Thanks for joining me in today's episode.
I'm going to talk you through a walkthrough of your entire
house. We're going to look for problem
areas. We're going to.
Deal with them, but. Before we do that, we're going
to make sure your dishes are done.
I'm Ronnie and you're listening to Clean With Me, the podcast
where I walk you through cleaning your house step by
step. Let's get right into the
episode. It's time to gear up for our
cleaning session. Maybe you need to freshen up for
the day, or maybe you need to take your trash out and get your
house smelling good. Maybe put some fresh wax in the
wax warmer or light a candle. And I know I can talk faster
than you can do these things. I'm just giving you some ideas
on how you might want to kick off your cleaning session.
Or maybe you want to get your machines running so that when
you're walking through the house, picking things up, wiping
down surfaces. Your.
Washing machine is running and maybe you're dryer.
And of course the other machine could be a dishwasher if you
have one. But for now, I want you to do
whatever you need to do to gear up for your cleaning session,
whether it's getting yourself dressed and presentable for the
day, your house smelling good. Maybe you need to open up some
curtains or blinds. I often raise my blinds up a
little bit after opening them. You know, turning the slats to
let light in. After doing that, I raise them
up so that I can expose the windowsills and wipe those down.
We live in a super dusty area, so I like to dust my windowsills
often, but I also just feel good when I let some light into my
house. And of course that's going to
reveal dust. So it's kind of A2 fold benefit
there. You feel energized, but you're
also revealing dust, which you're going to be taking care
of during this session. I'm going to give you a couple
more minutes to gear up for your cleaning session.
Maybe you're starting a load of laundry or taking out the trash
like I mentioned, or maybe you weren't dressed for the day and
you needed to, you know, run a brush through your hair or put
on some makeup if that's your thing.
Another thing you could do during this time is straighten
up your front entrance area, whether that's an entryway and
foyer area that's kind of separate from any living area or
just the front room of your house.
A lot of us have that floor plan where you're just walking into
the living room at our house. There's a little area.
Of tile we've got a piano off to the side, which serves as a
launchpad by the way, it's important to have a launchpad,
meaning somewhere where you keep your keys, somewhere you can put
things that you need to take out the door with you.
It's just a great way to help you get out of the house on
time. Another possible launchpad idea
is coat hooks or coat rack and somewhere to put shoes.
I don't like it when just shoes are spread out in someone's
entryway, but I've seen people with a little shelf to where
there's like kind of a bench and then a shelf underneath for the
shoes where they can sit there and tie their shoes or whatever.
So just a thought. There while you're straightening
up that front entrance area if needed.
But for me, when I straighten up the front entrance, not only am
I going to clear any clutter off of the back of the piano, but
I'm also going to pick up any stray items on the living room
floor, and I'm going to straighten up my.
Couch cushions. OK, by now you've had time to do
whatever you need to. Do to gear up for?
Your cleaning session. We're going to be cleaning the
kitchen soon. The next step, of course, is
gathering up any dirty dishes from around the house.
Maybe you have a mug on your night stand or a forgotten plate
and fork on the dining room table.
Let's get all that stuff gathered up and make sure to
walk into any room that might have something in it.
By the way, I, I recently I've moved all of my office
equipment, my desk, my recording equipment, all the things back
into a corner of my room where I used to have it.
For those of you watching the video version, you'll see me in
that old location. My corner office in my bedroom
is back. But as you can see right now, I
am sitting in my car. People ask me how I how I do so
much. And one of the ways is carrying
a big purse and bringing a lot of things on the go.
You might be wondering why'd you do away with your office?
My middle daughter and her two kids have.
Remember I said it's a revolving door when you have young adults.
My daughter and her two kids are staying with us again,
temporarily during a transition. And so I'm not going to be
recording in that room. We moved the desk and all the
equipment out, set up the kids beds and there of course, there
was already another bed in there.
So I'm back to that corner office in my room, but you might
see me recording in the car, you know, where it's quiet for a
couple weeks, OK, until they they get into the new apartment.
