Don't sacrifice having you know your dishes done every day to
deep clean an area. I'm Ronnie and you're listening
to clean with me, the podcast where I walk you through
cleaning your house step by step.
Welcome back to Clean with me. In today's episode, I'm going to
talk you through deep cleaning a small area.
Usually I talk you through your housework room by room, but in
this episode I'm going to assume that you're you're hyper
focusing on a single area. This could be one wall, one
corner, one window even. And we're going to talk about
removing the clutter and then we're going to talk about
cleaning the surfaces. And I'm going to get into just
the insurance and outs of cleaning your baseboards.
I'm going to tell you how professional house cleaners do
it. And you may be thinking, I need
to get my whole house presentable fast.
If that's the case, this is not the episode for you.
This is an episode for, as you detail small areas of your home.
And you might be thinking, well, why would I do that?
OK, not everyone has time to do like a major spring cleaning and
it's not spring when I'm saying this, but you know, that's the
popular term. We could call it a fall
cleaning, but not everybody has the time to dedicated to that.
In fact, most of us don't. Life keeps happening and even if
we set aside a day, maybe a Saturday, where the whole family
is working together and we get a lot done because our family
often works together cleaning out the garage on a random
Saturday. But are we really going to give
our entire house an overhaul in one day?
Even with the whole crew working, it's not going to be as
deep of a clean when you're trying to get the whole house
done. OK, so first thing I want you to
do is pick your area, OK? Maybe it's one wall of your
living room. Maybe it's a corner, a cluttered
corner of a bedroom, office, kids room.
You know, maybe it's the wall where the toy box is in your
kids room. Maybe it's a wall that has a
window. Maybe it's it's a wall that has
a piece of furniture on it. For example, you might pick the
wall where you have a couch and you're going to remove the
cushions and clean everything out and vacuum out that couch.
But you're also going to move the couch and clean the
baseboard. OK.
Or maybe it's a wall where you have a smaller piece of
furniture, like a dresser or a desk.
And maybe there are some items under your desk and around your
desk on your desk. You know, the desk wall could be
your area of focus. I'm just giving you some ideas,
but I want you to pick either an area that's a problem or just an
area that you feel like you could tackle, you know, within
this 20 minute episode. And for this first segment, I
don't want you to worry about the cleaning products and
cleaning tools. The first thing you're going to
do is declutter. OK?
You're going to declutter the area.
And I guess if you're working in an area that doesn't have any
clutter, maybe you're just working on a blank wall with a
window or something and you want to clean the window, the window
sills, the baseboards. You could always Fast forward
this episode. Maybe Fast forward like 5
minutes ahead. We're going to spend 5 minutes
on removing clutter. An example of a recent
decluttering project that I did was clearing out my piano bench.
I took everything out of it, threw some stuff away, relocated
some stuff, and just put the items back in that I wanted to
keep in there. Often the areas that have
clutter are not these empty walls.
Usually a cluttered area involves furniture because
things can be hiding around the furniture under the furniture.
You're going to need at least a trash bag, and then you're going
to be sorting things into piles. And you might even need a broom
if you're having to pull things out from under a heavy piece of
furniture that's too hard for you to move.
But for the next few minutes, we're going to be removing
clutter from your area of focus. And just while you're doing
that, putting things in the trash, putting things in a pile,
you know of stuff that you're going to relocate to other areas
of the house. Or maybe, you know, maybe
there's also a donation pile. OK, while you're sorting through
this clutter and dealing with it, and let's face it, a lot of
it might be trash. You know, you might be in a kid
room and there could be some broken toys and things that
you're throwing away. I'm not sure what your
decluttering project is, but you're removing the clutter and
sorting it. And while you're doing that,
I'll just talk about why you would hyper focus on one area.
By the way, if you do want to get your whole house clean at
once, a lot of the bonus episodes for paid subscribers
have you getting your whole house clean at once.
Special thanks to those who are already supporting the show
financially, either on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Patreon, or
some other less common way. When you try to spring clean
your whole house, so to speak, something's got to give and, and
there's a time for that. There's a place for that.
Obviously, sometimes we have a deadline where we need to get
our whole house looking as good as possible.
You know, obviously these deadlines are self-imposed, but
it could be that you're having a birthday party at your house.
It could be that you're having overnight guests.
