Managing Your Home To Make Your Work Easier

home·mak·er

hōmˌmākər/noun NORTH AMERICAN – a person, especially a housewife, who manages a home.

I think the reason many women don’t enjoy cooking is simply because their work space makes it difficult. This is a clear sign for the need to manage that space in order to maximize your homemaking efforts.

Yesterday I was sweeping the floor and opened my pantry door to see if it could use a swipe through. Yep. Onion skins around the produce basket and a sprinkling of little crumbs at the baseboards told me it needed some attention. I pulled the basket out, and then my flour tin. “Oh, might as well pull everything out and give it a good sweep” I thought.

Two hours later, I was leaving the kitchen! Why? Because once I began working in the pantry, I found more and more areas that needed some management.

Homemakers definitely need to constantly guide the affairs of the home. Without it, tasks are disorganized and difficult.

When I’m working on a space, I ask myself,

Does this space make it easy for me to do my work?

If the answer is no, I work until I feel like I’ve fixed the problem!

Here are some suggestions of ways I do that ~

• Move frequently used items to shelves I can reach without having to pull out the step stool.
• Fill jars with items I use frequently – oatmeal, brown sugar, confectioners sugar, chocolate chips and rice. It is so much easier to scoop those ingredients from a jar than to open up bags and boxes.

• Seldom used items are place up high and out of the way.
• Frequently used utensils are within my reach.
• Salt and pepper are at my hand near the stove for ease in cooking.
• All baking tools are in one area, keeping me from going from one spot to another to gather rolling pin, measuring cups and spoons.
• All baking ingredients are also easy to get to.
• The trash can is in a spot that is accessed easily.
• I also always have a “garbage bowl”out when I’m cooking or baking. It’s a container that sits on the counter and holds the trash – egg shells, onions skin, potato peel, empty cans and anything else that is needs to be thrown away. It all goes in there and gets dumped when I’m finished cooking. It saves me steps while I’m working.

How about walking into your kitchen and asking yourself, what area makes cooking burdensome, rather than easy? Then set to work to fix that problem. Managing your home well will make your homemaking work easier! You might even find that a task you disliked isn’t so bad after all!

What area in your kitchen is most frustrating to you?