Hopefully you've gathered up your dishes.
The next thing you might want to do is empty your dishwasher and
drying rack. We have a good system going
right now. And if you've been listening to
the show, you've already heard this, but my teenage daughter
has the chore of emptying the drying rack and the dishwasher
by 4:00 PM so that before my husband or I start to make
dinner, those are empty. It makes it just so much easier
to clean as we go when we can just immediately wash things and
place them into the drying rack. Maybe your drying rack and or
dishwasher are not empty right now.
That's OK, let's quickly empty those so you'll have a place to
put stuff. And then we're going to get
started on the dishes. And you might be feeling
overwhelmed if your kitchen is kind of messy right now.
There's just something about the visual clutter of stuff piled on
the countertops and a lot of dirty dishes that makes it seem
like it's going to take longer than it really is.
I mean, worst case it's going to take you an hour, but I'm
assuming that you're going to be able to get it done in a lot
less time. And remember that the job
expands to fill the time allotted.
So hopefully you can beat the clock, so to speak, and get it
done while I'm talking about it, I.
Recently purchased this smartwatch.
It's the Amaze Fit GTS4 mini and I am super happy with it.
I have a little aftermarket plastic cover over it that I got
off of Amazon. This watch looks similar to an
Apple Watch. The screen is a little bit
smaller, so I guess one of the drawbacks is that you'll have to
get a different screen cover for it.
I was not able to get some blingy rhinestone cover like my
daughter has. I just ended up with this clear
1. You could get a few different
colors or whatever. For me it is much simpler to use
than an Apple Watch and also this only needs to be charged
like every week and 1/2 or so compared to an Apple Watch that
you're probably going to be charging every day.
I also found it more user friendly.
I ended up passing my Apple Watch down to my teenage
daughter because I just found it too much of A hassle and it was
hard for me to navigate. The little button on this
doesn't spin, you just push it and then and you swipe to
different menus. Features I like about it.
Of course it keeps track of my steps, which is why I got it
keeps track of my heart rate and it alerts me when I get a text
or a phone call it, it will show the text preview.
Like let's say somebody sends me a picture and kind of a caption
with it. I can read the caption but not
see the picture. Somebody texts me, I don't have
my phone on me. I can see what they said.
I can't reply, but I can see what they said.
If I get a call, it buzzes. I can see that I have an
incoming call. So basically when I get a text
or an incoming call, it's just letting me know to go get my
phone. You know how you don't want to
be constantly looking at your phone at work?
I'm able to keep my phone on silent at work and but then I
feel a vibration if my husband texts me or something and then I
can go from my phone and reply to him with, you know, without
having my phone, you know, in my hand or, you know, the whole day
or this is attached to an app. So when you're looking at your
stats and everything, you know, how did I sleep last night type
of stuff because it has a lot of different things that it tells
you. You can check the app for that
or the watch itself. There's a little icon I can
click on in one of the menus that locates my phone.
It makes my phone start beeping when I've misplaced my my phone.
I'm not proud of this but I use that feature almost every day.
In a nutshell, this watch is more user friendly for
middle-aged lady like myself then the Apple Watch.
Because I don't. I love that I don't have to
charge it very often. And I've been wearing it. 24/7
except when I take a shower. So love it.
I love the freedom it gives me to be off of my phone.
I don't need the the feature of being able to actually text and
make calls. And my notifications are set to
where this only vibrates for texts and phone calls.
But you can have it notify you of other apps as well, like if
you wanted to know when you're getting an e-mail or something
like that. Obviously I don't want it to be
constantly buzzing to the point where I start ignoring it.
So I really just want to know when I'm getting a text or a
phone call. And the price point is also a
lot cheaper than an Apple Watch. You're going to pay an anywhere
from 8999 to like 119. So definitely recommend.
You can get it at Walmart or on Amazon.
And no, this is not sponsored, but I'm open to doing a
sponsorship for this because I love it so much.
Now that you've put away your clean dishes, it's time to get
started on washing your dishes. We're going to remove visual
clutter kind of early on in the kitchen cleaning process, but I
want you to get those difficult items pre rinsed and soaking.