It could be that your spouse has been out of town and you want to
surprise him or her with a clean house.
Or you could be preparing for a new baby or another busy season
of life, perhaps taking on a new job.
These episodes are timeless. So I don't like to go on and on
about a particular season. I mean, I do have some episodes
that are real seasonal, but this is definitely an anytime
episode, an Evergreen episode. You could be listening to this
anytime of the year. And please realize I'm using
spring cleaning as a figure of speech, but most of us don't
have the time or energy to do all of our spring cleaning in
one weekend. You know, life keeps happening.
People are still expecting to be fed.
Our energy levels are limited. But if you have something coming
up that's not just imminent, instead of having to do like a
crisis clean where you do your best to get the whole house
looking good, you know, within a day or two, you could start deep
cleaning one area at a time, either once a day or once a
week, and just chip away at the deep cleaning tasks while of
course keeping up on your daily stuff.
OK, I'm talking about spending maybe 20 minutes a day or 20
minutes a week hyper focusing on a certain area.
And then in that way you're systematically getting your
whole house detailed. I'm recording this episode in
September and kind of what I have in mind for myself is
Thanksgiving, OK? So if you are expecting company
over the holidays, could be overnight guests, could be just
one day that you're hosting a get together, you could already
be preparing for that by deep cleaning one area at a time.
And then you might not have to shut that back bedroom door or
the office door or, you know, put a rope by your staircase to
keep people from going upstairs. I know someone who did that and
I just thought, well, if they wouldn't have done that, I
probably would have assumed the upstairs was clean.
It's going to feel good to be able to just open up every room.
Oh, you can use my bathroom. I mean, how impressed are you
when you're at a party and someone offers to let you use
their bathroom because they see you standing in in line at the
bathroom and the doors shut and then you go into their bedroom
to access that master bathroom and their bedroom is super
pristine? I'm thinking of a specific
person right now. OK, before I delve into this
topic a little more, I want you to move on to the next step.
For this step, I want you to gather up your cleaning supplies
and maybe you have some some piles and things to deal with
quickly. Deal with what you can throw
away the trash. You know, maybe you need a broom
and dustpan. You know, whatever trash you
found and debris you found, get that thrown away.
OK, Put your donatables into a box or a bag that you can take
out to the trunk of your car later.
Or maybe you have a large container somewhere, a donation
station in the back of your closet, and you're just going to
kind of add it to that container and deal with it later.
That's fine too. Maybe you need to quickly
relocate some items around the house or maybe you want to just
put them in a basket, deal with them later.
But we're moving on to the surfaces and I want you to
gather up some supplies for this.
We're going to sweep and mop or vacuum at the end.
That's not what I'm talking about when I'm I'm talking about
surfaces. I'm talking more about things
like windows, windows, sills, furniture, OK, like maybe the
surface of your desk or your piano.
Or if you were cleaning debris out of your couch cushions, this
could mean like spot cleaning your couches.
It could be wiping down a hard piece of furniture.
Basically all of the surfaces other than the floor itself are
what we're going to be focusing on in the on this in this next
step. So you want to get some cleaning
supplies together. You want a rag, you want some
kind of a brush, either a toothbrush or a soft bristled
cleaning brush of some sort. Obviously when the brush is a
little bigger than a toothbrush, you can get your cleaning done
faster if there is a baseboard in the area you're focusing on.
And most likely there is because a lot of times our cluttered
areas are near the walls. If you've got a lot of like
grimy buildup, especially on the kind of that top edge of your
baseboard, you're going to want some type of a cleaning product.
But don't get it wet just yet. It's easier to dry clean a
baseboard first, dry dust it before you wet clean it.
But if you have a ton of build up, there's a product called
Crud Cutter. Tough task, pretty easy to find
if you're here in the United States.
Obviously I don't know what what they have in other countries,
but I'm sure you have a comparable degreaser and crud
cutter is on the list of safer products.
So I think it's, you know, fairly clean.
Obviously you might not have that product on hand right now,
but you probably have some other type of multi purpose spray.
But bonus points if you have some kind of degreaser,
especially if you have build up on your baseboards.
If you're dealing with scuff Marks and you happen to have a
magic eraser, get that wet. It's one of those sponges.
It kind of looks like a sponge, but it's not a sponge.
A wet magic eraser. Get it wet.
