31 Days to Declutter Your Life - DAY 4 (Kitchen)

My kitchen is a room that I was hoping to try to clean before I showed you my 'before' pictures.  That's how messy it is.  When you see the pictures you have to keep in mind we just added a few cabinets and a counter top in the last week, we still have several Christmas gifts stacked in the kitchen and some boxes of Christmas decor that need to be taken down to the basement.  I shouldn't be making excuses, but I needed to say SOMETHING about how awful my kitchen looks right now, but I knew it would probably take a few days to clean and I wanted to try to get it done before I went back to school.  I will be cleaning this on Friday which is our teacher work day, so these steps aren't going to be very big.  So it will be achievable when I get home.

Okay *sigh* here goes nothing......

You can see the difference in the cabinets that have just been put in.  

LOVING my pot rack Jason got me for Christmas!!  

Isn't that awful!?!?  For me, this is going to be a job that takes a few days (counters, floor, cabinets, fridge, freezer, etc).  For most people I would suggest using the piles system from DAY 2.  With how messy my kitchen is right now, I am going to have to use a different method.  

My first day of cleaning the kitchen will consist of clearing off all counter tops, doing ALL the dishes and cleaning out the microwave and toaster (yes, opening the bottom and cleaning out all the toast, waffle and poptart crumbs).

I don't know about you (well I guess I might have an idea), but I hate cleaning out the microwave!  I am going to share with you how I clean my microwave and how easy it can really be.  Maybe you already know this tip, but humor me.  

BEFORE:  Doesn't this look awful!?!  Another picture I really didn't want to take and actually share.  

The bowl in the microwave is filled with water.  Yep, that's it, just water from the faucet. 

I 'cooked' it in the microwave for 5 minutes.  The water turns to steam and the steam softens all the gunk.  When it got done all I did was wipe it out.  No muscle power, just simply wiped it out and this is how it looked!!  

Big difference, huh?!?  I did it one more time (5 minutes again),  just to get it a bit more clean.

So with how easy that was, there is really no excuse for how awful my microwave looked in the first place!  

See you back here tomorrow for my next step for cleaning the kitchen.