It’s a safe to say that your kitchen is your happy place. It’s where you feel the most creative, always mixing and matching your favorite ingredients in new and exciting dishes. As with any area you used a lot, your kitchen takes a little bit of a beating and needs to be deep cleaned on occasion. In addition to a pristine kitchen, it’s also a good place to spend your time rather than a dirty one, it’s also important to keep it clean. You do not have a health inspector, you need to make sure it’s safe. And you have a health inspector who wants to make sure it passes the inspection. Here’s the first in a two-part series on how to make your kitchen shine:

Clean the kitchen itself:
Before starting on your appliances, clean the kitchen itself. Wipe down your walls with a cloth sprayed with all-purpose cleaner. Sweep and vacuum your floors, getting the crumbs from your table, fridge and stove and the edges of the counters. Shake out your kitchen outside, and then finish the floors with a mop job.

Clean your sink:
Put an even layer of baking soda in your sink and scrub with a wet sponge or toothbrush. If there’s still a movie left, it’s a few spritzes of degreaser. Your garbage disposal has been neglected for a while. After all, you would throw old food down it, why would it have to be cleaned? If you’ve ever noticed a funky smell permeating from your disposal, that’s why you should clean it regularly.

According to Apartment Therapy, you can effectively clean your home. Put a cup of baking soda down the drain and add a cup of white vinegar. Let this fizz for a few minutes and for some boiling water down the sink after it. Then let’s get away from it, with the water running. Finishing it up while running a lemon or lime through the disposal to deodorize it.

Clean your dishwasher:
You ask why would you clean your dishwasher? It does the washing, right? Well, it washes your dishes. The laundry itself has to deal with lime deposits and food stains, which can get pretty gross. Put a bit of lemonade flavored Kool-Aid in the soap container and run the empty dishwasher on a cycle. The citric acid will get rid of anything stuck to the dishwasher.