There’s nothing worse that spending an hour laboring over a complicated cookie recipe, only to end up with a kitchen looking like the one pictured above. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your kitchen all clean by the time the timer buzzes for the last batch of those pumpkin chocolate chip cookies? I have a few tips for you! Here are a few things I do to produce a clean kitchen at the end of a baking session!

Before I start the baking process, I always wash the dirty dishes that are in the sink and empty the dish drainer (and the dish washer if it has just been run). This gives me more counter space to work and enables me to keep things cleaner as I go.

Rachael Ray was the first person I saw utilize the “garbage bowl.” In the picture above, I used the last of my oats for the recipe, so the empty container became my garbage bowl. Otherwise I would have pulled out a small bowl for the same purpose. This saves me from having to walk across the kitchen every time I need to throw something away – and there’s no danger of dripping egg yolk on the floor on my way to the garbage bowl!

My mom hammered this principle into my brain throughout my teenage years (I was her in-home sous chef!), and I’m grateful that she did. If I have a small bowl that’s dirty early in the recipe, I’ll fill it with soapy water so that I still have use of the sink while I’m cooking. While I’m waiting on a batch of cookies, I’ll wash a few dishes until they are completely done – usually before the baked goods are out of the oven!

How do you keep the kitchen clean while you bake? Please share your tips in the comments!