And that's going to be for your scuff marks on baseboards or
possibly doors. Oh, you might need a Swiffer
duster or some type of a duster, whether it's a short one or on a
pole. OK, a dusting tool.
And then last but not least, a micro fiber cloth and some glass
cleaner. Now, micro fiber cloth is the
best thing that I've found for cleaning windows and shiny
furniture like my piano mirrors, of course.
However, in a pinch, you can always use paper towels.
It's going to leave some tiny bits of fuzz, but it's really
not that bad. And when I grew up, my mom
always cleaned all the mirrors with paper towels.
It's not the end of the world if that's what you're using.
OK, but add some of these things to your grocery list if you wish
you had them. OK, obviously right now you're
going to clean with what you have.
Where I got the idea for purchasing Crud Cutter is from
this lady Angela Brown from Ask a House Cleaner.
I was interviewed on her show a while back.
She hasn't made any YouTube videos and I think like a year.
I hope she's OK Great lady. And she's a professional house
cleaner. So she has some amazing tips and
a lot of the knowledge I'm going to give you about baseboards in
this episode comes from her. And I shared her video on the
Clean with Me podcast Facebook page if you want to watch her
actual video on it. But I'm going to touch on some
of what she talked about. OK, now that you have all of
your supplies together, it is time to start working on the
surfaces. OK, you've removed clutter from
that corner, or that piece of furniture, or both.
Now it's time to wipe that surface down.
You know, whether you're wiping down a desk or you're washing a
window inside and out, like maybe you picked a blank wall
and just be working on whatever, you know, whatever your area is,
use those tools to clean the surfaces while I talk.
You know, don't, don't waste too much time wondering what I'm
going to say next. I'm going to be talking about a
few different things and not all of them are going to apply to
the area you're working on. But if you pick just a wall that
has a window and there's not any furniture there, and you know,
maybe you fast forwarded to this part because there wasn't
clutter to deal with, you're going to want to spray and wash
the inside of the window, possibly even go outside and
clean the outside of it. Something that I just love doing
lately is taking my Swiffer mop and it's the kind that's
designed to put that pre moistened pad on and you kind of
you wrap that pad around it and you kind of push it into some
holes. Well, you can attach a micro
fiber cloth to that mop instead of that pre moistened pad.
Then you spray the window or the mirror that you're working on
with a glass cleaner and basically mop the window.
It works so well. I'm telling you, it's so fast
and thorough and you just go over it a couple times and it
just gives you a wonderful streak free clean mirror or
window. Now, obviously, sometimes your
exterior windows are dirtier. You might need to power wash
them with the hose or you know, get, you know, get the the mud
off of them first. I think this applies most if
you're cleaning a sliding glass door and your dogs have been
jumping up with muddy paws. Obviously at that point you're
not ready to just use a glass cleaner and a microfiber cloth.
You might want to spray down that window with a hose and, you
know, brush it with like that tool you use to wash the cars or
something, you know, to get rid of the the surface dirt and mud.
And then you can do the, you know, clean it with glass
cleaner and microfiber. OK.
And if the if the sliding glass door door area is your area of
focus, you would clean that sliding glass door inside and
out. And you would also want to take
your vacuum and vacuum all the dust and debris out of the track
of the door. But once you've cleaned the
piece of furniture, whether you're spot cleaning a couch or
you're wiping a a smooth piece of furniture down, you're going
to want to turn your attention to the baseboard.
OK, and maybe you cleaned a window and a window sill, but
with baseboards, it's easier to dry dust them first.
I think I already mentioned that it's easier to dry dust them
first. Professional house cleaners dust
the baseboards every time. You know how they'll charge you
more for a deep cleaning than like a routine cleaning?
On those routine maintenance cleanings, they're just dry
dusting the baseboards because there's not a lot of buildup.
But keeping that dry dust at Bay will prevent your baseboards
from getting grimy and harder to clean.
But even if they already are grimy, you want to kind of dust
them off with a brush first before you apply a cleaning
product to them. So you quickly dry dust them.
Then you're going to wet clean them by using your crud cutter
or whatever else. But here the crud cutters
available at like Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, and there are a
lot of crud cutter products, but the one you would probably use
on your baseboards is the tough task.
It's for, you know, cleaning greasy, grimy areas.
And maybe you have a baseboard cleaning tool that keeps you
from having to bend if you have a bad, bad back or something.
