While most of us are extremely busy during the week, and like to relax on the weekends, kitchen maintenance is a necessary chore. You may be tired from a long day, but it is hard to prepare a healthy meal for your family in a kitchen that needs to be cleaned, prepped, and rid of bacteria. The most effective and time consuming way to handle your kitchen is to start a regimen of daily kitchen maintenance. While it may sound like housekeeper boot camp, it is much easier than you would imagine. Daily kitchen maintenance can effectively save you time, energy, and maybe even your sanity.

In order to maintain your kitchen, you should first get it in functional order. Your first step is to make sure the kitchen is clean. Take a weekend or day where you have the time to really clean your kitchen the way you need to, in order to make maintenance easier. Scrub floors, counter tops, appliances and clean out your refrigerator, throwing away old and moldy food.

After you have cleaned the kitchen the way that you like, it is time to work on organization. Realizing where you want everything to go will make it easier to put things away later. When considering placement, remember to organize for your life. Keep items that you use frequently in easily accessible areas. It is also a good idea to make sure that items that go together are close in proximity. For example, coffee and coffee filters should be close to the coffee maker and/or espresso machine. You may soon figure out that you need additional storage or counter space for your items.

In these situations, appropriate choice of kitchen furniture is a good stylish way to give you more space. However, there are different types of kitchen furniture, such as islands, cabinets, carts and more so be sure to choose kitchen furniture that will fit well into your kitchen and overall design of your home. When you are taking into account extra space and organization, consider items such as mail, plants and miscellaneous objects that frequently clutter a kitchen. Being able to quickly put these items away will save you precious time, when you are doing your daily kitchen cleaning.

After initial organization, all you need to do is maintain things the way that you have them set up. This way nothing becomes overwhelming and your cleaning should take more than 5 to 10 minutes each time.

Pre-wash items and place them directly in the dishwasher, or wash items as soon as you are done with them. It is important that you do not wait until after meals, since the amount of dishes, pots, and glasses can pile up quickly, especially when you have a family. This is a great way to cut down your dish washing time, as you are preventing dishes, pots, pans, cups, and other kitchen items from piling up.

Your kitchen table and counter tops are usually pretty easy to clean off. You will probably need to wipe down countertops and tables after meals to clean up and spills or crumbs that can attract bugs and bacteria. It is also important to wipe down countertops and tables used before and after food preparation. Not only will this reduce overall cleaning time, but will also help protect your family against disease.

Wiping down your stove tops should be a quick daily task and a good practice to prevent food particles from becoming backed up and stuck on your stove. If possible, wipe down the stove top after cooking each meal. Cleaning burners and burner trays are typically not done each day, as this task may often take up a lot of time.

Your kitchen floor usually does not need to be mopped everyday, however, sweeping is a different story. Depending on your family you may be able to get by with giving your kitchen floor a quick sweep once daily. However, families with toddlers and other small children may want to go through and sweep several times each day. A quick once over should only take a few minutes each time.

Depending on the style of your cabinets, you may want to take 2-3 minutes each day to wipe down your cabinets. We usually forget that the residue from cooking, things spilled, and stains left by children and pets often take a toll on your cabinets. Taking a minute or two to simply wipe down cabinets can keep your kitchen looking new and put off the need for replacing or repainting cabinets.

Most of us consider the kitchen the heart of our home. Daily kitchen maintenance is an important process. In order to keep your kitchen cleaned, you need to ensure that you follow these and similar tips routinely. Allowing tasks to back up will not only throw off your maintenance schedule, but will also cause your cleaning to take more time than you either have or want to devote to cleaning.