My kids are on summer break, and while they'll spend ample time outside, the kitchen is still the central gathering spot in our home. 

I spent the weekend cleaning up our kitchen "workstation," which had become the dropping post for everything. Bills, notebooks, end-of-year school art. Everything. And it needed an overhaul in a big way.

I cleaned out cabinets, got rid of old/expired food in the pantry, and organized art supplies in the "kids" section.

And then my favorite part of prepping the kitchen for summer: I started mapping out summer meals and breaking out the summer cooking gear. If a meal needs to be cooked, I try to make it on the outdoor grill. It keeps our kitchen clean and our home cool. But most important, it helps our family stay to the season.

How do you prepare for summer?

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 July 7, 2011

Do you have secret cleaning tips to make your kitchen sparkle? We recently hosted a contest to give a $100 Target gift card to the Shine user with the best kitchen cle

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