But a lot of us are just getting down on our hands and knees and
scrubbing that, you know, spray some stuff on it, clean it with
a brush and then wipe it with the rag.
Remember, you had a rag that wasn't your micro fiber, just a
rag. Of course, if you've already
used your micro fiber on the window or mirror and you're
you're, you don't mind dirtying it up, you can use that to kind
of wipe the cleaner off of the baseboard.
And again, that magic eraser will work for scuff marks.
Sometimes, you know, kids or your spouse are vacuuming and
they're just slamming the vacuum into the baseboards and it's
leaving little scuff marks. And don't get me wrong,
sometimes after cleaning your baseboards, you're like, I just
need to paint these. You might need to add that to
your To Do List or your honey do list.
But I mean, my sister is famous for doing a lot of home
improvement projects on her own. And it's not that the rest of us
aren't capable, just some of us don't want to do it.
I do these projects when I have to.
There was a time when I was moving and we kept getting like
bad reviews, bright colors throughout because I had done
kind of an ocean theme in the bathroom.
And you know how when you're looking at the color swatches
and you're, you know, you're not a professional decorator or
whatever, you don't realize that the paint's going to look a lot
darker once you get it on the wall, you know, compared to what
it looks like on that card. So I was trying to sell a house
and the, the guest bathroom was a really bright blue.
And you get feedback after the showings.
You know where the real estate agent is typing in what her
clients commented about your house.
They were saying bright colors throughout.
But it was a four bedroom house. Most of it was neutral except
for that guest bathroom and one of the kid bedrooms.
But I decided with a four bedroom house, a buyer should be
OK with like one bright green bedroom.
And it was like that sponging that was popular for a while.
So it was kind of the walls in that one bedroom were kind of
crazy, something that I had allowed a teenager to do.
Bottom line is my husband was already working in another state
and I was kind of traveling back and forth to visit him.
I had four kids at the time. My youngest was a baby, like 9
months old. So it was kind of an ordeal
painting that large guest bathroom myself, because in the
bathroom you've got to tape off a lot.
There's there are a lot of obstacles.
It's not like you're just painting a blank wall.
But I did do a great job and as soon as I got it painted white,
the house sold. But normally that's the type of
thing I would ask my husband to do, but he was not able to at
that time. And yes, I've mowed lawns before
and stuff, but in general I give him that kind of stuff.
So yes, I realize you're capable of things when I say put it on
the honey do list, but you're probably already doing a lot of
housework. And of course, if you did choose
a window, you're going to want to dust the blinds, maybe wash
the curtains. Or if it was a hard piece of
furniture that you were decluttering on and around, you
might want to kind of decorate it, decide which items you're
going to place on it, you know, and kind of position them in an
in an aesthetically pleasing way.
Those finishing touches are kind of the fun part.
And if you're like me and you have you kind of have a deadline
that's far out. If you're preparing for
something that's a couple months out, maybe after this episode,
you can make a list of deep cleaning projects.
Or you can just kind of systematically work your way
around your home. Like if you started, if you
started with that wall where your living room window is,
maybe you're going to just turn the corner and focus on the next
wall where one of the couches is and just kind of work your way
around the perimeter of your house systematically.
Or if there are just a few problem areas, you could make a
list and start checking them off, you know, each day or each
week as you get those done. But by spending only a few
minutes on these hyper focus projects, it allows you to kind
of do your daily tasks. You know, don't sacrifice
having, you know, your dishes done every day to deep clean an
area. Ideally, you want to do both.
At this point in the episode, I want to encourage you to clean
the floor either by vacuuming or sweeping and mopping.
OK, that's the last step. And of course, if you had some
items that you put in a basket, you're going to want to put
those away things that are in your relocation pile.
Or maybe you need to take that trash bag you filled up to your
outdoor trash bin. But for the sake of keeping this
episode short, you might need to just put on your cleaning
playlist after this. It's a good idea to have a
playlist of music that gets you in the mood for cleaning.
Bonus points if it's not the same music that you listen to
while you're in the car, because you want to kind of condition
yourself to clean when you hear certain songs.
Anyway, I hope you decluttered an area and cleaned those upper
surfaces and cleaned the baseboard on that wall or on
those two walls if you're cleaning a corner and that
you're finishing out with the floors.
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate each and everyone
of you and as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.