Create a practice before cooking
Suggested Equipment
Apron
Sponge or paper towel
Broom or vacuum
Swifter or mop
Cleaning solutions of your preference
Suggested Tools
Music to move your hips
Open curtains or windows to welcome natural sunlight
Organic incense, essential oils, or smudge to relax sensory
Description
Every professional kitchen starts by ensuring that safety and sanitation procedures are understood and implemented. The day begins and ends with cleanliness. From the protocols of uniform standards to changing the sanitation buckets every two hours or sooner if necessary. It shows pride, but more importantly, we understand we work in an industry where people rely on us to keep their well-being in mind as we prepare food for them. The home we cook in is no different.
When we cook for our loved ones, especially ourselves, we can easily let go of the formalities of sanitation. As long as what we need to cook at that moment is clean and available, it is go time! And that’s great, do what you can. This serves only as a reminder that you can enhance your performance by carefully cleaning your home and yourself. The kitchen is a magical workshop where we turn raw items from a garden into unrecognizable shapes and styles by hand, changing from cultures and generations. Why wouldn’t we create the environment most conducive to letting that process freely flow?
It may not be as obvious how this will also clean us, but it benefits your sense of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
What you see can reflect how you think, and if your space is full of clutter or things thrown or placed anywhere, that nonchalance may carry over into your cooking but, more importantly, become daunting to your peace of mind. The music, of course, activates the senses of sound and sets the tone for vibrational uplift. That is why it is important to choose music that will bring you into wholeness and not distortion. When it comes to smell, we don’t have to wait to react to what we notice but mold the environment around us to the scents we desire. Think to how your behavior changed from the smells coming from the trash bag out of the garbage can vs warm cookies out of the oven. Cooking with dirty appliances not only sounds gross, but it can affect the taste of your food. There’s also something unsettling about the feeling of sticky cabinet doors, seasoning bottles, and dusty shelves. Lastly, this brings us to touch. The focus isn’t just skin maintenance but our emotional response to the unsettling nature of finding dirty items by hand unexpectedly. Why wasn’t the honey jar wiped down after the last use, leaving the bottle sticky and the top hard to open?
Overall, these minor occurrences that we may ignore from time to time build up to being annoying. Depending on where you are in your discovery of the influence of our five senses on your health journey, it is worth your time to learn how to improve your sensory health at a low cost and as effectively as possible. This is only the beginning!
Instructions
- Turn on your favorite playlist or relaxing sounds of your choice. Sometimes, I switch from songs that I can sing along to to instrumentals or sounds found in nature. Light the incense or essential oils in an area that will circulate through the kitchen and around the neighboring areas of your home.
- Begin cleaning from the top of the room, starting with the cabinets and working your way down. Take items off each shelf, wipe them down, and place them back on clean shelves. You are cleaning the inside of the doors as well as the outside. As you go through each item, check for expiration dates and freshness. I won’t tell you to throw anything away, but unless you want to turn into a mutant ninja turtle or something else that lives underneath the city, I’d suggest you do!
- Continue this thorough process around the room of your kitchen cabinets above and below. Carefully notice what is used and unused, expired, double purchased, and forgotten about.
- Continue this process with your refrigerator going through the shelves and being careful not to leave anything out for too long, as this is a quicker area to work through.
- When cleaning your stove, make sure it is not turned on, and you can leave the doors open to release the fumes.
- Finally, leaving the floors for last, we will sweep or vacuum behind any kitchen area where an appliance can be pulled out, such as the stove, and then the main areas—afterward, a brief mop to remove contaminants remaining.
Future Planning
Once you are finished, use a calendar of your choice to keep a cleaning schedule for your kitchen that aligns with your life schedule:
- Daily: Clean dishes, inside of sink, and countertops, including used microwave or stove, and sweep.
- Weekly: Wipe cabinets and draws for fingerprints and stains. Straighten inside cabinets when putting away new purchases.
- Bi-weekly: Clean refrigerator from spills and debris.
- One to Three Months: Deep clean major counter appliances such as a coffee machine, refrigerator, microwave, and oven.
- Six Months: Keeping up a routine like this makes the seasonal deep clean much quicker since everything is monitored frequently. However, if you cannot keep up a regular cleaning schedule, then follow the instructions every six months to keep the kitchen and your head space around it organized.
What are your routines for cleanliness? If you decide to try any of these suggestions out, tell me what you think!