Be Ready for Quick Clean-ups

There are likely some places in the home that are more prone to messes than others where you may want to be prepared for quick clean-ups.  The kitchen is an obvious one, but your bathroom is another one place that has frequent spills and messes especially if you have little ones.  If you have pets or frequent company, the most-used entrance might be the place that constantly where messes happen often.  If you have a wee one, it may be where they feed or play, or where they get their diapers changed.

Think of places in your home that spills and messes happen most often.  And when that inevitably happens are you running to your an upstairs closet or the laundry room to get the supplies?  What shoud take 30 seconds to mop up could take 5 minutes or more as you hunt for products around the house, clean up the mess that has since spread to 3 rooms because of a toddler or pet trampling through it, and then return them to there rightful place.  

Try keeping the most common cleaning supplies in the areas that are prone to these messes and spills.  You don't need to stock each space with every cleaning product you'll ever need; just the most common one or two that would be effective at cleaning that area's most common spills.  That mess will invariably happen.  Next time you will be prepared.

DONE Project (DO it Now, Everyone!):  Make sure those little messes can stay little messes instead of becoming an inconvenient ordeal!  Get those most regularly used products into those spaces today.  I doubt it will be long before you are glad you did. 

Reduce Trips to the Garbage Can with this Great Tip

This is such a tiny little kitchen tip, but I had to include it because after doing it you will wonder why you didn't do it before.

Place a large bowl on the countertop where ever you are working.  Everytime you need to throw something out, toss it into the bowl.  When you are all finished your preparation work toss all the contents of the bowl into the garbage.  In doing so you will save yourself several trips to the garbage can.

Not only that, you will not be dirtying your floors and cabinetry door handles as you try to transfer mucky things into the garbage bin, and leaving grimey finger prints as you try to open the cupboard to access your bin.

I also leave a foil tray on the counter for all of our compostable waste.  We recieved a countertop container from the city for this purpose, but we found the container to large, bulky and a bit of an eye-sore.  Right after every meal or meal preparation I dump the contents of the tray into the green bin.  This is important since the compostable material is not in a closed container, and you don't want a problem with fruit flies.  I usually line the tray with a papertowel or wax paper because those are compostable materials and they help make cleanup a snap, but they are not necessary if you really don't want the added waste.  We rinse the tray after every use and wash it daily. 

If the thought of a tin tray on your counter doesn't light you up, choose a lovely bowl instead.  There is no reason garbage can't look pretty!