Day 5 of the Decluttering Challenge: Kitchen Counter Tops

For day five, we are decluttering our kitchen counter tops.

If you are anything like me, that is a daily battle. Unfortunately, I am not winning that battle. Today we can set aside ten to fifteen minutes to focus just on that.

If you already have thoroughly cleaned off counter tops, this is a great time to work on your table or your kitchen drawers, wherever your kitchen clutter is.

At our house, the kitchen counters and the coffee table are, as Flylady calls them, our “hotspots.” I try to constantly clean them off, but it feels like the impossible losing battle, as my husband sees it as his personal dump spot when he gets home from work.

Huh. I just thought about that. It’s funny how talking about your problems helps you solve them. When I gave my son Daniel a bag to dump his book bag into, that worked. It got his school work out of my living room and into a bag in his own room.

What I need to do for my husband is provide him a new dump spot. He needs a crate or something.

Our other problem is that groceries and mail end up there, which you will see in the picture above and in this video.

I am so tired when I come home from buying groceries that I do not have the energy to put it all away on the spot.

If your house is anything like ours, you will find day five especially helpful. When the kitchen counters are cleaned off, the whole house instantly feels cleaner and nicer and more inviting. Don’t you think?

Day Five Video:

Let’s set our timers and get going! The list says to do fifteen minutes, but I was able to do it in ten. Do which one works for you.

Kitchen Counter Decluttering Tips:

Most of what ends up on kitchen counters is either groceries or trash. Mail usually falls into the trash category.

The only way to truly stay on top of kitchen clutter is to always put everything away as soon as you use it, (*life goals*) but what about all the extra? Most people don’t have as many cabinets as we want, so we end up with more food than fits in our cabinets.

I think in that case the first step is to thin out your cabinets and throw out old expired food to make room for the new. Expired food in boxes tastes stale and disgusting anyway.

Maybe your house doesn’t have enough cabinet space for your groceries, period. Look for as many things to clear out of your cabinets as possible. Past that, there can be areas where you accept that you store things on top of the counter. There are ways to make that look better with baskets and boxes too.

If no one ever eats it, it is definitely time to throw it out.

I think the kitchen can be one of the hardest rooms to declutter, but when you pull it off the results will be the most beneficial of any room.

Need print-outs for the challenge? I’ve got your free printable calendar below:

You can also get it in list format:

Also, here is a link to my YouTube channel so you can follow along on there.

If you want to go straight to all of the 30 Day Decluttering Challenge playlist, click here.

In conclusion, I hope you are all enjoying the challenge as much as I am. And I sincerely hope it is helpful! Our homes will never be perfect top to bottom, but they will be less cluttered. Plus, we will be able to find everything better! To me, that’s the best part.

Happy decluttering! I will have a new video up on Saturday too, for day six. Then I will take Sunday off and be back on Monday.