Oh, how the clutter in the kitchen drives me bananas!! For some reason, clutter builds up quickest in the kitchen. It really is entertaining when I pile up ALL of the things I find! I set it up on the table and make the kids go through it, because most of the time, it’s toys of theirs or random stuff they didn’t want to find a home for, or feathers they are collecting – like sheesh!

Get it out of my kitchen!

I have one side of my kitchen, I hesitantly admit, I have probably only seen the true counter a handful of times since our big renovation…in 2013!!! That’s like…8 years! How awful is that!? I love cooking and baking, and making stuff with the kids, and decorating cakes and using my big new-ish kitchen! But I have hardly been able to maximise it’s space for good reason…rather than as a catchall for basically, EVERYTHING!

So, I decided to take a step back, and ask myself; what is it that builds up? What are we missing in order to make it not pile up in the kitchen? What system or systems do we need so that clutter is dealt with BEFORE it even gets into the kitchen.

This is what I was staring at….for days….trying to figure it out…

• 

Toys, papers, food, random box of I don’t know what, drinks that never made their way to the basement. The number of times that I had to shift stuff, so that I could use the microwave is ridiculous! The moral of the story is that a lot of the stuff on my counter, shouldn’t even be in the kitchen!!

Every time I clean up the entire kitchen, I get to enjoy it for a few days, then it looks like this within a week! How is that possible?

I started to think.

I was thinking about how everything will always inevitably come into the kitchen! I mean, in our house, it’s the first open space, it’s the first “landing zone” of counter/table space, it’s the easy place for kids to reach, it’s where we drop papers to follow up with – ahem* because then it’s easy to find! Ya, right!

It’s truly, the main place of neglect!

When evening comes, and the kids are finally sleeping – the last thing I wanna do is deal with all this clutter…so then it goes another day. Maybe a little gets tidied, but stuff always piles on faster than we can deal with it.

Rather than coming up with a million new systems that may or may not actually create better efficiency in the house, I decided to examine our habits a little more closely.

Writing in my blog has also helped me to really think about how we use our time, and what is most important. I just don’t wanna stress about the kitchen at bedtime, I want to relax and still come down to a clean kitchen for my coffee in the morning.

So I said, “enough is enough! I gotta clean this so that I can keep cleaning it!”

Low and behold, a little determination, a lot of motivation, and a good chunk of time…

• 

Everyday I will use this bit of countertop to load all the things that don’t belong. It may get cluttered during the day – come bedtime it ALL GOES!

It’s just gotta get out of the kitchen!

A clean kitchen makes a big deal! It makes me feel like I am not suffocating! It’s one of the areas of my house that can truly impact my entire day. When it’s cluttered, I feel disorganized with my whole life. When it’s cluttered, I feel like I can’t make healthy meals! When it’s cluttered, I don’t want to bake! When it’s cluttered, I don’t even want to be in my own house!

Now, I can sit back and actually enjoy my coffee in the morning. If I want to do some batch cooking, I can set it up all over the kitchen! If I want to bake, I can set up so many trays of cookies!

What is the one area of your house that you just can’t cope with if it’s messy? Maybe it’s not your stuff, maybe it’s life’s way of begging for a habit change.

Thanks for coming home!