One room gets clean at the expense of another.
I'm Ronnie and you're listening to Clean With Me, the podcast
where I walk you through cleaning your house step by
step. When you clean along with this
show, you'll get more done in less time, so you can spend the
rest of your day doing what matters most to you.
Hi, cleaning besties. In today's episode we are going
to make some progress in your entire house and this is going
to be one of those sessions where we're cleaning in layers
instead of room by room. Often we need to prioritize and
work on certain rooms first, but other times we have a little
more time and we just want to do a whole house cleaning session.
And there are efficient ways to do that without going room by
room necessarily. OK.
And it also keeps things interesting when you don't do
the exact same routine every time you clean.
Let's get right into the episode.
It's time to gear up for your whole house cleaning session.
Maybe you need to get dressed for the day.
Maybe you like cleaning in shoes, or maybe you want to slip
on a pair of slides. Maybe you want to clean
barefoot, but I don't recommend it if you've got gritty floors.
I don't like that feeling. OK, you might want to put on
shoes so that you move quickly about without thinking about the
state of your floors. Maybe they're even sticky if you
got little ones spilling juice. I don't know.
Use sippy cups with valves, folks.
Another thing you might want to do to gear up for your cleaning
session is get your house smelling fresh.
Weather permitting, you can open the windows and let some fresh
air circulate through. And letting the light come in by
opening the blinds or curtains can also energize you regardless
of the weather. Or maybe you want to start a wax
warmer, essential oil diffuser, or light a candle.
A lot of times the aromatherapy really gets me in in the mood
for cleaning. I love things that smell like
lemon verbena. And eventually it's going to be
pumpkin spice season again. I don't drink a lot of pumpkin
spice lattes, but what I do love is actual pumpkin pie.
And I love the scented candles and fall decor and fall weather
and wearing sweaters. I love the fall.
We've got a ways ways for that. But it is the end of July and in
today's day and age, we start observing fall in August.
To me, it's it's a little weird when the weather's still hot,
but once we go back to school, I'm probably decorating for
fall. I say once we get back to
school, I really mean when the kids go back to school.
But I work at the school off and on, and I haven't really
finalized my negotiations about what I'm going to be doing at
the school yet. But for sure the kids are going
back. If I go back, I'll be working
either two or three days a week. Maybe you need to start a load
of laundry. Do you need to wash your
bedding? Something I've been doing with
my bedding lately, I washed. The.
Comforter and I ran it through the dryer maybe one time or
maybe not at all. I have this room divider thing
that I use in the bathroom. I like to put it next to the
bathtub in case my husband's going in and out of the room
while I'm in the bathtub, you know, then people are coming
down the hallway or whatever. Just it, it adds a little bit of
privacy in case my bedroom door ends up opening.
Well, another thing that I do with that room divider is I hang
the freshly washed comforter over it.
I hang it up to dry because I'm I'm so tired of having to
restart the dryer again and again to dry a comforter.
It's a waste of electricity and time.
And So what I do is I wash and dry the sheets and pillowcases,
but with the comforter, which is actually a duvet, I wash it,
hang it up to dry, and then just we go to bed using an alternate
comforter. And then the one I wash dries
overnight. So I'm just throwing that out
there in case somebody is trying to save money on their electric
bill or gas bill. But maybe you need to start some
bedding or maybe you need to start a load of towels.
It can go a long way to just wash the towels and underwear
because let's face it, most of us have a lot of clothes and
we're not running out of clothes to wear, but we might run out of
towels or underwear. And underwear are small, so you
can always buy more. But that having been said, I
tend to steer away from buying lots and lots of socks, T-shirts
and underwear just to make sure we always have clean stuff
because laundry is a weak point for me and I don't want to be
tempted to let it pile up too much.
I'd rather throw in some underwear with a towel load then
have a bunch of underwear and a huge pile of clean laundry, if
that makes sense. Some people can relate, some
can't. But if your husband has ever
bought himself T-shirts, underwear and socks just simply
because he doesn't have enough clean laundry, it might have
added to the size of your mount. Fold more.
By now you've started some laundry.
The next thing I want you to do is get some cleaner into your
toilet bowls. Obviously if you're worried
about toddlers, pets, shut the door or, you know, do this at a
time when you're home alone. But I'm assuming you can safely
do this. Get some cleaner into your
toilet bowls and give them a swish so that that chemical will
have time to do its work. OK, you want to get your house
working for you while you're working for it.
