Do you look forward to cooking out with your friends and family but dread the inevitable cleanup that comes afterward? Cooking out can feel like a big responsibility. It’s not just about cooking the meat just right and making sure everything stays fresh and sanitary, but there’s a lot of responsibility left to you after the cookout is finished.
Who’s going to tidy up the patio, clean up all the dishes, pick up the trash scattered around the yard, and take care of the dirt that was tracked into the house? If these are the questions that loom in your mind when you’re thinking about cooking out, we have a few tips to help keep things tidy.
Set Out a Trash Can
If you constantly find trash in your yard or on the patio after a cookout, that probably frustrates you to no end. There’s a simple solution that will help handle most of that so you don’t have to spend a long time picking up wrappers and bottles afterwards. Place a trash can in the cookout area in a highly visible spot. It can be in the central area or just off to the side but close to where people will be congregating. This makes it easy for people to deposit their trash and helps them avoid temptation to just leave trash wherever they feel like it. If you don’t have a spare trash can to put out, you can always hang a garbage bag on your patio railing inside the grill, or even on a low tree branch (if you are having the cookout in the yard).
Consider Locking Up the Pets
You love your pets, but they may not love you having a lot of company over. All the people that are attending your cookout may scare your pets or cause them to behave poorly. This can lead to a lot of messes and spills that will need to be cleaned up. John with Queens House Keeping says “As much as your pets may not like being locked up, it could help with the cleanup later on”. Your pets may be much happier being out of the way and away from strangers. Some cats and dogs are very good around company and love all the attention, but for those that aren’t, getting them out of the way may be a good idea.
Close Off Your Home
Everyone has different rules about their cookouts, but if you don’t have any rules laid down, people may take advantage of your home. You may find people moving in and out of the house from the yard or patio if you keep the doors open or even unlocked. They may want to use your restroom, find drink refills, look for snacks, or find a more comfortable place to sit. If you want to save yourself a lot of cleanup and not feel like you need to hire a cleaning service after the cookout is over, then it’s a good idea to shut and lock the doors of your home once guests start arriving. You can always unlock the doors as needed to let people use the restroom, but you’ll likely be surprised how your guests can be perfectly happy without using your home once it’s off limits.
Set Up Dishes to Soak
Do you feel like it takes forever to clean off the cookout dishes when you’re done with your get together? All that stuck on food can be difficult to clean, but you can set up a sink of soapy water to soak the dirty dishes in right from the start. As soon as you make one of your dishes dirty and you’re done using it, it can go straight into the sink of soapy water. If you run out of space, you can always fill a large bowl or basin with soapy water and soak the dishes there. This will save you a lot of work later on, so you won’t have to spend so much time and effort scrubbing.
Clean as You Go
It’s a good idea to keep a wet cloth and other cleaning implements close by as you cook out. That way, you can wipe down surfaces as they become dirty. You should keep a broom, dustpan, and mop nearby to handle any spills as they happen. This keeps trashing to bring from spreading around and helps you get a handle on spills immediately before they become a larger problem. Keeping these items out on the patio or somewhere outside also helps you avoid walking through the house and tracking dirt through there. You’ll save a lot of time on clean up by planning ahead like this.
Give Guests Duties
If you’re realistic about the effort that goes into a cookout, you may realize that it’s difficult for you to clean up everything by yourself. Some of your guests may be very close friends of yours who would love to help out in order to make things easier on you. You can ask them ahead of time if they’d be willing to handle a few cleaning duties, like taking out the trash, putting away leftovers, washing dishes, or other small jobs that will have your cookout cleaned up quickly at the end. If you can get several people helping you, you won’t spend nearly as long as cleaning up, and you will be able to rest shortly afterwards.
Cook Some Things Up ahead of Time
The final tip I want to share with you is that you should try to do some of the cooking before the day of the cookout. Foods like potato salad, baked beans, casseroles, and your desserts could easily be made up a day or two in advance and still taste fresh on the day of the cooking. This will give you less cooking work to do on that day and fewer dishes to wash as well.
Cooking out doesn’t have to feel like a lot of stress can’t if you take the time to plan ahead and make things easier on yourself.