I had to do a thorough kitchen cleaning before Thanksgiving, and I did it all with hand-made cleaners. There was a lot of baking soda used for scrubbing, and then a water-vinegar mix for regular counters.

I've had an ongoing issue with Bob. He does all the cooking, and he has good AllClad pots. He thinks I wash them very poorly, so he says he'll wash them. But he never does, so they sit there for months (I'm not kidding) until he finally needs a specific one again and then washes it.

I think that's silly. If he's going to wash it anyway, at least it can be "Lisa Clean" and off the counter until then. So I have taken to washing them and putting them away. If he pulls one out and thinks it's not Bob-clean, then fine, he can re-clean it then and at least it's not mostly clean.

It's not like I'm missing giant spots of food. I'm not even sure what he thinks I'm missing. It looks clean to me. I must be missing some microscopic dust.

But in any case, I think we finally have a compromise that works. It doesn't take any extra time for him - if he's going to wash it either way, then it's the same time. And in the meantime our counters are clear and things are more sanitary.

Do you have any dish-issues in your home?

Yes, our silverware is constantly missing. I have no forks now, NONE, except for the plastic ones that I get from takeout food. At some point my griping will penetrate layers of young brain cells, and PRESTO, forks will appear.

My biggest dishue is that if a person is going to clean the kitchen then they need to do the entire job not just half the job.

It bothers me when somebody says they'll clean up but their version of cleaning up means loading he dish washer but leaving stove, counter tops, and sink full of food and crumbs and water that harden up overnight. Then I have to scrub the hell out of it the next day.

I would rather just clean the entire kitchen myself than have somebody half-[censored] it. Taking out garbage and then not replacing bag is a big pet peeve of mine too. I guess I never replace toilet paper rolls and put empty half and half carton back in fridge sometimes so I'm not perfect either. We all have our kitchen issues

With us, Dan does his dishes and I do mine. I try to keep up with it - i hate doing dishes. I have to use gloves or my fingers start cracking.

I have discovered lately that if I have one mug, one cup, one bowl and one plate, that i will actually clean my things. So that is looking like a good answer for me.

Connie -

That is so bizarre! Missing forks? Where in the world are they going?

I've never had missing silverware They are all in the kitchen, and those are easy to stick in the dishwasher, so they never cause an issue. It's only the non-dishwasher items that cause a months-long backlog.

Dear Monica -

Maybe it's a wording issue? What if they said "I'll load the dishwasher" and you knew one task would be done and others remained? I would be very happy to have different people take on different tasks.

Dear Jilly -

You're in a different situation where you hand wash things. We pretty much never hand wash things, everything just gets dropped into the dishwasher. The only things that are handwashed are the pots, and as mentioned those can sit there for months. So the handwashing definitely doesn't get done. Right now we still have Thanksgiving pots sitting there. I did 3 of them. I do whatever fits on our counter to dry and then I stop until those dry and I have room to do another set. So now sometime today I should do another 3. We have at least 7 pots sitting there I think, so when I do this 3 there will still be pots remaining.

LOL Connie mine is missing knives, I found one today, yesterday there were two! I have absolutely no idea where they go, I had six to start with last year when I bought yet another set of cutlery, but now there is only one dinner knife left. We are using the chopping knives now to eat with.

Wow Lisa, does Bob really not clean his pots for months! I can't believe you are that bad at washing up that he has to re wash them lol.

I have to wash up every day, our kitchen is so small and with three of us using it the dishes soon run out, (not to mention cups and glasses).

I clean everything with lemon and bi-carb but I had to get my son to buy some Mr Muscle over cleaner as I don't think the cooker has been cleaned for a while!

Linda

Lisa, you must have a very small counter? Or very big pots!

If we actually cooked we'd have more dishes. There are lots of dishes and utensils that get used in food prep. Our food prep consists of opening up a can and plopping it into a bowl that we then eat from. Dish total - one bowl, one spoon.

Connie, maybe the knives go live with the missing socks from the laundry.

Lisa, what does a 'bob clean' look like? Does he use scalding water and dip them in bleach or something?

Dear Linda -

Bob is very "blind" when it comes to mess. He simply doesn't see it. A pot sits on the side of the counter and it's just a decoration to him, it's not even something he pays attention to. It only comes to mind when he needs that pot again months later and looks for it, and realizes it's sitting there and needs to be cleaned.

