Eliminating Kitchen Clutter

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:06:00 -0700

by LDS Living staff
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: Simple ideas for clearing your kitchen clutter. Fact: the average homemaker will spend 15 years in the kitchen. If you’re going to be spending all that time there, why not make it a little more relaxing? Try some of these simple strategies for streamlining the most popular area of the house:

Use the wall. Maximize counter space by taking the spoon holders, dish soap, and paper towel dispenser out of the equation. Find suspension rails with accompanying containers, such as those sold at IKEA, which can hang from the rods and hold kitchen tools. Use shelves for bigger or heavier things. To free up some space in your cupboards, hang a pan holder in the ceiling.

Keep the favorites on-hand. On one of those shelves, put attractive containers holding your most used ingredients—flour, sugar, salt, etc.—for easy access. Tape a few of your family’s favorite recipes to a cupboard door near your working space; that way, you won’t have to search through all your cards each time you want to make it.

Clear the cupboards. Go through and identify which mixing bowls, baking pans, strainers, etc., you use the most; get rid of the rest. Chances are, you’re hanging onto a popcorn bowl you haven’t used in ten years.

Stash appliances. With your newly free cupboards, put your blender and stand mixer away. Unless you’re one of the few who use these appliances daily, they’re taking up valuable counter space.

Get an easy-wipe backsplash. A good backsplash will save you clean up time. If you have a beautiful mosaic backsplash, look into taping up a smooth layer of plastic wrap or putting laminate over it.

How to Clean Any Oven

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:07:00 -0600

by LDS Living staff
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: It's that time of year again--oven cleaning! Get ready for the holiday season with a clean oven. The holiday season is approaching and between Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas cookies, and holiday entertaining, your oven is going to be working overtime. Now is the perfect time to prep your kitchen for the season by cleaning out last year's leftovers from your oven.

Safety first: Make sure you follow the instruction manual for your oven.

Next step: Find out what type of oven you have. Is it self-cleaning, textured, or the traditional non-self-cleaning kind.

Self-Cleaning: Lucky you! All you need to do is turn on the "self-clean" mode and wait. Open up windows to allow the smoke to escape and to prevent it from sticking to your walls. When the cycle finishes any residue will have turned into a pile of ash that is easily cleaned up with a wet rag.

Textured: Another easy clean-up, the textured oven's surface is designed to clean as it cooks. A quick wipedown after each time food spills over is all the cleaning this oven needs. Make sure to use gentle cleaning materials, however, as the special surface is easily scratched.

Non-Self-Cleaning: It's time to break out the oven cleaner and scrubbing brush. Also, baking soda is really good at soaking up grease and oily stains. A good way to avoid this in the future is to cover the bottom with aluminum foil to catch any drippings, just make sure not to block any vents or you could have a fire on your hands.

Happy cooking!

Mormon Life - Cleaning tag

Eliminating Kitchen Clutter

How to Clean Any Oven