Plus, a clean kitchen will make you feel better, Mehas says. “It makes you feel less overwhelmed if you complete the whole dish situation once and for all and can move on. It just clears your mind.”
The mother of three also vacuums her kitchen once or twice a day and mops every night before going to sleep. “You just feel so healthy and clean, and [then] you can relax for the rest of the night,” she adds.
What cleaning supplies should be used to clean a kitchen?
Typically, a damp cloth with a cleanser or soapy water will remove residual splatter. But you might want to invest in specialty cleaners for quartz countertops, marble countertops, and stainless steel, Dieul says. Be careful with bleach and ammonia, as these chemicals can damage various materials, including marble. For hardened food debris, he suggests mixing baking soda with soap and scrubbing away. You can even put your own DIY solution into a spray bottle.
Dieul leans toward eco-friendly kitchen cleaning products for his worktop. “You have to be careful with the products you use in the kitchen, especially the surfaces where you prepare your meals,” Dieul says. “They need to be clean, but at the same time, don’t use products that can be harmful to the the food you prepare.”
Mehas agrees that often all you need is soapy water and a microfiber cloth to get started on cleaning your kitchen.
What are the six important areas to look into when cleaning your kitchen?
If you’re embarking on a deep clean, there are six important areas to pay attention to: the sink, countertops, large appliances, small appliances, refrigerator, and floors.
Cleaning a kitchen: Your step-by-step guide
Below, we’ll walk you through how to tackle each of these areas in our step-by-step guide on how to clean a kitchen.
Step 1: Get into the right mindset for kitchen cleaning
The first step to kitchen cleaning is to shift your mentality. If you walk into your kitchen with a sense of dread, it’s going to be harder to clean, Mehas says. “You got to get that out of your mind.”
“Put on good music and get yourself in a mindset that you’re going to get it done.” Often people overlook this mental step before getting started on kitchen cleaning, she adds.
Step 2: Declutter or find a place for anything left out
Begin cleanup by decluttering your kitchen space. “The more clutter you have around you, the less effective your cleaning will be,” Dieul says. Load dirty dishes into the dishwasher and clear countertop clutter. Organize any cookware, throw away or recycle empty jars, replace the paper towel roll, put out a laundered dish rag and kitchen towels, and refill the handwashing soap on the kitchen sink. Once you remove unnecessary items, you’ll actually be able to see the debris that needs to go.
If you’re finding that you don’t have a place for everything that’s currently sitting out in your kitchen, Mehas says it might be time to throw it away. “Everything has a place, and if it doesn’t have a place, it goes in the trash,” she says of her own home. Items that are used only on occasions, such as a roasting pan for Thanksgiving, can be tucked away outside of the kitchen if needed.
Step 3: Pull out anything that needs to soak
A successful deep clean involves some forward-thinking. Mehas suggests pulling out oven racks, metal grills, and air vent filters, and soaking them in the sink while you’re cleaning other areas of the kitchen. Metal stove grates in particular tend to get grubby quickly. This will soften any debris or buildup so you won’t need to do as much heavy-duty scrubbing later. “You can fill up your kitchen sink with some warm soapy water and stick whatever you need in there and let it soak while you clean everything,” she explains.