The next thing I want you to do is gather up any dirty dishes
from around the house. Get those items soaking or at
least get them to the sink area. But if if some of them have sat
too long already, for example, a dirty cereal or ice cream bowl
from the day before, or a mug with a ring in the bottom of it,
you know, fill those items with hot soapy water or get them
submerged in the sink. Whatever your system is, get all
those dirty dishes gathered up and whatever needs to be
soaking, get it soaking and maybe your entire kitchen is a
disaster right now and you have a dirty pot, pan and casserole
dish. Get those pre rinsed, get them
filled up and soaking as well. OK.
Because while your toilet bowls are soaking, you want your
dishes to be soaking. We're working on the whole house
at once in this episode. By the way.
Do you have any plants to water? I feel like somebody mentioned
that I do water my plants while I'm cleaning.
Oftentimes, you know, if my husband's out of town or
something, I'll also feed the fish.
He hasn't been working, so he hasn't been traveling on
business, so he's the one who feeds the fish.
But maybe that falls to you if you have an aquarium.
By the way. Once you've isolated the dishes
to the sink area and put away appliances that you haven't been
using and things like that, go spray happy and just spray down
your countertops and maybe even give them a little scrub with an
abrasive sponge and then spray them again, OK?
Especially if they're pretty dirty right now, that can go a
long way. And when you come back to wipe
down the countertops after working elsewhere in your house,
this stuff is going to come off more easily.
But you got to get it kind of wet for this to work because you
don't want it, you know, to just spray something lightly that's
going to dry, get it kind of wet.
OK, Don't go overboard. Of course, you don't want to
warp your countertops or anything, but sometimes I will
scrub my countertops. I'll spray them with my favorite
cleaning product. I'll scrub them with an abrasive
sponge and some dish soap, and then I'll spray them again to
where things are kind of damp, and then I'll come back to it.
Pause the episode if you need more time for that step, but the
next thing I'm going to have you do is a whole house pickup.
One of the keys to getting your whole house presentable at once
is going into every room and picking up the floor and then
the furniture. I start by picking up the floor.
Then I remove any items from the couch, coffee table, end table.
OK, straighten the couch cushions and just get the whole
house tidied up. It still might look a little
rough if it's been a while since you vacuumed and dusted, but
we're cleaning in layers here. So I want you to go through
every room of your house and pick up just like I had you do
in the regular episode on Monday.
That whole house pickup can work wonders because I think
sometimes we end up neglecting a room in the back somewhere,
whether it's a spare room, a bedroom, or maybe one of the
bathrooms. I mean, there's probably, if you
have more than one bathroom, there's probably one that you
use. You're probably getting ready in
the master bathroom and using the toilet in there and
everything else that you do in a bathroom and then not going into
the other bathroom as much. The thing about doing a whole
house pickup is it forces you to go into each room and pick up,
and then you don't have any neglected dungeons anywhere, you
don't have a nightmare bathroom or nightmare bedroom.
So I want you to spend a few more minutes tidying up.
And of course, there are always people ahead of the game.
And, you know, this might be a day where you've been keeping up
on your cleaning and you don't need to just barely pick up the
house or something. I get that some of you need to
be deep cleaning during this session, and that's perfectly
fine. But I like to make sure that you
are at least getting your house tidied up and you're getting
your dishes done and you're sanitizing your bathroom and
kitchen, OK? You're keeping up on laundry.
I like to make sure that you're knocking out those minimums.
But rest assured, we are going to clean surfaces in this
episode. We are going to do some deep
cleaning. But right now we're doing the
surface level tidying of the entire house.
And it can seem overwhelming, but it really isn't.
And there's probably at least one room that is in worse
condition than the others. OK, you know, maybe you only had
three or four things to pick up in the living room, but your
bedroom floor is a disaster. But it's probably just visually
overwhelming. There probably isn't as much to
pick up as you think. Or maybe all of those items go
in the same place, like maybe your living rooms covered in
toys or your bedrooms covered in dirty laundry.
And sometimes it's OK to wash things that might still be
clean. Sometimes you can just pretend
you're a teenager, put it all in the hamper, and start over.