So let's gather all your dishes to the sink area.
If they're spread around, maybe you need to kind of quickly pre
clean out your sink. If you've got stuff piled in
there, run your garbage disposal, give it a swipe,
whatever you need to do, and then you're going to pre rinse
and get any difficult items soaking.
This could mean filling up one side of the sink and submerging
some items or you know, maybe filling up a dish pan and
submerging them there. Or it might mean filling up
items. What I mean by that is if you
have a dirty pot or a pan or a glass with like a chocolate ring
in the bottom of the glass, a lot of times you can just fill
that with hot water, a couple drops of dish soap and get that
soaking. OK, a heavily A heavily soiled
pot or pan. You could drop in a dishwasher
pot as a way to speed up the process of doing that.
Pre soaked, unless I have something that's heavily soiled,
I'm just putting a little bit of liquid dish soap, some hot water
inside that container and setting that down.
Other things I'm submerging like a fork with food crusted on it
or whatever. OK, But of course, before I
submerge anything or fill it up, I'm pre rinsing it under running
water with a scrub brush. OK, And then I get it soaking.
OK. And then once I get any
difficult items soaking, it's time to wash the easy stuff,
whether that means loading it into the dishwasher or, you
know, if I'm hand washing, washing it by hand, I typically
put everything that I can into the dishwasher that's small,
meaning plates, bowls, silverware, spatulas, things
like that. And then the bigger pots and
pans, I don't want them taking up valuable real estate in my
dishwasher. So I hand wash those.
OK. And you know, maybe if you're
facing a dishwaster and not everything's going to fit in the
dishwasher and you're going to have to hand wash a few things.
But once you get your difficult items soaking, you're going to
walk away from the dishwashing process and quickly declutter
your countertops. OK.
I think everyone has that one countertop that tends to get
cluttered. That's kind of your workspace.
For us, it's an island in the middle.
We have one of those kitchen islands that's also a breakfast
bar. That's our workspace.
That's also kind of a hot spot in our home where people tend to
plot things down. So I like to get that cleared
off. And right away my kitchen looks
better. And then of course, I move to
the other countertops. You know the space on either
side of my stove and the space is to the left and right of my
sink. I get those cleared.
Meaning I'm putting away seasonings, I'm throwing away
empty packages. I'm putting away a cereal box
that may have gotten left out. I'm relocating items that don't
belong in the kitchen at all to their homes throughout my house.
And Speaking of relocating things to their homes,
throughout the house, lighthouse work is exercise.
Getting a smart watch has made me a little bit more active
around the house because I like seeing the steps that I'm
getting in it. I did purchases to keep track of
the steps on my walks, but I also knew I wasn't getting the
full picture of how many steps I'm getting in because I'm not
always carrying my phone. I bring it on walks, but I'm not
always carrying it, you know, with me around the house.
You know, maybe you have an Apple Watch or Fitbit.
But if you're looking to get something that's affordable and
has a lot of cool features, this is the Amaze Fit GTS 4 Mini.
I got it at Walmart. I'm super happy with it.
It's it's been a game changer. I'm busy, I'm on the go a lot
and I think it's great for work too because it keeps me from
needing to look at my phone very often.
I like to get the the clean dishes put away the the
difficult items pre rinsed and soaking.
And then I like to remove visual clutter so that I can see the
little mess in the kitchen for what it is and not feel
overwhelmed and think it's more than what it is, if that makes
sense. I love just getting my kitchen
looking nice and kind of isolating the mess to the sink
area. So once I clear everything off,
I start spraying and wiping down surfaces.
I'm talking about my stove top, the control panel area of the
stove, the countertops. And I'll admit that I don't wipe
down my cabinets every day. That's not an everyday thing.
But what I try to do every day is when I'm spraying and wiping
down the countertops, I like to also grab a glass cleaner or
glass and surface spray, which is typically a different product
than what I'm using on the countertops.
I'm often using just a Myers spray on my countertops.
I'll grab a glass and surface cleaner maybe.
Maybe like right now I think I have one that's made by Windex.
It's a yellow liquid, and I'll spray that on my refrigerator,
the front of my oven, the front of my dishwasher, and I'll wipe
those down. And of course, you might also
need to wipe down some small appliances that you keep on your
countertop, toaster, coffee maker, whatever, right?
I also have other surfaces in my kitchen.
I have a kitchen table. And then there's a piece of
furniture that serves as my coffee station, you know, kind
of a sideboard table, so to speak, in the dining area
portion of the kitchen. And that needs to be cleaned,
you know, when people are putting sugar in the coffee or
whatever. Yeah.
And that's where, you know, my Keurig is my little portable ice
maker. And then I have the large water
bottle with a little pump feature.
It's a little Drake station. So I go ahead and clean that up
as well. I like to get all those surfaces
clear and consolidate the mess to the sink area.
And you know, if you don't like cleaning your kitchen that much
and you feel overwhelmed, this is going to make a big
difference. It's going to make a huge
difference. You want to get it kind of under
control quick and then you feel less overwhelmed, especially
since your difficult items are soaking now your surfaces are
clear and wiped off. And did you see how quick it
was? Maybe you're just finishing up,
but notice how quick it is to get your kitchen surfaces
cleared and wiped down once you consolidate the dishes to the
sink area. OK, and we're not going to sweep
and mop the floor in this episode, but I encourage you
after the episodes over if you need to sweep or vacuum your
kitchen floor and mop it to put on some music and do that.
But I'm trying to get you through the more tedious aspects
of housework and also sometimes, sometimes the, you know, the
teenage boy or the the husband doesn't mind sweeping and
mopping at all. So maybe you'll be able to
delegate that one. But I'm here to get you through
the tedious work of, you know, doing the dishes and some other
small detail work throughout the house.
It's now time to finish up your dishes.
OK, maybe your dishwasher is not fully loaded and you need to put
some more items into it. Maybe you don't use a dishwasher
and you're washing completely by hand and you need to wash that
first sink load. You know, those, those easier
items, glasses, silverware, plates, bowls, knives.
I don't submerge any knives. I, I set them aside and then I,
I scrub them. I, I wash the knives under
running water. If I do feel like they need to
be submerged and soaked, I set them in like a large skillet
that's already soaking. But typically I'm just washing
the knives by hand with a scrub brush and, you know, a few drops
of dish soap under running water.
I'm talking the sharp knives. Butter knives go into the
dishwasher. So whether you're hand washing
or loading the dishwasher, let's wash all the easy stuff and then
end with those difficult items you have soaking.
I don't want you to leave more than one item.
Soaking after this session, meaning once you wash all the
small stuff, or the easy stuff if you will, you know those
glasses that had a ring in the bottom, you're going to use that
bottle bottle scrubber. You know, baby bottle scrubber
that I hope you have to clean the bottom of that glass.
If your other dishwashing scrub brush doesn't fit into the
glass, you're going to wash it because once it's soaked for a
little while it's it's a lot easier to clean.
You're going to wash The Dirty pots and pans.
There might be 1 casserole dish that's got just severely baked
on food, or maybe a crock pot that needs to actually soak for
the next hour. OK but most of your stuff didn't
need to soak that long and you can go ahead and finish washing
it after you've washed the easier stuff.
And maybe you need to reboot your sink a couple times if you
have a lot of stuff. I mean pre rinsing can go a long
way and not dirtying up your dishwater if you do submerge
when you're washing. But sometimes if you have a lot
of dishes to do, you're going to need to change the water part
way through and do another sink load.
Hopefully you're plugging away at those dishes and that you get
them done soon. And I'm sure your kitchen is
looking a lot better now that you've cleared the clutter off
of the countertops, dining table, coffee station, what have
you, and wipe down those surfaces along with your
appliance surfaces. OK?
This isn't a deep clean of your kitchen.
This is just the daily necessity of getting your dishes washed
and your kitchen sanitized, OK? And don't forget about the floor
if it if it needs work after the episode.
Now that we got that out of the way, isn't that a good feeling?
We're going to continue with the whole house walkthrough, OK?
You might have already straightened up your front
entrance and front room, or you might have, you know, and maybe
that's your only living area, or you might have some work to do
as far as picking up clutter in your outer areas.
Out by outer areas, I'm talking a living room, maybe a family
room if you have a second living area and any hallways.
Let's get those areas picked up. Remove any stray items from the
floor and then remove any stray items from the furniture.
Maybe there are items on the couch that don't belong and you
need to straighten those couch cushions and throw pillows.
Maybe there are items on the coffee table that need to be
relocated somewhere in the house.
Let's remove all the clutter. Let's get the floor picked up.
Let's get the furniture cleared of everything that's not
supposed to be there perpetually.
Obviously, you're going to have a few decorations.
You know, a framed picture, a candle, a plant, you know, your
TV remote might go on the little side table.
I get that. But anything that does not go
there, let's get it put away. But now that you've picked up
those outer areas, because it definitely shouldn't take long,
you know, unless you know, your kids have spread toys all over
or something. But you know, if so, maybe pause
the episode and talk them through the process of putting
those toys away. But now that you've cleared your
living areas, let's talk about possible problem areas.
I mentioned earlier that when I open the blinds, I also like to
raise them a little bit when I'm cleaning and wipe down the
window sills. Maybe there's a spray and a rag
that you like to use for that pledge or whatever.
Or maybe you use disinfecting wipes.
Whatever you use, it's time to clean any dusty window sills.
You also might want to dust some blinds.
I have three sets of blinds in my living room, so sometimes
I'll just pick one of them and dust it.
Whether it's the big picture window on the front or one of
the two smaller windows, I don't always dust all those blinds at
once. I like to kind of just add a
deep cleaning chore into my regular cleaning session.
Like, OK, today I'm going to write down this window sill or
today I'm going to dust the floor under the piano.
Because when I vacuum and mop that entryway tile floor, it
doesn't, you know, the vacuum or room or whatever I use doesn't
reach under the piano. So I grab a dusting tool on a
pole, reach under the piano, and dust it.
That that's the thing at our house, dusting under that piano.
Because when I'm sitting on the couch, I can see the dust under
the piano. You might need to wipe down
something else. Maybe there's a smudge on a wall
where somebody's touched it with dirty hands.
Maybe there's a spot on the couch, you know that you need to
spray and scrub. You know, maybe you need to
spray your some upholstery cleaner on your couch and grab a
washcloth and clean that little mess that's on the couch
cushion. Maybe you, like I said, maybe
you need to dust something. Maybe you want to grab a feather
duster and dust some frame pictures or artwork.
Or, you know, maybe you like to use dusting wipes.
That's a thing. Sometimes when I'm at a dollar
store, I'll get a little package of dusting wipes.
I don't use them all the time, but I'll grab them and then I'll
go home and I'll just wipe down a bunch of stuff with those just
for fun, so to speak. You know, sometimes it's fun to
just clean a little bit differently and pamper yourself
by getting a product that maybe you don't usually indulge in
using. Dust any problem areas in those
living areas quickly, whether it's a set of mini blinds or the
window sill for mini blinds. I do have a little dusting tool.
I've got a video somewhere that shows me using that, but
sometimes I just grab a wipe and I wipe down the slats section by
section in between where the strings are.
There are several ways you can clean your blinds.
If you let them get really dirty, you can even take them
outside and hose hose them down. OK, I've done that before at a
different house, different type of blinds.
But yeah, I keep up on these blinds.
So I haven't, I haven't had to remove them and hose them down
or anything. But I understand that sometimes,
you know, we get in a rat where we're not doing all the deep
cleaning and yeah, we need to take something outside and hose
it off. OK, so now that you've done
that, and you can of course worry about vacuuming or
sweeping and mopping after the episode, I want you to move to
the bathrooms. We're not cleaning the bathrooms
and in this episode per SE, but we're doing what I call
straightening the bathrooms. You're going to remove anything
from off of the floor, You're going to take out the bathroom
trashes and reline them, and you're going to put away any
clutter that's sitting out on the countertop.
