A year of cleaning the Kitchen

 I made it a goal this year to clean the kitchen every Saturday for an entire years.  I just want to preface this post with "this is not a cleaning post and I do not consider myself as an expert cleaner. "  I will never say "it is not clean until..."  because most likely I didn't do it.

I will start with the assumption "If I tell everyone that I am cleaning the kitchen every Saturday, everyone will just leave all the dishes for Saturday for me to do."  In part that was true.  My wife did plan dinners depending on what pans were clean towards the end of the week. The kids complained when they had to load the dishwasher, but they always do that.  I also found myself falling into another assumption.  "Do I want to have the fight with the kids to clean the kitchen or do I just wait until Saturday to do it."  It would be easier and less of a fight.  I think that happened just as often.

About the floor.  There are two philosophies that I have heard.  One is that you sweep the floor before cleaning the kitchen so you don't worry about the water that gets on the floor.  The other is that you sweep the floor after you are done, so you can wipe things onto the floor and then sweep it up.  I am efficient (that is what I will call it), so the latter was more appealing.  Besides, sweeping water is like mopping the floor, right?

When I cleaned was determined early on.  I tried to clean the kitchen before the kids woke up.  This way it was done before the breakfast dishes and before the three tornados come through.  Later in the day made it hard to get the motivation to do it.  I also made a point to clean the kitchen before I did any woodworking in the garage.  It is the philosophy of get what you don't want to do first.  I was hoping that my kids would get this concept.  They did not.

I hoped that this goal would do a couple of things.  The first would be a cleaner kitchen and it did that pretty well.  If I had done the deeper cleans periodically it would be better, but I am lazy.  I hoped it would set an example of work for my kids and show them to get things done early and consistently makes the job easier.  That did not happen.  They still do not understand why they have to do things they hate to do.   I was also hoping that with a clean kitchen the rest of the house would not be too bad so we could invite other over to meet new friends.  I think everyone knows how that went in the year 2020.

I don't know if I will continue this through the next year.  It was a good thing for me to do and it was somethings that I could accomplish over and over again.  What will next year bring, I don't know.