Racine,
The real solution to your housekeeping problem is "better" organization throughout the cooking process, and the good habit of a rinse and wipe for the plating knife before going into the kitchen.
Not to jump too far afield from knives, but the more of your prep winds up in mise en place and the more you cook from mise instead of doing a lot of knife work as you prep, the more flexibility and control you'll have over timing and the less pressure you'll be under. It also keeps the kitchen neater, which not only makes everything easier to find which also makes timing easier, and in turn, that releases some of the pressure and helps keep you focused and allows for more tasting during the process.
Try pretending you're doing a TV cooking show, with everything you need already to go in little bowls, before pre-heating the first pan and see if that doesn't give you a little more freedom with your knives along with everything else. A few minutes before plating, put your plates in a warm oven if you have the oven space, or put them in the empty dishwasher and run the drying cycle. Warm plates makes it easier to spend a little extra time getting the plating right, and frees you for that all important 20 second rinse and wipe.
However, that's not everyone's cooking style and it's not inherently superior -- which is why I put "better" in quotes.
BDL
PS. You should always have a "kitchen rag" at hand. There aren't many things which will make your kitchen life easier. Not just the kitchen, either. A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. Doug Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.
Edited by boar_d_laze - 1/19/12 at 9:34am