In the future, you can be more efficient about hanging things
up or whatever. But if you're in survival mode
right now and you need to wash a couple extra items, it's not
going to hurt you. But you might be like me, and
you're draping clean items over a chair so you know which things
you can hang up. That makes it easy.
You don't have to put those in the hamper.
But sometimes it's not worth the mental effort to question
whether or not you can wear a pair of jeans a second time
before washing them. Put them in the hamper.
Because right now your goal is to clear your floor and then the
upper surfaces like beds, couches, tables, chairs.
You should just be going fly to the bumblebee right now, picking
up items all over your house. And you're getting exercise when
you're doing this, when you're walking briskly and you're
bending down and picking things up, that's a lot better than
being sedentary. And if you're like me, you like
to be killing two birds with one stone.
So even though you're fully focused on picking up your
house, you can feel a sense of accomplishment that you're
moving your body as well. Man, my husband is making
tamales right now and the smell is very distracting.
It smells so good. I haven't had breakfast yet and
I really need to eat something soon.
Speaking of eating, if you eat a little bit lighter, and I'm not
talking about light as in low calorie foods, I'm talking about
smaller portions, it can help you with your energy levels.
OK, so whether you're just trying hard to lose weight or
you're not even in that mode right now, eating a little bit
lighter make things so much easier.
I mean, have you ever gone out to breakfast right before a
shopping trip and just thought, man, I'd rather just go home and
plop down because you ate a bunch of pancakes and stuff?
Be careful doing that as a homemaker, you know, eating too
much at breakfast or lunch. Now, I do try to consume more
calories at breakfast and lunch than I do at dinner.
That's just kind of my system for staying in a calorie
deficit. You know, by the end of the day,
I'm higher up in my calorie budget.
So I'm like, OK, I'm going to eat a light dinner.
That that's kind of what I do, but at the same time, I'm not
eating a huge breakfast or a huge lunch that's going to drag
me down. I mean, if you're stay at home
mom, think, think back to a time where you worked outside the
home and you didn't eat a real heavy lunch because you knew you
still had four hours left to work after lunch.
Take that same mindset with you and your home making.
Whether you're a stay at home mom or you're doing housework on
your way on your day off. Eating too much before you get
your housework done can make you feel sluggish.
And if you are trying to lose weight, a lot of it is about
mindset. You need to get more comfortable
with the feeling of only being 75% full after you eat.
That can be a game changer. I'm going to give you another
couple minutes to tidy up. Of course, those who already had
their house completely picked up could, you know, are probably
cleaning surfaces. You definitely need to customize
these episodes because I have no idea what the condition of your
home is on any given day. And I suspect that sometimes you
listen to an episode and you're doing less than what I'm telling
you to do, and other times you're doing more.
But while you're picking up just another thought on, you know,
weight loss. And nowadays they call it fat
loss because you don't want to lose muscle or whatever, but
obviously you want to see the scale move.
So that's why I'm still saying weight loss.
I do try to obviously preserve my muscle mass as I'm getting
older and I do plan to get better about weight training
once I get the backroom turned into an office and have all the
gym equipment in there, it's just going to be more
convenient. But I did get on the treadmill
yesterday and I did get on the weight machine.
And if you're just trying starting to do strength training
or whatever, you know, just shoot for twice a week.
There are benefits to that. There are benefits to going for
a one mile walk. There are benefits to every 45
minutes to an hour during your. Work.
Day or just if you're sedentary on the couch, getting up and
doing a few squats or a few diagonal push ups off the
countertop A little bit is better than nothing.
Don't have an all or nothing mentality when it comes to
exercise, but right now just picking up the house is getting
you moving and track your steps. If you don't think the things
you do around the house or exercise, use your phone or
fitness watch to track your steps.
And that might motivate you to do these whole house pickups
more often because you're probably racking up a lot of
steps. I know I'm all over the place,
but as you're finishing up straightening up your whole
house and remember, it's not just the floor you're picking
up, OK? You're clearing surfaces, you're
clearing your dresser, you're clearing your night stand.
But when you're at home, OK, maybe you're a full time
homemaker, maybe you work part time or full time, but when
you're at home for the day, you don't want to have this
mentality that you just need to fuel up.
The food's always going to be there, so you want to listen to
your body a little bit more. And when you're not that hungry,
don't eat just because it's lunchtime.
