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Monday Motivation: Silverware drawer

You know what happens. Life happens. It happens in your kitchen. It involves crumbs. Every person in your family uses the silverware drawer and they aren't neat about it.

Today is Monday and your motivation is to clean out your silverware drawer. Here's what to do:

1. Take all of the silverware out of the drawer.
2. Sort through it and remove any items that don't belong in that drawer.
3. Remove any dividers you have in the drawer.
4. The easiest way to remove the gunk that remains is to use the vacuum with the nozzle attachment. Suck up all of the crumbs, dust, and who knows what else.
5. Use your "sparkle cleaner" to wipe out the drawer.
6. Replace the dividers. If your divider is cracked or really beat up you might want to splurge and purchase a new one.
7. Replace the silverware, putting like items together. If you have a choice of where to put items, put them in the order you would use them when setting the table. (salad fork, dinner fork, knife, soup spoon, teaspoon) This will help your children to learn which utensil belongs where. My divider has the long, knife storage on the far left side, so I can't use this system. Look at the bottom of this post to see how I taught my children to set the table properly.
8. Don't forget to put the extra, removed utensils away where they belong.

silverware drawer

(Sorry about the hugh-mongo photo. I'll see if I can make it a less scary size)


I taught my children to set a proper (casual) table by counting the letters in the word.

1. FORK has 4 letters so it goes on the LEFT which has 4 letters.
2. KNIFE and SPOON have 5 letters each and they go on the RIGHT which has 5 letters.
3. The knife goes next to the plate with the "sharp" edge facing the
plate to that nobody gets hurt.

I know this sounds like a silly method, but my children all learned how to set the table at a young age. Now, I would be really happy if my 18 y.o. son would actually use the utensils when he eats. He says they "slow him down".

Comments

  1. Do you use drawer liners? if so, which do you recommend

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Judy,

    I don't use drawer liners in my kitchen because I've found they are difficult to clean. I prefer to use drawer dividers, either plastic or wood, because they can be removed and cleaned.

    I do use drawer liners in my dresser drawers just because the papers are so beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The link to sparkle cleaner isn't working. :-(

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, Jo-Lynne, I got it working again.

    ReplyDelete

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