If you’re feeding small kids three meals a day (plus snacks), you know the drill: feeding them is only half the battle — cleaning up feels like a whole second shift. Today’s episode might sound silly at first, but sometimes the simplest routines make the biggest difference in daily life.
Why We Needed a System
There are nights when the dinner table is sticky, the floor is covered in sauce, and someone is crying. Multiply that by breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every single day — and you see why we needed a clear, repeatable plan.
This method didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s inspired by How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis. Her five-step system for tackling any mess completely clicked for me — and I realized I’d been doing something similar in our kitchen without even knowing it.
The Five Steps to Tackle After Every Meal
Here’s how we break it down — in order:
1️⃣ Trash
First, gather all trash and leftover scraps that can’t be saved. Bits of food, crusts, wrappers — whatever’s unsalvageable goes straight to the trash.
2️⃣ Dishes
Next, round up all the dirty dishes and bring them to the “dirty dish zone.” We have separate zones for dirty and clean dishes, which makes hand-washing easier. Most of our plates and cups go in the dishwasher, but I do have pots, pans, and cooking tools that get washed by hand.
3️⃣ Laundry
Yes — laundry in the kitchen! Between cloth napkins, rogue socks (why do my kids remove their socks before dinner?!), and the baby’s messy outfits, there’s usually something to toss in our little laundry basket under the sink.
4️⃣ Things Out of Place
Gather any ingredients that need to go back to the fridge, pantry, or cupboards. Leftovers get packed up and join this pile, too — nothing goes back until it’s all grouped together.
5️⃣ Things That Don’t Belong
Finally, tackle anything that wandered into the kitchen but doesn’t live there — toys, hair ties, art supplies. Make a pile and put it back where it belongs once the kitchen itself is handled.
How It All Flows
Our big rule is: one step at a time, one zone at a time. Here’s how it actually plays out:
- Trash goes in the bin first.
- Dishes get scraped, sorted, and loaded — we do top rack first, then bottom, so we’re not opening and closing racks a million times.
- Hand-wash items get cleaned and set to dry in the “clean dish zone.”
- Laundry gets dumped in the basket under the sink.
- All leftovers and ingredients go back into the fridge or pantry together at the end — no endless trips back and forth.
- Toys, hairbrushes, or mystery items get relocated once the kitchen itself is reset.
While I do this, my husband wipes the table and counters, then the chairs, then sweeps and mops the floor. We finish by taking out the trash and starting the dishwasher. Before bed, he empties it so we wake up to a clean slate.
But What About the Kids?
While all this is happening, our kids are not underfoot in the kitchen — trust me, we learned that the hard way. We either send them to the backyard, plop them in a bath, or point them toward the playroom. The goal: get the kids out, so we can reset the space and chat for a few minutes without refilling someone’s milk cup for the tenth time.
Why This Works
It sounds more complicated than it is. Once you do it a few times, you don’t even have to think — you know exactly where you are in the process, and you’re not zig-zagging all over the kitchen in circles.
Is it perfect? Nope. But it means we start each morning with an empty sink, a clean counter, and space to tackle the next round of kid meals. And that, for us, is sanity-saving.
Try It Yourself
If your kitchen cleanup feels never-ending, give this little five-step system a try — or tweak it to fit your family. Sometimes the tiniest routines add up to the biggest sense of peace.
Thanks for tuning in — see you next week!