SusieJ's Advent Calendar December 14, 2009

Confession: I only clean my kitchen

This is surely reassuring to anyone who's eaten at my house, and not overly surprising as the rest of the house is in a constant state of chaos.

A chaotic kitchen — sink full of dishes, groceries on the counter, clean dishes waiting to be put away — keeps me from functioning. No matter how tidy the rest of the house, my eyes see only the disorder in my favorite room. Conversely, if the kitchen is really clean — counters scrubbed, everything away, stove-top degreased — my son could have every toy out in every room and I wouldn't care as much.

That the rest of the house is such a mess is also due to the kitchen being the only room with a place for everything, and my will to put it in its place. When we renovated the kitchen I wanted a baking station: a counter area with everything to bake with within arms reach. If the books are all jumbled on the bookcase, something can still be found to read. If the spatulas are in the wrong drawer or, worse, waiting to be washed, that's minutes lost and the chance of something burning.

Instead of Spring cleaning, there is the pre-Thanksgiving scrubdown: cleaning the oven, the trash can, the doors, walls and baseboards, the cabinets. The fridge gets cleared out and washed out; if I could move it I would. Crumbs are vacuumed from the cabinet with the toaster oven. Anything not used recently is a candidate for re-gifting. Silver gets polished and linens ironed.

When it's all done, the kitchen and I are ready to cook a four-course dinner for a dozen friends and family, and then bake hundreds of cookies and dozens of loaves of bread.

It's almost fun.

[Christmas delicacies for sale at Rieker's Prime Meats.]