You're at home, so you don't need to prepare for anything.
I just can't emphasize enough how much operating in a calorie
deficit is about your mindset. It's about being comfortable
with the feeling of being a little bit hungry.
It's about not eating preemptively when you're not
hungry, but then at the same time not waiting too long to
eat, which could trigger a binge.
I'm going to give you one last tip on that note because I don't
want to talk too much about it, but I saw a video that I found
really inspiring. And I don't remember the
numbers, but this guy was saying like a certain number of hard
boiled eggs is the same amount of calories as some other number
of Oreo cookies. But then he was like, what are
you more likely to do? Eat this many Oreo cookies or
this many eggs? And basically, you're not going
to end up eating as many eggs. They're, they're more filling
than the cookies. So while no food is off limits
when you're counting calories, you know, and you can eat a
cookie here or there to take the edge off.
The reason you want to avoid dessert foods for the most part
is because it's a waste of calories and you're more likely
to eat more of them. You're more likely to overdo it
on chips cookies than you are on hard boiled eggs or bananas.
Now that your whole house is picked up, maybe you need to
revisit the countertop that you sprayed and scrubbed.
And that may not apply if you're not cooking from scratch two or
three meals a day and then getting sidetracked.
You may not relate to having some build up on your
countertops. You know, maybe you're like
these cleaning videos that I see on YouTube where whenever they
wipe down the countertops in the kitchen, they're completely
clean to begin with. Because either they never cook
because they're, you know, rich influencers, or they pre clean
their house to avoid embarrassment.
They pre clean it before the video.
I don't know. But some of us, you know, have
some scrubbing to do on the countertops.
Go back in there, spray and wipe a second time, and while you're
in there, wipe down your kitchen cabinets, the fronts of your
large appliances, your stove top, the control panel of your
stove, and the exterior of your refrigerator.
And by the way, I do have episodes for cleaning the inside
of your refrigerator. I think I have a link to one of
them on cleanwithmepodcast.com. So if you don't need to do any
of the housework that I'm talking about, clean the inside
of your fridge. But a lot of us just want to get
our whole house cleaned today. By the way, a great time to
clean the inside of the refrigerator is either the day
before or the hours before or in the hours before you get a large
amount of groceries. So if you do a weekly grocery
trip or a monthly grocery trip, clean out your refrigerator and
then wipe it down while it's relatively empty.
Just a tip there, but we're not really focusing on the inside of
your fridge in this episode. So I'm going to give you a few
more minutes in the kitchen. You're going to want to deep
clean those upper surfaces. You're going to want to wipe
down the cabinets top and bottom.
You're going to want to scrub your countertops, your stovetop,
clean out your sink, and if you did leave a few things to soak,
now's the time to go ahead and wash those dishes because you
want to get down to dish zero. And right now you might be
thinking about those To Do List items other than your housework.
You might be preoccupied with back to school preparations, or
you might be thinking about some bills you need to pay later
today, or you might be thinking about what you're going to make
for dinner. Resist the urge to get
sidetracked. If you need to mentally dump
something onto a notepad or the notepad app of your phone, then
do so. Sometimes I even just text my
husband something like all-purpose flour, salsa,
whatever. I'll I'll text a couple
ingredients. He knows exactly what I'm doing
and the reason I do that is that we is because we go grocery
shopping together. So if I forget about that item
he'll remember it too. So maybe you want to involve
someone else in your To Do List or maybe you want to just kind
of brain dump yourself. Maybe you have a chalkboard in
your kitchen. I got a really cute little
chalkboard from Hobby Lobby. Sometimes I like to write down
what I'm making for dinner that night.
But another thing that I use that chalkboard and just be
working in your kitchen. Everything except the floor,
because we're doing that at the end of the episode.
Or at least I'll tell you to do it after the episode, but that's
for the end. You know, we clean top to
bottom. So you're working on your
kitchen surfaces and getting down to dish 0 while I talk.
And if you don't have dishes to do everything fit the
dishwasher, you got it done earlier.
Or you've been doing dishes as you go, or you've been eating
out. Great.
Be deep cleaning the surfaces of your kitchen.
I want you to do that either way, even if you have to leave a
couple things soaking, make sure you're deep cleaning your
kitchen. But another thing I use the
little chalkboard for, sometimes when I get groceries, I'll have
several meals in mind. I'm not one of these people.
