How to Make Your Thanksgiving Cleanup Easier

With a little strategic planning, there’s plenty you can do ahead of Thanksgiving to make after-dinner cleanup more efficient. Any food prep you can do in advance will save you some day-of washing, and lining baking dishes with foil also cuts down cleaning time. Plan to serve food buffet-style to reduce the volume of dirty serving dishes and platters leftover at the end of the night. Most important, don’t be afraid to ask for help. To break up the workload, delegate tasks like dishwashing, floor cleanup, or trash duty to guests of all ages before dinner, so no one is caught off-guard when they’re put to work after pie.

If guests bring their own containers to take leftovers home, you won’t have to buy more plastic containers—or struggle to find room in the fridge for all the food left behind. Ask everyone to fill their containers at the table right after the meal so you can shuffle all of the empty, dirty serving platters into the kitchen immediately.

Dishwashing is one of the most tedious parts of the Thanksgiving cleanup. To save time, create dish cleanup stations: Set up a folding table as a holding area for dishes, and have a volunteer scrape any food left on plates into a garbage can. Stack the dishes in the sink to get them out of the way before loading them in the dishwasher or hand-washing them. The ask is truly minimal, considering we don’t recommend rinsing your dishes before sticking them in the dishwasher (more on that below). For anything that needs to soak, you can fill a dish tub or cooler with hot, soapy water. If space is tight, even your bathtub will work in a pinch.

You heard us: Don’t waste time rinsing your dishes before sticking them in the dishwasher. This can actually do more harm than good; overloading the dishwasher with mostly clean dishes could throw off its soil sensor and cut your cleaning cycle short. Save yourself the headache by scraping off large chunks of food, but leave behind some grime for the dishwasher detergent to chew through.

Although a lot of stainless cookware is advertised as being dishwasher safe, it’s better to clean it by hand; cookware takes up a lot of room in the dishwasher, and sometimes your pots need a little more attention. We recommend using hot water and a dish brush like the OXO Good Grips Dish Brush to loosen up any crud. If old-fashioned elbow grease doesn’t cut it, use a mildly abrasive cleaner (like baking soda, Bar Keepers Friend, or The Pink Stuff) to reduce scrub time.

And don’t worry about the popular myth that you can’t use soap on cast-iron cookware. You really can use a little soap on your cast iron as long as it’s seasoned properly. To loosen stubborn, cooked-on food, pour hot tap water in the skillet while the pan is still hot, let it bubble for a minute or two, then transfer it to the sink and hand-wash.

Keep in mind that if red wine sits in glassware too long, it can permanently etch the glass. To protect glasses while they wait to be cleaned, try this tip from Martha Stewart: Pour a little water into each glass at the end of the night, and leave it until the morning. The next day, run glasses through the dishwasher.

Your table linens will inevitably end up with some gravy spots and greasy butter stains, but cleaning them is not as hard as it seems. “The best line of defense against stains is water,” says senior staff writer Lesley Stockton. “Start by running the stained area under flowing cold tap water to flush out as much of the discoloration as possible.”

Wine Away is great for removing wine, tea, and coffee stains. Just apply the solution and let it sit for five minutes, then wash the item with cold water. For grease stains, it’s more effective to spot-clean linens with dish soap and water before letting them air-dry. Air-drying is key: Stains are hard to see when fabric is wet, and tossing stained linens in the dryer will cause any leftover spots to set permanently. By air-drying, you’ll be able to touch up any lingering stains before it’s too late.

This article was edited by Catherine Kast and Annemarie Conte.