6 Tips For Easier Clean Up After A Big Thanksgiving Meal – Tidy Tuesday
Does it take you as long to clean up after Thanksgiving dinner as it does to prepare your feast? Being up to my elbows in greasy dishes and dirty pots and pans isn’t exactly my idea of the end to a perfect day.
However, a big meal does produce a lot of dishes. What are some of the ways we can reduce this tedious chore at the end of the day?
1) Use an oven bag to roast your turkey. This works well for me for several reasons. Soaking a roasting pan is a chore I’d rather eliminate and because the nice brown bits don’t stick to the roasting pan, they’re inside the bag, clean up is much easier. Plus, the other upside to roasting my turkey in an oven bag is it captures the juices and browns itself right in the bag. No basting. Saves some of the fussing which wastes time, and saves a lot of the clean up, which also wastes time.
2) Make as many one dish items as you can. If you’re mixing together mushroom soup, milk, and sour cream for a dish, do it all in the casserole you’re using. If when you’re preparing your dishes you see two or three mixing bowls lined up, re-examine your method and consolidate if you can.
3) Consider some disposable utensils. Your best dishes may be sacrosanct for your Thanksgiving dinner, but consider one tiny step to getting rid of a small portion of your clean up detail. How about using small festive paper plates just for dessert? And, don’t forget to remind everybody to hang onto their forks after dinner! Your dinner guests love to accommodate this request, especially when they know dessert’s on its way!
4) Line every casserole dish with tin foil. This is a no brainer for me. I’ve learned long ago to line those stuffing casseroles with tin foil because that stuff really stick to the sides of a dish. You can eliminate a lot of soaking and scrubbing with this little trick.
5) Wash as you go. I must give credit to my Hubby for this one. Before you even begin your chopping and mixing, fill the sink with hot soapy water. Every thing you use goes in and as you move to the next dish, the first thing you do is wash up what you used and it’s done. This is also a nice method especially when you have limited measuring cups, spoons, and mixing bowls. Everything is ready for the next step and nothing piles up.
6) Prepare what you can ahead of time. Of course, anything you can make a day or two ahead of time will help the clean up process. But, don’t forget that something as simple as chopping onions and celery and storing them in a zip lock bag will help, too. Having your cutting boards and knives clean and ready on Thanksgiving morning for other tasks is a real time saver.
These are just a few simple ideas that I wanted to share with you. I know you’ve probably developed some of your own easy clean up ideas and I would love it if you would share them with us here. Have a restful and wonderful Thanksgiving Day!
p.s. If long tedious house cleaning projects are not your idea of a good way to spend your time, check out some of the Spring Cleaning Tips For Mom to get your house sparkling clean, without all the hard work.
Tags: cleaning up after holiday meal, Thanksgiving dinner, Thanksgiving dinner clean up
November 24th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
I love you!
November 25th, 2009 at 10:54 am
My only comment is on lining your casserole dishes with foil. I find foil a lot harder to scrub than the casserole dish itself is, can you offer more details on how that’s less work? I don’t cook meat often enough to know the tricks for cleaning up afterwards.
November 25th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I love oven bags! Not only do they eliminate a lot of the mess, but the turkey comes out so juicy and moist. I also line my casserole dishes with foil. It sure makes clean-up easier when you just take the foil out of the empty casserole dishes and toss it in the trash. I’ll be busy baking the desserts for tomorrow all day today, but I’ll also pre-chop my veggies for my dressing to save time tomorrow. I’ll have eleven people in all at my table and would like to have to energy left to enjoy the meal.
November 25th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Here is how I line my casserole dishes with aluminum foil. I typically use a roll of heavy duty aluminum foil and tear off a piece to fit in the bottom and up the sides of the dish. I press the foil into the dish and up the sides, forming the foil nice and tight inside the dish. I try to bring the foil just up to the top of the sides, not folding over the outside of the dish. I don’t really want it to show. After serving the food out of the casserole, I just crumple up the foil and toss it in recycling (yes, aluminum foil is recyclable in most municipalities). There are two things to keep in mind. 1) Use heavy duty foil because it is less likely to tear while serving the food. 2) Use a wooden or plastic spoon when serving the food so you are not as likely to tear the foil. Hope this helps.
November 26th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
We don’t have recycling pickup more than once a week, so we need to wash our recycling. Also, I really don’t use enough aluminium foil to have pieces that are ready to throw out for every time I eat meat, I guess I’ll just have to use elbow grease and baking soda. Thanks for the clarification.
November 28th, 2009 at 5:21 am
I’ve just come across your site and wanted to say ‘thanks’ for those fantastic tips. Although we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Britain, I’m just going to substitute in the word ‘Christmas’ for it, and cut my clean-up rate in a few weeks time.
December 17th, 2009 at 8:49 am
when ever one of my friend complained about the mess his wife maked when she cooked I would think to myself, “Why dont you wash the dishes as she cooks for her?” As for myself, I wash as I go, like one of your tips. But I never thought of filling the sink with water, that’s a great idea to save water! Now I just got to buy a drain plug that fits the drain in my sink!
thanks, Craig