That's like, OK, Monday is chicken night, Tuesday is Taco
night. Like I'm not going to be that
specific, partly because we don't know how many leftovers
we're going to have. Some days we're going to eat
leftovers or I might declare A fend for yourself night or
whatever. But what I do know when I'm
grocery shopping is which meals I've bought ingredients for.
So my method of meal planning is planning a certain number of
meals, but not planning which day we're going to have them on.
So sometimes I make a list of dinners and put that on the
chalkboard. That way when my husband goes to
cook, because we take turns cooking, he can see what dinners
I had in mind when I bought the ingredients that I bought, if
that makes sense. But sometimes I write other
random things on the chalkboard. My point is, you need a method
of brain dumping so that when thoughts come into your head
about things that you need to do later, you can just brain dump
those to do items instead of kind of flitting around from one
task to another and never completing anything.
Right now we're cleaning, so you might need to brain dump
something else that's popped into your head.
And I feel like it happens a lot in the kitchen.
You'll start thinking, oh, I need this or that at the store.
And it can just get your mind wandering.
So that's where the chalkboard or maybe a magnetic notepad
that's on the refrigerator or just something in your phone
comes into play. You've got to have a place to
brain dump and maybe you're not distracted at this particular
moment, but I feel like it's so valuable to be able to brain
dump. And a lot of times I do it
before I go to bed. I'll put some To Do List items
in my notebook pad app and then I'll check it in the morning.
That way I don't go to bed worrying about what I need to do
the next day, worrying whether I'm going to forget to do it.
So definitely get a system for that.
We're going to spend only a couple more minutes in the
kitchen, but I'm hoping that you have everything done in there
except the floor. I hope you're wiping down your
countertops. I hope you're wiping down your
table. I hope you're wiping down your
chairs if they're sticky. I hope you're cleaning out the
high chair if you have a toddler or baby.
And of course, if you're ahead of the game, there are always
declittering tasks to be done in the kitchen.
Sometimes you need to consolidate 2 seasoning
containers. Sometimes you need to organize
your pantry because whoever helped you put away the
groceries didn't put them away exactly as you want them.
Sometimes I'll use containers that have missing lids to store
other items. For example, I have a canister
that doesn't have a lid. I put all of.
The. Tumblr lids into that canister
just to keep them contained so that they're not spread out.
I don't have a lot of drawers and I didn't want those spread
out on the shelf, so I put them in that open canister.
I definitely have containers in my pantry for small things as
well. For example, I have a little
plastic box for the small baking ingredients like baking soda,
baking powder, vanilla extract. I'm definitely big on
repurposing items for storage and organization.
Shoe boxes can be good for things like that.
In fact, a long time ago, I I ordered something that came with
a very sturdy box that wasn't just the regular cardboard.
It was like kind of a glossy dark brown finish.
Even though it was cardboard. It was just a really pretty open
box. And I ended up putting that
inside my kitchen island and I use it for the glass lids for my
pots and pans. So maybe be thinking about
kitchen organization right now. And if an idea put pops into
your head and it's not something you can do right now, put it on
your brain dump list. And I have other places where I
can brain dump things that are less urgent.
I definitely write notes to myself in a journal in my binder
and my calendar planner book that I used to keep track of
college assignments. But if it's something that I for
sure need to remember in the near near future, I'm either
putting it on the notepad app of my phone or I'm texting it to my
husband. Obviously the texting brain dump
is not a good idea if your husband's at work.
I'm talking if he's at home. Nobody really wanted to be
interrupted at work to find out you need BBQ sauce or razors.
OK, hopefully your kitchen surfaces are wiped down.
Probably the most irritating aspects of your housework are
done. Your whole house is picked up,
your dishes are done. Maybe you have a couple items
soaking, but for the most part your dishes are done.
And I did give you time to wash those items that were soaking
unless you were facing a dishaster.
I get it, it happens. But things are looking a lot
better than when you started this episode, and I'm proud of
you for that. The next thing I want you to do
is go back and scrub the inside of both of your toilet bowls.
I'm just randomly assuming you have two bathrooms.
You might have one bathroom or three bathrooms, but go back and
scrub the inside of those toilet bowls now that the chemical has
had time to soak. And I know you picked up the
bathroom floors in both bathrooms, but what I want you
to do is focus on deep cleaning at least one of the bathrooms.
