Tiny Ways to Clean Your Kitchen in 1 Minute or Less

Few people actually enjoy all of the tasks that come under the umbrella of kitchen cleaning. In addition to washing up, a million other tiny things need to be put away, wiped down, thrown away, composted, recycled, and swept or dusted. It’s an avalanche of tiny tasks that can sometimes feel so overwhelming that it’s easier not to do them at all.

But what if there was a way to get some of them done sometimes? Take a break from the pressure of doing every task every day. If you do some of these chores some days, you can end up with a kitchen that is cleaner overall in the long run.

Try this: Use what is known as a “microwave minute” to complete small tasks in short bursts. Use this time every time you run the microwave to pick a quick task that will make things just that little bit cleaner. (So ​​no, not every “microwave minute” is exactly 60 seconds, but the theory still works.)

Why it works

With the countdown for the timer, you can only focus on one task. When you sit down to eat, your kitchen is a little less disastrous than it was when you started out.

The best thing about the “Microwave Minute” is that it works even if you aren’t cooking properly at all. There are many small kitchen cleaning tasks that you can do even with just heating a mug of water. In fact, the only small kitchen cleaning task you can’t do during a microwave minute is wiping the inside of the microwave.

If the thought of cleaning your kitchen is terrifying, here are 27 little things you can do to get a cleaner kitchen in one “microwave minute”. (Spoiler: # 27 is my favorite).

1. Throw expired food in your refrigerator

Because there’s nothing worse than pulling out a container of something so green and moldy that you can’t even remember what it used to be.

If that feels too overwhelming, try to just pick one thing that you are sure is definitely no longer good and just throw it away. Each progress is a good one microwave minute progress.

2. Make sure everything in your refrigerator door is upright

Choose a shelf in a closet and flip all of the ingredient labels so they are facing the front.

3. Prepare something for tomorrow’s breakfast or lunch

Put it in front of the fridge so you don’t forget about it tomorrow. Or take a minute to write down a meal plan for the week. If you prepare your breakfast or lunch in advance, there will be less clutter to make later.

4. Label all containers with scraps with adhesive tape

Bonus points for adding the date you did them!

5. Rearrange your cheese drawer

Whether or not you actually keep cheese in it. These shallow, deep refrigerator drawers are great for hiding things you’ve forgotten. Take a minute to re-mix and familiarize yourself with the contents.

6. Find the oldest thing in your freezer and throw it away

Admit it, you definitely will never use it!

7. Empty your dish dryer

Someone else tends to keep theirs piled high until all clean things slide back into the dirty sink? Yes. Me too. It turns out that emptying your dish dryer prevents this from happening. And it never takes as long as you think.

8. Wipe your sink faucet

And the inside of the sink. Just because you are cleaning other things here doesn’t mean you don’t need an occasional exfoliator either.

9. Give the drain a bath with baking soda and vinegar

Add 1/4 cup of baking soda down the drain of your kitchen sink, followed by a slow pour of 1/2 cup of distilled white vinegar. (Do something else for 15 minutes, then pour hot water down the drain to clean it.)

10. Clean the place where you keep your sponges

Bonus points for replacing your sponge when it’s dirty (likely).

11. Scrub the extra stubborn pot that you “soaked” in the sink last night

We all do it. No shame in the soaked game. But this is your chance to get it out of the sink and out of your head in 60 seconds. You can do it!

12. Take all utensils out of the sink and put them in the dishwasher

If you hate loading the dishwasher, start with just one part of the job: the cutlery. That way, you don’t have to worry about some of it slipping down the drain (possibly the disposal, yikes) when moving other things around the sink to finish the job later.

13. Wipe the front of your microwave

Especially if your microwave is hanging over the stove – it’s covered in more oil and grease than you’d like to think. Don’t forget to wipe the keys / keyboard too. Just be careful not to accidentally abort your microwave minute or you will have to start over!

14. Wipe the front of your oven

It drips and splatters more than you think. And it’s rarely at eye level, which means you don’t really notice how dirty it is until you look for it.

15. Run the nozzle of your vacuum cleaner under the refrigerator

This is where I always find all my cat’s missing toys.

16. Wipe the drip pan on your favorite stove burner.

In one of my previous apartments, I was so scared of cleaning my electric range until the maintenance crew told me I could literally run the burner coils and drip pans through the dishwasher. Check out your oven model to see the best way to clean it, but it probably isn’t as difficult as you think.

17. Wipe all device handles

And grab the handles on your cabinet while you’re at it.

What brings us to …

18. Sweep under the counters

Onion and garlic peels love to hang out there. Gross.

19. Wipe the counter under your glass with cooking utensils

It’s easy to forget to brush under things when they never move. You don’t have to do this often, but it is good to take 30 seconds every now and then to pull it out of place and clean underneath.

20. Change your kitchen towels

Throw your dirty kitchen towels in the laundry basket and hang up some clean ones.

21. Wipe the area above the stove to remove any build-up of grease and oil

It’s not just the microwave that gets covered in grease – if you have a range hood or cabinets over your stove, it also needs a quick scrub every now and then.

22. Nest your pots and pans from largest to smallest

I hate this job because it’s always so loud, but you’ll feel so much better knowing that the next time you need a small pan it won’t be buried under 5 other heavy pans. Plus, 60 seconds of controlled volume to nest them is better than the unpredictable cacophony that occurs when you remove a small pan from the floor and the rest falls out like you’ve just lost Jenga’s worst game.

23. Nest all your Tupperware together and stack the lids

The endless struggle to keep Tupperware containers organized is universal. The good news is that it only takes about 60 seconds to stack them all again.

24. Peel the top of your wooden cutting board

Sprinkle the surface with a tablespoon of coarse salt and remove stains with the cut side of a lemon. When you’re done, wipe it down and rub the surface with a food-grade mineral oil to keep the wood moist and prevent cracking.

25. Put any stray spice jars back where they went

True story: I once found a glass of bay leaves in the living room. It didn’t belong there!

26. Throw away a spice or herb that you haven’t used in years

Most dried spices and herbs have a shelf life of 3 to 4 years. So if you’ve been moving that same little jar of marjoram from apartment to apartment for half a decade or more, you have my permission to throw it away. (Be sure to save the jar to keep other things.)

27. Eat the last cookie

Yes, the one you saved for some reason. It takes up space. It is delicious. You know you want to eat it. So eat it! Enjoy it! Life is short and your kitchen will be exactly a cookie cleaner.

Rebecca Eisenberg is a freelance food editor at Greatist. She is the voice behind the food blog The Practical Kitchen and recently received her Certificate in Pastry at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts (class of January 2021). She lives in Boston with her husband and two cats.

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