How do I clean a kitchen as I go?

Cleaning as you go is treated as discipline and is really about timing. Nearly every recipe contains several minutes of waiting, and the difference between a clear kitchen and a disaster at the end is whether those minutes were used.

Step by step

1. Fill the sink before you start.Hot soapy water ready and waiting. If washing up requires filling a bowl first, it does not happen mid-cook. This one change does more than any other on the list.
2. Clear the surfaces before you begin.You cannot clean into a cluttered kitchen. Two minutes of clearing at the start buys you somewhere to put things down all the way through.
3. Read the recipe and find the gaps.Every dish has waiting built into it — something simmering, roasting, resting, proving. Knowing where those gaps are before you start is what turns them into cleaning time.
4. Wash during the gaps, not at the end.Twenty minutes of simmering is enough to wash everything used so far. The work is the same; only the timing changes, and it is time you were spending anyway.
5. Keep a bowl for waste on the worktop.Peelings, packaging, trimmings straight into it rather than walking to the bin repeatedly or letting them pile on the board. One trip at the end.
6. Wipe as you move between tasks.A damp cloth kept to hand. Spills wiped immediately take a second; the same spill baked on for an hour takes several minutes and a scourer.
7. Deal with the worst pans first.Anything with burnt or starchy residue goes into hot water to soak the moment it is empty. Soaking is passive and it happens while you carry on.
8. Reuse the board and the knife deliberately.Cut in an order that avoids washing between — vegetables before raw meat, never the reverse. That is both a hygiene rule and a washing-up saving.
9. Measure over the bowl, not over the worktop.Flour, spices and liquids measured over the destination catch the spill in something you are already using.
10. Put ingredients away as you finish with them.Not at the end. A worktop with only the things you are still using on it is faster to work on as well as faster to clear.
11. Line trays where it saves scrubbing.Parchment or foil on a roasting tray for anything sticky or sugary. It is the difference between lifting a liner out and ten minutes with a scourer.
12. Do the last wipe before you eat.The final two minutes while something rests or plates warm. Coming back to a clean kitchen after a meal is a disproportionate improvement to the evening.
13. Accept it will not always happen.A complicated dish with no gaps sometimes leaves a mess, and that is fine. The habit is worth having for the eighty per cent of meals where it works.

Tips

• It makes the cooking better as well as the clearing up. A clear worktop means you can see what you have, and most kitchen mistakes come from losing track.
• Load the dishwasher as you go rather than stacking beside it. The stack is what makes it feel like a job.
• If someone else is in the kitchen, washing up during the gaps is the most useful thing they can do and the easiest thing to ask for.

Common mistakes

• Leaving the washing up until after eating — Food has dried on, the motivation has gone, and the job is several times longer than it would have been during the simmering time.
• Starting to cook on a cluttered worktop — There is nowhere to put anything down, so everything accumulates in the sink and on the board. Two minutes of clearing first prevents it.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask