Today I spent an hour visiting with my neighbor. It was really pleasant and I enjoyed myself. Then after an hour spent in her kitchen I walked back into mine. Suddenly I could clearly see the crumbs liberally scattered over all the flat surfaces. I could see the dishes on the counter and table left over from both breakfast and lunch. I could see the slopped-and-dried deposits of food all over my stove. It was the same kitchen I’d walked through only an hour earlier without seeing ANY of those things. They were there, but I didn’t SEE them. Why didn’t I see them? It took me less than 30 minutes to load the dishwasher, wipe all the counters, wipe the stove, and sweep the floor. Why didn’t I do those simple chores earlier in the day? I have some mental block about kitchen maintenance. If I’m interrupted before a kitchen job is completely finished, I won’t get back to it until the next time I have to feed myself or the children. And then it is usually crisis feeding which means that instead of cleaning as I go, I shove the mess aside in order to put food into mouths quickly. There are so many other things I’m so good at. How can I learn to be better at this?
5 thoughts on “My Kitchen”
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The way I learned was in food service… you have to clean as you go because if you don’t, you’ll have to clean up before closing anyway. Besides, we used to do a hot plate lunch once a week… and fixing food for 500? Fix one dish, start it baking, broiling, whatever and then go fix the next one. It all has to be ready by 10 am too. But the kitchen was small so if we didn’t clean up, we’d be trying to work on top of one mess while making another. Not a good idea. (A small side note… when we got inspected if we were below 98% both of us felt horribly ashamed. We had the cleanest kitchen in the city.)
For your case, perhaps you could use the time right after a meal to clean… say, while the kids are stil having dessert or digesting or something. Or get them to help… kids love to help in the kitchen, mostly.
Lady, having that always perfect kitchen is a sign of serious family problems (or at least one family member who is an OCD cleaner.) To have a perfect kitchen you have to be a perfect house wife. No one is a perfect housewife, so you have to fake it, which puts stress on you and your family, because “that does not happen in my family” and “My children do not eat seaweed” (in reference to her daughter talking about sushi) (I’ve got a friend with a psycho-mom. believe me it is best to avoid that. You will like yourself better, and most importantly your kids will like you better.)
Instead of the perfect ‘burb kitchen and the perfect ‘burb family, I figure it is better to have the occasional mess and an embarassingly bizzare family. Everyone is happier and 20 years down the line there aren’t any counciling bills. Shove the mess aside, get to it later, have your husband get to it from time to time (I know your kids are really too young to get to the mess still, but their time will come) Make less than perfect cookies. Buy a silicone bunt pan (there is now no excuse for poor bunt cakes. those flexible pans are one of the most wonderful inventions of the 21st century to date, right up there with visible light antennae and ubiquitious personal data storage devices. My little brother could make a decent bunt cake given a recipie and one of those pans and his idea of fine dining is a microwave pizza.) Pax Vobiscum
I don’t expect myself to always have a clean kitchen, but I would like the mess to exist because I chose to do something else not because I failed to notice that it was there.
oh, alright. but sometimes not noticing the mess that is there is a survival/sanity skill, so don’t try too hard to get rid of that ability.
You’re right, repression and denial are vital survival skills for us all. But blindness to mess leads to a pig-sty effect.