Over 2000 questionnaire respondents told us the kitchen is the next least favorite room in the home (after the bathroom) because it’s such a busy place, always being undone; it never stays clean and orderly for long. Working in an overloaded, out-of-control kitchen is self-defeating; maintaining it is time-, energy-, and spirit-consuming.

You’ve probably noticed it’s not only stressful to you, but can also be difficult for others to deal with. That’s why it needs to be streamlined down to the bare bones:

People + kitchen + activities + overload = Mess, confusion, and lack of control. Eliminating the overload reduces the mess factor, removes much of the confusion, and increases the control people have over this area.

The basic idea: set your kitchen up in “centers:” clean-up (sink, undersink cupboard, a drawer or two for dish cloths and towels), cooking, baking, information (if there’s a phone in there), tableware, microwave, pantry, and so on. The “and so on” means that you add to these basic centers according to your lifestyle.

We take lunches to work, so we need a lunch center — you might not. We feed pets in the kitchen, so we need a pet center — you might not. Alice is a walking green thumb so she has a houseplant center in her kitchen — you may not need this. So, for a kitchen that measures up to the demands placed on it, let’s get it “centered.” Here are the basic steps:

STEP 1: Look closely at your living patterns, decide what you’d like to have happen in your kitchen (streamlining and “centering” can create that ideal world), then list these activities. This reveals what “centers” your kitchen needs.

Basic centers are clean-up (kitchen sink, under-sink cupboard, a drawer or two nearby for dish cloths and towels), pantry (cupboards that hold minimal supplies of foods), tableware (for place settings and serving pieces), baking (only if you like to bake — all ingredients and tools and utensils used in baking, including bakeware), cooking (all ingredients and tools and utensils used in cooking, including cookware, plus pot holders), microwave, and so on.

The “and so on” are any other centers germane to your lifestyle. We take lunch to work, so we need a lunch center. We also feed pets in the kitchen, so we need a pet center. Alice tends her houseplants in the kitchen, so she’s incorporated a plant center into the clean-up center under her kitchen sink. Make a list of your needed centers and labels (masking tape works fine) of the centers.

STEP 2: Empty it out — yup, ALL the cupboards, drawers, countertops, EVERYTHING. Then go through all this stuff hunting for what you like, use, need, want, and have room for. Send everything else to either trash (ancient food products for instance), charity, someplace else boxes (keepers that go to other parts of the home), a motor home, cabin, college apartment box, or “our kids may need this” box. Group your “keepers” into like categories.

STEP 3: Wipe out cupboards and drawers and apply new shelf/drawer liner if wanted.

STEP 4: Decide on locations for all your centers. Label each center (temporary — only meant to minimize confusion and speed the job along).

STEP 5: From your stacks of “keepers” find everything appropriate for each center and place these things in their new locations. So in a nutshell, you’ve gotten rid of everything you don’t like, use, need, want or have room for and you’ve assigned what’s left to logical locations (“centers”). Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re just going to put things back where they came from. Chances are, they weren’t in the best locations in the first place.

If you have questions or need more help than what this skinny synopsis provides, talk to us in the Forum. Also, for the real in-depth version, look for Alice’s book, It’s Here…Somewhere (Alice Fulton and Pauline Hatch) on Amazon.com.

Now here’s the bottom line: You will save yourself TONS of time and energy by working in a streamlined and centered kitchen!

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(If YOU have a smart idea, won't you share it? Life is so much easier and we accomplish so much more when we pool our resources. And after all, we're all in this together. So email patty@dvo.com or alice@dvo.com with YOUR Smart Ideas!)

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