Most of us who have ever decided to host a holiday party can agree that preparing holiday meals can be a positive and rewarding experience. However, cooking holiday meals can be quite stressful. To help keep your holiday meal preparations as enjoyable as possible, here is a helpful list on how to minimize kitchen messes during the holidays.
Taking these small steps to keep an organized and tidy kitchen will not only relieve a lot of the stress involved with hosting holiday parties, but it will also allow you more free time to spend with the ones you love.
1. Organize All of Your Ingredients
While you might not consider yourself a professional chef, you will find that organizing your cooking space with the ingredients that you plan to use ahead of time will work wonders. If you are using recipes, go through the list of ingredients that are required and place them together in your cooking space.
If you have a smaller cooking space, try returning ingredients to their designated space as you add them to your dishes. It is also helpful to use extra containers to hold ingredients as you chop, slice or measure them out.
2. Use a Garbage Bowl While Cooking
The possibility of cross-contamination should not be taken lightly when it comes to holiday meal preparation. Taking trips back and forth from your kitchen garbage can to your designated cooking area can bring unnecessary germs into your cooking space. This is where a garbage bowl can come in handy. Placing a large bowl somewhere central in your kitchen and designating it for disposing of empty food packages and other food waste can save you time and reduce germ transfer.
Once your garbage bowl fills, simply dispose of its contents into your regular garbage can or compost bin. This practice will help keep your cooking space tidy as well as minimize cross-contamination.
3. Wash Dishes as You Cook
Allowing used pots, pans, and other kitchenware to gather as you prepare your meal is a definite way to put a damper on your cooking experience. Focusing on tasks becomes more difficult in a cluttered environment and that could mean that your recipes might not turn out quite as planned. While it could take a bit of extra effort to wash dishes as you cook, you will find that adopting this habit will make your cooking experience more enjoyable.
Try washing used cookware between each dish and removing excess clutter from your kitchen counters to ensure that you can stay focused and stress-free. You might also consider employing your family to help!
4. Strategically Place Containers of Soapy Water
Once your holiday dinner has started, keeping things neat and tidy can be as simple as placing soapy containers of water around your kitchen. Asking your guests to place their used dinnerware into containers of soapy water will help keep clutter to a minimum and save you time when it comes to scrubbing away stuck-on food residue after your meal.
If you have limited kitchen space, simply add soapy water to your plugged kitchen sink and ask your guests to help place dirty dishes there.
Let us know if you plan to try any of these tips at your upcoming dinner party by leaving a comment below. Also, show your support by liking or sharing this blog with your friends and family!
For more tips on how to stay stress-free this holiday season, click here!