Meaning you're going to clean the vanity, OK, the countertop,
the sink, the faucets, the area behind the faucets and then the
mirror. OK, and I've said this before,
but my tip for cleaning a huge bathroom mirror is attaching A
microfiber cloth to the end of a mop.
Which for me, I use the Swiffer because it you can just
literally push into those little holes.
You push the the microfiber cloth into the little holes in
the same way that you would attach a pre moistened pad
that's designed for the Swiffer. And you could be using a
different brand. It's just Swiffers what I have.
It's what I know. And then you spray your mirror
and mop it. But if it's a small mirror,
makes more sense to just quickly wipe it by hand.
OK, but I typically save the mirror for last because when I'm
quickly scrubbing the faucet area and behind the sink, I
might splash a little water on the bottom of the mirror.
So that's my reasoning, but there's no right or wrong order.
I mean if it's more your style to start with the mirror and
work your way down, I've done that at times but I think just
it often creates an additional step of me having to re wipe the
bottom of the mirror. OK so get that sink and vanity
area done and then sanitize the exterior parts of your toilet.
Whatever you use for that. If I have disinfecting wipes in
stock, I definitely like to clean the toilet with those.
But if I don't, sometimes I'll grab a roll of paper towel.
Well, I will grab a roll of paper towels and a disinfecting
spray or some of the bathroom spray and I will clean that way.
And I mean, if I'm out of cleaning products or something,
I might, I might use Windex or something.
It's not a disinfectant, but it's better than not cleaning at
all. And you can always add
disinfectant to your shopping list or disinfecting wipes to
your shopping list. In the meantime, you can still
wipe down the surfaces after using whatever spray you have.
And of course, if you're really frugal and you'd rather work
harder than spend more, you can clean the exterior of your
toilet using a bleach powder like Commet or Ajax and a damp
rag. That's the way my mom does it,
but I definitely like to pamper myself.
I guess my version of the frugal method is when I'm being frugal,
I use those cheap bleach powders inside of the toilet bowl
instead of using an actual toilet bowl cleaner.
Because if you get the actual toilet bowl cleaner, it's kind
of nice how it has that neck on the bottle and it sprays up
under the rim. But it's a lot cheaper to use
Commodore Ajax inside the toilet bowl and never mix chemicals
inside of the toilet bowl. My social media manager recently
posted a video where this asinine video where someone just
put a bunch of different chemicals in the toilet bowl and
she said her her grandmother taught her that that's super
dangerous and it is. So pick one thing to go in your
toilet bowl because you don't always know what the active
ingredient is in each cleaning product.
And I've told this story before, but once I used two different
toilet bowl cleaners thinking these are both toilet bowl
cleaners thinking they'd be similar.
Now I learned my lesson that day I I felt that toxic chemical
brewing and ran out of the bathroom.
So using the commenter Ajax or a dedicated toilet bowl cleaner is
an either or because different toilet bowl cleaners have
different active ingredients and it's the whole thing where you
don't want to end up inadvertently mixing bleach and
ammonia. But where I don't like to cut
corners is on using disposable stuff for cleaning the exterior
parts of the toilet. OK, by now you've cleaned the
the countertop, mirror and sink and we're focusing on the
exterior parts of the toilet. Paper towels and disinfectant or
disinfecting wipes are a lot easier to use and that's that's
what I like to use on the exterior part of the seat,
behind the seat, the area around the hinges.
Yes, I realize you can remove the toilet seat, but you can
still clean it effectively without moving it, especially if
you're using a spray to really get in those crevices.
OK. And then you're going to want to
wash the back of the tank, the flusher handle, the exterior of
the bowl. You're going to work your way
all the way down. You're going to clean that base.
And I'm going to admit that I don't clean the base of the
toilet during every light touch up.
But right now, this is more of a deep cleaning session, so I want
you to get down on your hands and knees and wipe around the
base, down where those bolts are, and clean the floor around
the base of the toilet. I'm going to give you just a few
more minutes to finish up in the bathroom.
Maybe you need to sweep your way out of the bathroom, or maybe
you're planning to sweep the bathroom kind of in one fell
swoop when you sweep the rest of the house.
