This week I found an almost painless way to keep a kitchen looking clean all the time.

If you know me, you know I’m not really the guy you would naturally go to for tips on anything in the kitchen. I can boil an egg though. I proved it this week – two actually, and they were delicious.

My kitchen and culinary skills have never evolved to any extent and it may be due to always having someone in my life who had those skills.

It’s not that I dislike cooking, it’s that I don’t really know how to do it. I’m okay with a BBQ, and that’s probably what saved me this week.

I was away at our cottage ALONE doing my yearly planning, so I had to fend for myself in the kitchen. Almost all my meals consisted of using the BBQ.

The meals turned out tasty … with all the food groups represented in some sort of fashion.

However, with cooking there also comes cleaning. I never thought they went hand in hand before, but that was because we had a dishwasher.

The dishwasher is neat; you put the dishes in it and the kitchen looks clean.

There was a time when our dishwasher broke down and I was forced to do dishes with my wife. It was a trial and it was traumatic. I wrote a few blog posts about it (you can read them here).

This week I started off ignoring the fact that I needed to wash the dishes. I soon realized you can only do that for a couple of meals. Then the dishes pile up in the sink until you can’t get any more in and they spill over onto the counter.

So I decided to try something. When I started a meal I would run water in the sink and throw some dish soap in. Then, as I made my dinner, when I was finished with something, I would run it through the water, swish it with a cloth, and place it on the drying rack.

By the end of the meal, I only had a few things to clean up. I would quickly wash them and then dry them all with a towel.

It was simple – almost painless. I never stood over the sink for more than a few minutes and best of all, the kitchen virtually looked clean all the time.

It was amazing. I never went by the kitchen trying to avert my eyes from the mess. I never got that nagging feeling of “I’ve got to get at the dishes”.

Like a home with a built-in dishwasher is how my kitchen looked. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be happier with a dishwasher – and I don’t even mind what kind of dishwasher – either the built-in model or the live-in kind.

I’m not going to push my luck though. My new method is something that might be helpful to someone else in my family.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been reading through the Bible each year for the last 17 years. Sometimes I would get really far behind and have to exhaust myself trying to catch up. I’ve found it best to set a time and read a little bit (about 4 chapters) every day. That way you can keep up and you never have that pile of scripture that you have to clean up all in one sitting.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How has keeping up with something helped keep you from being burdened with it?  Leave your comments below.