You may really enjoy cooking every meal at home. But, you may be like most people and absolutely hate the clean up you have to undertake after cooking. Some couples have an arrangement: whoever cooks doesn’t clean. This may work if you have a willing partner, but it rarely sticks for more than a few nights. So, if you hate to clean up after cooking, take a look at these tricks to cut down on your mess after a great meal.

Aluminum foil is simply one of the best things to have in the kitchen. You can use it for so many things, including setting the stage for easy cleaning after cooking. You can place it on pans when you are baking anything from biscuits to chicken. When you are done with the pan, simply tear off the aluminum foil and toss it, leaving your pan as clean as it was when you pulled it out of the cabinet.

Another great thing you can do when cooking is practice cleaning as you go. One way you can do this is to unload your dishwasher before you begin cooking. As you use dishes while cooking, simply slip them into your dishwasher. Then when dinner is over, everyone can put their plate directly into the dishwasher, leaving you with very little clean up to do.

So as you can see, cooking doesn’t have to be that messy. You can easily create a plan for an easy clean up and find that you might even enjoy cooking each night.