Spring Cleaning Your Kitchen

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Ah, spring! Flowers, green grass, birds singing….pollen, mud, rain. Good side and bad side, right? If you’re like me, you considering spring cleaning to be a good thing! I love getting the house back in shape after a long winter trapped inside. What if you don’t like spring cleaning? Do you still do it? If you spring clean no other area of your house, make sure you give your kitchen a bit of an overhaul. As we are coming into grilling season, vacations, and spontaneous runs to the ice cream stand, it is very handy to have your kitchen in tip top shape. It makes those quick dinners and being gone much easier. If you don’t know where to start or just really hate spring cleaning, follow my tips to make it a more manageable task.

Spring Cleaning Your Kitchen

Empty your pantry

The first thing to do is to go through your pantry. Get rid of anything that is expired, chips that have been opened forever, etc. Donate any unopened food you know you’re not going to eat. If you’re not going to eat it and it’s already opened, toss it! Now is also a perfect time to rotate your items.  Get that pantry in good shape for summer-y foods. We tend to keep more soup on hand in the winter for quick meals after church or illnesses. In the summer, there’s more things like canned baked beans and chips for sandwiches.

Wipe down shelves

While you are going through your pantry, take the time to wipe down the shelves. Clean up any dust and spills. Do the same thing with your other cabinets. It might look clean but you’d be surprised by the amount of dust that can get in a closed cabinet.

Get ride of unused items

As you are taking things out of cabinets and wiping down shelves, make a pile of items you never use. 6 travel mugs but only ever use the same 3? Donate the ones you don’t use (or throw away if you don’t use them due to being broken or worn out). Specialty baking pans you were gifted but have never used in the 3 years since you received it? Donate. Just don’t get rid of those few things your husband uses when he goes hunting or fishing or his favorite set of coffee mugs. Even if he hasn’t used them in 4 years, he will be mad. Trust me on this. Not that I know from personal experience or anything…;)

Clean the top of your cabinets

If your cabinets have space between the top and the ceiling, get it clean. If it’s just a small space, use the vacuum or a duster. When you have a significant space and even use it for storage, wipe it down. Grease and dust get up there like you wouldn’t believe! It can be quite gross. If you don’t have shelf paper up there, take the time to do it. You will appreciate it later.

If it’s been more than a few years since you last papered, replace it. It is so, so much easier to wipe down when the paper isn’t too old. When I painted my kitchen cabinets a few years ago, I discovered the tops of them hadn’t been cleaned in at least 10 years. It took a long time to scrape up the dirty grease. Yes, scrape. With it cleaned up and papered, it now takes me about 10 minutes to wipe them all down.

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Clean your vent hood

This is another place that gets dirty and greasy. My method to clean it is to soak the filter in hot vinegar water, dump it out, refill the pan, and turn the filter the other way. I have nothing that will fit the whole filter at a time. I then rinse it really well with clean, hot water. I’ve seen a post that says to stick it in a pot of boiling water and baking soda but none of my pots are quite big enough.

Clean your fridge and stove

Clean it all! Wipe down the top, wipe down the handle and any spills on the front, clean under it, clean the coils. Get your fridge working the best it can. A clean fridge works best, particularly the coils. With your stove, move it out and clean under it. I also clean my sides as I am forever dropping stuff between the stove and counters. (I really need to finally get myself some of these). I don’t include cleaning the oven or cleaning inside the fridge in my spring cleaning because that is one of those “as needed” things in my opinion.

 

Following these spring cleaning steps, you’ll have a kitchen ready for summer in no time! If it is too much to do in one day, split it up over a few days. Now, instead of wondering what really needs to be done and where you start, you have a guideline. Whether it takes you one day or a week, the important thing is that you stay focused and get it done!

 

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