Rachael Ray's Simple Yet Brilliant Tip For Easy Kitchen Clean-Up While Cooking

When you're looking to cut down on post-cooking cleanup, the best way to minimize any mess is to clean as you go. Whether you're wiping up splattered sauce or tossing empty boxes while your pasta boils, you'll end up with a cleaner environment to work in and more time to enjoy your post-meal food coma instead of slogging through tidying up the kitchen. For this, Rachael Ray sells a line of durable melamine "Garbage Bowls" on her website, which are particularly helpful for both composting and keeping clutter under control.

The bowls are handy to collect your assortment of scraps, trash, and dirty paper towels rather than letting them pile up on your counter. If you compost and have the space, try to keep two bowls available: one for trash and one for vegetable scraps. This becomes especially useful when you're juggling several recipes at once, since every second you don't spend walking back and forth to the trash can is more time to monitor your dishes and keep them on point.

While Ray's bowls retail for around $20, you can use just about any vessel that's sturdy or disposable. It can even be a great way to repurpose that wooden salad bowl that's fallen out of fashion, since you won't have to worry much about safety precautions. Whatever you choose, just make sure it's lightweight and doesn't take up too much space.

A zero-waste kitchen isn't about giving up useful tools, ingredients, or practices, but about squeezing every last bit of efficiency out of what you already have on hand. With that in mind, recycling all sorts of odds and ends that would otherwise wind up in the trash is a smart move — whether you're reusing coffee grounds to enrich your garden or simply trying to keep your counters clear.

Those cheap plastic bags you use to bag produce at the grocery store are great for managing kitchen waste. Not only are they extremely lightweight, but they can hold a surprising amount of onion skins, paper towels, and other cooking detritus before breaking. If you have precut vegetables stored in a container or zip-top bag, you can repurpose those as well once you've used the contents.

If you go with Rachael Ray's garbage bowl method, choose something taller rather than wider. Counter space is at a premium when cooking, so a vessel shaped like a metal stand-mixer bowl or even a drink pitcher works well for holding plenty of scraps without hogging workspace. If you're not cooking much food, you can even use a bar cart essential — a drink shaker. As long as it doesn't get in your way, you don't need it for a recipe, and it cleans easily, there are no wrong answers.