The kitchen is probably the messiest room in your house. All the cooking, eating, and washing leads to a heavy load of cleanup work. There is also a lot of foot traffic going through the kitchen, which usually opens directly to the garage or outdoors. There’s no doubt that the kitchen can get very messy very fast, so think about these four tips for trying to cut back on the filth.

Manage Movement

A major source of kitchen mess is spilled food and ingredients. This often results from having to move containers too far. If preparation requires two different work spaces, get them as close together as possible. Try to avoid having to move around appliances so that you don’t have as much chance of a collision and spill. And place your garbage can as close to the exit door as possible.

Upgrade Equipment

Sometimes your fixtures can clog or malfunction thanks to poor setup. One example is sink drains. If you allow too much food to go down your drain, it will eventually clog. That leaves you with the very messy job of cleaning or even disassembling the pipe. Instead of rinsing that food away, get side inlet strainers from an inline strainer supplier to capture it before it becomes a blockage.

Cover Painted Walls

Our hardest-working surfaces in the kitchen are also the easiest to clean. We understand that counter tops and sinks will get most of our mess. However, walls can be subject to a lot of splattering and splashing, so it can make cleanup much easier if you install tile or other easy-to-clean materials for your back-splashes.

Invest in Good Storage

Most of us have plenty of food items to store without their original containers. It could be leftovers from the last meal or a partial box of dry rice, or any of dozens of other things. For the budget’s sake, we often simply wrap the container with foil or plastic wrap and store it. However, these methods are not as secure as they should be, and they often leak or get spilled. Invest in some good reusable storage containers to keep food from escaping.

Prevention and planning can go a long way when it comes to cleanliness in the kitchen. The more time and money you invest in trying to avoid messes, the less you’ll have to invest in cleaning them up. Think about the layout and function of your kitchen, and identify the areas that could be improved to make cleaning easier.