The living room is full of dirty clothes piles, clean clothes piles, guitars, amps, you name it. There's a paper punch-out cutter to make rectangle shapes that I use to turn regular cards into windowed cards for my origami. I use it for holiday cards sometimes. It's been sitting there for *months* waiting for him to return it for me, and now it's Christmas and I need it and can't use it I'm sure he doesn't even see it. It's just background to him and he's completely forgotten that I'm waiting on him to do something with it.

Which then gets into the question of why don't I just do it myself. But then like with the pots if I step in and do it, I get scolded for not doing it properly. So it's a lose-lose. But I have to mentally prepare myself that yes, I'll be scolded, and in the meantime the house will be cleaner, so it's a long term benefit and a short-term grumpiness. And that I have to train him NOT to scold me since in the end I didn't make anything "worse" for him. He is simply in the same boat he was in before. He didn't lose anything - and I gained something.

Dear Jilly -

I think I don't get the surface of the pot polished smooth again. I think I leave the occasional little minute sandpaper type of bump on the pot. I try to scrub as best I can and to me it feels smooth when I'm done. He must have super-sensitive fingers.

I don't mind that he wants them pristine-smooth. I just don't want food-encrusted pots sitting on the counters for months while he gets around to doing that.

Well, it's spoons over here (LOL). We have 3 sizes and the smallest ones keep walking away (makes me think it's my kids or their fairy friends).

My husband doesn't put anything away after he uses it. Furthermore, he cooks, which is nice, but the kitchen is like a mad scientist's lab afterwards. And he will only clean dishes if I'm on strike.

Half-cleaned kitchens, re-scrubbed pots, and missing silverware. Sounds like a line out of a storybook.

I liked the article on cleaning the fridge. I had just mentioned that this was to be my next project. She read my mind.

The article on cleaning the fridge was also very helpful. A clean space is very important. Very good article!

Cleaning the kitchen is one of my pet peeves. Recently, we downsized and the house does not have a dishwasher. I hate doing dishes. Hubby's idea of cleaning the kitchen is dumping everything in the sink and letting it soak. Who is going to finish? The kitchen fairy godmother?
Sundancer
Embroidery Fashions Boutique

I don't have a dishwasher either. I try to have as few dishes as possible, so that I am forced to wash each thing while it's still wet and easy to scrub.

I have been avoiding the kitchen in the old mobile on my property. My behavioral worker helped me clear out the cabinets last time she came, and we loaded the spaces up with canned goods I got from food pantries. First we dusted out the spiders, then i slopped washrags with bleachy soap on the entire cabinet insides, and then added some anti insect treated paper to the cabinet shelves. Finally we added in the cans and powdered goods into some kind of order. I can treat this area as a sort of above-ground root cellar.

I can see the countertop in there now. That's nice.

Today I went in there with a microfiber cloths and started working on the outside of the cabinets, which is a 1963 whitish grey formica. Decades of grime, stains and weird globules are all over every surface in there. I spent a half hour doing some serious and painstaking scrubbing of the outside cabinet surfaces. I am not even close to done with just those, but it's a start.

I figure if i spend a few minutes in there every few days, at some point it will be clean enough to look decent.

The best thing would be to have the entire kitchen gutted, but not everyone can afford to do such things! I need to work with the old, sloping, shabby stuff that came with the house.

I did some cabinet cleaning today in the mobile. Just trying to get in a few minutes each day! I have no idea what the gunk particles are. Where do these globules come from?

When you clean the kitchen vinegar mostly in use, for washing the tiles of kitchen and for remove stains on the tiles we use a nylon scrubbing pad and chlorine-free household cleaner.

The Magic Eraser removes permanent marker and crayon off walls, I can vouch for that! It's made for small areas, though- the Eraser sort of dissolves as you use it, so it might get expensive to use them to scrub a whole counter, depending on the surface area of the counter. It would probably work, though. Have you tried Flylady's purple cloths- maybe with vinegar on them? Vinegar left to soak in pans will loosen up icky stuff. And those cloths really do clean better than other rags; I have four of them. Just my thoughts on the subject. good luck!