirty dishes is downright overwhelming – especially during the holidays. That’s when baking special cookies, preparing more elaborate meals and taking on other traditions can seriously undermine the cleanest of kitchens.
We discovered a terrific article on simplemom.net by Aimee Wimbush-Bourque, mom and former chef. What makes it so valuable is Aimee’s Clean As You Go (C.A.Y.G.) method comes straight from her days in cooking school. We love how her process aims at creating a calmer, more smoothly running kitchen, ultimately better nurturing our families.
Day One of cooking school introduced me to “clean as you go”: the practice of combining cooking and cleaning to help free up valuable work space, eliminate visual mess, and make for manageable post-cooking clean-up.
Since then, I have rigorously embraced the clean as you go motto for all cooking and baking, ensuring that I clean up after every task, no matter how minuscule, before moving on — thus eliminating the bomb-struck kitchen after dinner.