If you watch any YouTube cleaning video or CleanTok influencer, you’ll hear the same advice over and over again: empty your kitchen counters.

I agree that visually it’s very sleek to have a wide expanse of marble and show off those beautiful countertops. 

Yet many of us have ugly countertops or – more importantly – use our kitchens. 

It’s up to you if you want to put your toaster away in a cabinet and then take it out every day for the rest of your life. 

It’s up to you if all your fruit and vegetables are hidden away in the fridge whether or not it ruins the taste (hello, tomatoes). 

So instead of “clearing your counters” the challenge today is to determine what you WANT on those counters and get rid of everything else. 

It can also be helpful to move things around, my counter top microwave has migrated all over the place until it found a good home. 

What do you really need next to the sink? 

What would you like on the island or next to the stove? 

The only guideline I use is that if I were to take everything off the countertop to clean, it should only take a minute or two to migrate things from one side to another. 

As long as you can use your counters to prepare food, do you thing! If cleared counters don’t work for you, don’t fall for the hype.