Can I prepare meat and dairy dishes at the same time on the same countertop? 👀

What do you need to be careful about if you're  going to be preparing both dairy and meat foods on   the same countertop? The truth is, the Halacha  is pretty lenient about this. Halacha allows   preparing both milchigs and fleishigs on the same  counter. You can even have hot milchigs and hot   fleishigs. So the Halacha allows many things,  but it's not always a good idea to do that. The   prevalent minhag (custom) is that we have separate  counters for milchigs and fleishigs, and people   don't usually prepare on the same counter meat  and milk for a variety of reasons. Now, sometimes   people don't have the space. So things to be  careful about: You have to be careful that   there shouldn't be any spills, obviously, from  one to the other. So if you're pouring anything,   there shouldn't be any splashing. Let's say you're  going to be dealing with the meat right now, all   the dairy food should be covered, or vice versa,  because in case there is a splash from one food,   it shouldn't get onto the other foods. Even  though, again, foods are allowed to be hot,   you have to be careful that the place you're  putting the food down on doesn't have any   residue. You may be putting a hot pot of meat  onto something that's dairy or vice versa. You   have to be careful that there’s space around it.  You should leave spaces between them, even though,   again, Halacha says that If they do touch, As long  as everything is clean and dry, The food is still   permitted, but oftentimes they're not clean, and  therefore, if the outside of one of them has some   residue on it, there was a spill, whatever, and  it touches against another pot, you're going to   have problems. Therefore, the common minhag  is not to keep them near each other at all.   But if one has to, then one should at least  abide by these rules of keeping them covered.   If they're going to be hot, make sure to put that  on a clean spot and keep a distance between them.