But your bonus task, should you choose to accept it, is quickly
wiping down some surfaces in your bathroom that you don't
always wipe down. Because we all know when we deep
clean a bathroom, we're wiping down the countertop, we're
cleaning the sink, the faucet, we're cleaning the toilet.
OK. But what we don't do as often
and it it still needs to be done is wiping down the cabinets,
wiping down the light switch plate, wiping down the
baseboards. OK, so if you have time, do some
of those deeper cleaning tasks. But if it's a big bathroom, it's
super messy and you're just overwhelmed right now.
I get it. Do those other surfaces another
day. But I wanted to mention them as
a reminder. Don't forget to look up.
There may be some areas that you need to spray on your ceiling
around the vent. You don't want to let any mold
take hold. There might be a window and a
window sill in your bathroom to spray and wipe down.
There might be a fixture to dust.
These are just some ideas as you're finishing up your
bathroom. And of course, take inventory.
Are you running low on toilet paper?
Add it to your grocery list. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash,
bar soap. Whatever you use, make sure you
have enough in stock. Hand soap.
Do you need to hang up some fresh towels?
If you need more time to work in that bathroom, definitely pause
the episode. My sister and those of you who
comment serve kind of as my focus group of how you use the
show and she often tells me that she just does whatever needs to
be done in her house while listening to me talk.
She's not using it as a step by step, but she does get ideas.
She hears me say something, ends up cleaning it, but she's also
customizing just doing what needs to be done at her house
while I talk. So obviously you could keep
working in the bathroom while I move on.
But before I have you do kind of the the final step of dusting
and vacuuming your entire house or sweeping.
If that's if that's how you do it, I want you to pick a room or
an area that you're going to focus your deeper cleaning
efforts on today because you got the whole house picked up, you
got one of your bathrooms deep cleaned, you got your kitchen
under control. So at this point you might need
to make a choice and that's what life is about.
There's there's never time for us to just be perfect in every
area and that's OK. You're probably not having a
white glove inspection by your mother-in-law tonight, but what
you probably have is an area that needs more attention than
another area. Maybe it's been a long time
since you've really deep cleaned your bedroom as far as dusting
the surfaces. And just being real thorough in
there. Or maybe someone is coming over
and you want your kitchen to really sparkle or your living
room to really sparkle. Or maybe you have a room that
just needs an overhaul. Maybe you have a small child or
disabled child or an elderly parent, somebody who needs you
to clean their room. OK, maybe that's what you're
going to focus on doing. But I want you to pick one room
and do some things in there you don't normally do.
OK. For example, in my bedroom I
have two small windows and a sliding glass door.
So if I were to focus my deep cleaning efforts in here, I
would be cleaning the insides of the windows.
I might decide to go outside and clean the exterior of those
windows. I'm going to wipe down the
window sills. I'm probably going to pick at
least one baseboard to wipe down.
I'm going to vacuum out the dusty track of my sliding glass
door. Maybe shake out the mats.
Be working in a room that needs your attention.
I'm just throwing out some ideas while you work.
If I were to focus on my living room, I'd be dusting the blinds,
cleaning the insides of three windows, wiping out three
windowsills. Well, four if you include the
skinny window by my my front door.
OK, I would be cleaning out the drawer in my side table and my
entertainment center work, we'll call it.
It's not an old school entertainment center, so I
typically call it the TV stand. But I do have a piece of
furniture that has a couple drawers and a shelf.
You know baseboards are a thing in every room, but it's not an
all or nothing. Sometimes you want to just pick
one baseboard or two baseboards to wipe down.
Sometimes you need to go through a kids toy box and get rid of
broken toys. Sometimes you need to clean out
your walk in closet so that you can walk into it again or clean
out your hall closet. OK, after the episode I want you
to go through with either a go through your whole house with
either a feather duster or a micro fiber cloth and some
dusting spray. Whatever you use to dust quickly
go through and do that, do some light dusting and then vacuum or
sweep and mop your entire house in one fell swoop.
And you need to have a music playlist for this or maybe a,
you know, some other podcasts on different topics because it's
there's not a lot of thought involved when you're just
cleaning your floor systematically and rows.
OK, so I want you to do that after the episode.
But for right now, I want you to pick an area of focus to do lots
of bonus tasks and you know which area needs the most help.
And if your whole house needs help, you might need to listen
to several episodes. This week, one of my dear
listeners took some time off from work and binged several
episodes to get her house under control.
