Kitchen counters are perfect for preparing wonderful meals for your entire family. The qualities that make them perfect for this task, however, also make them perfect for collecting clutter. They are in a frequently-used room in your home, right at waist level, and offer plenty of flat, open space to quickly put something down when you've finished with it. Instead of having cluttered, unusable kitchen counters, though, consider a few simple tips to keep them clean and ready for your next cooking masterpiece.
The very first step is to get rid of what you don't need. Do you really need three whisks? Will you use that meat tenderizer again now that you're a vegetarian? Carefully go through the items on your counter, and get rid of everything you know you won't use. Doing this will give you less to clean up in the rest of the process.
After you get down to only the items you absolutely need, and put in cabinets and drawers everything you can, invest in some organizers for the items that must be kept on the counter. To keep these necessities from causing clutter, find specially-made organizers for them, whether it be a tub or holder for utensils, a double-tier fruit bowl for your abundance of fruit, or a hanging rack for all your lids, if the need exists, you can be sure someone has invented an organizer for it.
Secondly, make sure to have organizers for all the other items that collect on your kitchen counters. They key here, though, is to keep those organizers out of the kitchen. Whether it's a letter organizer for new mail, a hook for keys, or a folder for schoolwork, if it has a specific place that everyone knows about, it is much less likely to make it to the kitchen counter.
Third, set aside a specific time on a specific day each week to clean the clutter that does accumulate before it has a chance to become overwhelming. Put it on your calendar for every week on the same day, at a time you're usually not doing anything else. If you do it weekly, the job won't take more than a few minutes. Keeping on top of it will ensure nothing important gets lost at the bottom of piles, and keep the mess from getting to the point that it takes you hours to clean up.
On the other side of this coin, don't beat yourself up if you do get behind on the clutter. Self-doubt and frustration will only make it less likely that you start doing any of these steps at all. So, when your schedule gets crazy and you have to put it off for a day, and that day becomes a week, just pick up where you left off, and enjoy the results when they happen.
While it may seem overwhelming, tackling your kitchen counter clutter step-by-step will give you a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and make it that much easier to whip up your next delectable dish.