And I, I found that so admirable, the dedication to
just focus and clean, listen and clean and repeat day after day
because she had gone through something so painful that she'd
been paralyzed with depression for a while and she still had to
go to work and things like that, but her house had suffered.
I think we can all relate to that to an extent.
Even if we haven't gone through something as dramatic, we've all
had times where we're preoccupied with something and
it it physically drains us. That could be you right now.
You're not alone, you just might need to clean along with an
episode every single day for a while and obviously
decluttering. It's not this one time project,
it's it's a lifestyle. For example, I recently cleaned
out my hall closet that's more of a coat closet.
I recently cleaned that out. Not that we just keep coats in
it, we do have coats in it among other things.
But I recently cleaned out that closet.
But across from that is the one called the linen closet that has
the shelves instead of a bar where you hang things.
OK, a lot of houses have both and that one needs to be cleaned
out now because somebody just stacked it sky high with
comforters and sheets and blankets and I feel like those
items could be organized a lot better than what they are.
My walk in closet, I'm always having to redo it.
Not so much the clothes that are hanging up, but the things that
I place on the floor because I have a shoe rack with shelves in
there. I've got a plastic dresser where
I put various things that are not clothing.
I have clothes hanging up, but sometimes the floor of my walk
in closet becomes kind of a catch all.
When I'm cleaning my room in a hurry, I put things in there and
I think we're all guilty of this to some extent or another where
we're relocating things instead of putting them away, right?
Like one room gets clean at the expense of another.
In an episode like this where I'm telling you focus on an
area, it could be the area that has gotten messed up at the
expense of another room. I mean, it might have been a
great idea to put everything in the spare bedroom or one of the
closets when you were preparing for guests or when you just
wanted your most lived in areas clean for you and your family.
I understand, but sometimes we have to evaluate our home and
identify the problem areas. Is there a shelf above your
washer and dryer that's cluttered?
And maybe you need to brain dump some of these items onto your
list because there are so many of them.
But if you listen to my show often, you probably won't need A
to do list that's about cleaning, because I'm going to
remind you to do various things. And if you listen to enough
episodes, I'm going to mention everything.
At least I I try. If you started a load of laundry
at the beginning of this episode, depending on the length
of the cycle, it might be time to switch the laundry from the
washing machine into the dryer. Sometimes when I'm just doing a
load of towels and they're not like stinky forgotten mildewed
towels, just regular towels that have been used but appear
relatively clean, I'll put it on the short cycle.
And I'm really likely to use the short cycle when I'm just
washing a load of dressy clothing, like things I wear to
church or work, which is usually a dark load.
I wear a lot of black. I'll put it, I'll put it on a
short cycle so that I don't eat up too much time because I want
to, I want to do the laundry switch and start another load.
And then I'll put it on a more thorough sanitizing cycle.
If it's something questionable, some kind of pet bedding or
something or towels used to clean up throw up or whatever.
We haven't dealt with that in a while.
I will tell you this though, if someone throws up and doesn't
make it to the bathroom, what? I've always done it, and my kids
are older now, so this hardly ever happens.
But what I would do is grab my ugliest towel.
I would pick a towel, or towels, plural, that we're kind of
frayed along the edges or maybe had bleach stains on them or
whatever. Just the ugly towels.
I'd clean up the mess with the ugly towels and then throw them
away because from time to time you're getting new towels
anyway. After a while.
They're thin, they're not that soft, they don't look nice
anymore, and you're always upgrading and getting new ones.
But save a few ugly ones for those gross messes, OK?
And something that does still happen is a dog throwing up.
Hopefully I'm not grossing him out here, but I definitely
reserve the right to throw away towels.
When I clean up a gross mess. I just pick an old ugly towel
for it. When I was growing up, our old
ugly towels were taken out to the garage and we used them to
dry the cars after washing the cars.
But since my husband and I usually drive through a car
wash, I typically just keep the ugly towels in a cupboard and
then use them when there's a gross mess to clean up and then
just throw them away. I hope you got your whole house
looking good during this episode.
I encourage you to vacuum the whole house or sweep and mop the
whole house after this. It'll give you time to listen to
your non cleaning podcasts. Thank you so much for your
financial support. I appreciate each and every one
of you and as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you soon.