If your bathrooms are already tidy, you might want to do a
little spot clean with some type of a spray and paper towels or
disinfecting wipes. You might want to do a quick
clean of your bathroom. You know, sometimes I do a
little touch up with just a glass and surface spray and you
know, spraying like the bottom of the mirror and wipe it with a
microfiber cloth and then continue to wipe down the
countertop and toilet and so on. I use disposable stuff for the
toilet though, like paper towels or wipes.
But yeah, it's fine. It's fine if you do it
differently, as long as it's going into the laundry room to
be washed after it's touched the toilet.
But maybe you have time to do a little bathroom touch up?
Or maybe you just needed to clear clutter from the bathrooms
and you're going to do a deep clean after this episode.
I recently posted an episode about deep cleaning a large
bathroom and that one will give you plenty of time to do all the
things as far as detailing your bathroom.
But for now, I want you to do a quick touch up and move on to
the next bathroom and get it straightened.
I think especially in the master bathroom, sometimes people are
dropping clothes on the floor, towels or cluttering up the
countertop, the vanity area. Let's at least get it
straightened up and make sure that there are clean towels
hanging up and, you know, an extra roll of toilet paper on
deck, things like that. Just a bathroom straighten and
possible touch up. OK, again, a touch up is when
you're cleaning kind of the bottom of the mirror, the vanity
area, the sink area, and the kind of the outside parts of the
toilet, the seat behind the seat, the rim flusher handle,
back of the tank, that sort of thing.
Whereas in a deep clean, you're scrubbing the toilet bowl,
you're getting on your hands and knees and cleaning the exterior
part of the toilet, you're scrubbing the floor around it.
You know, there's there's more that goes into a bathroom deep
clean. But again, I made an episode
that you can listen to after this.
If you want to do a deep clean of a bathroom, let's just touch
up all of your bathrooms quickly or at least straighten them up.
There's just something about getting everything put away in
your house and then wiping down any obviously dirty areas that
can make your house look so amazing, especially after you
clean the floors. OK, by the way, Speaking of
cleaning the floors, I talk about that in the Crawling Out
of the Hole series that you can access as a financial supporter.
If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, the option
to unlock those subscriber only episodes is already being
advertised to you. You can also join my Patreon to
access the same episodes. If you're not sure how to do
that, visit cleanwithmepodcast.com.
I'll put a link in the description of this episode to
my website that talks about the different options for support
the show and has links that you can go to.
I make it easy for you because I really, I can really use the
support and frankly, it's going to help you.
It's definitely a blessing when somebody subscribes, but you're
going to benefit from it too because you're not going to be
on the full program without accessing those bonus episodes.
Hopefully by now your bathrooms are straightened up and maybe
touched up. The next areas we're going to
look at are bedrooms and depending on how messy your
house is, you might need to just pick one bedroom you're going to
focus on. If I were cleaning along with
this episode right now, I'd be working in my bedroom.
I, I have an overflowing clean laundry bin right now that's
kind of taking over. So I would, I would start
folding and putting away laundry on my freshly made bed.
Maybe you need to quickly make your bed if that's where you
fold your laundry. OK, maybe laundry isn't a
priority for you though and you just want to get your floor
picked up or clear some surfaces.
Maybe you need to clean a kids room?
I recently shared a video on the Clean With Me podcast Facebook
page of a friend cleaning her kids room and I liked how she
had hard floors. I liked how she kind of dragged
all the toys to the center of the room with the broom and then
sorted through those items, put them where and put them where
they go. So that's a quick way to get a
kids room under control. If you have hard floors, if
you're like me and the bedrooms are carpeted, you're going to
have to just pick things up manually.
And maybe you have a kid helping you right now, but maybe this is
your personal cleaning session. You know, just because your kids
are learning to pick up toys and they're often told to clean
their room and it's part of the regular routine, doesn't mean
that you're not going in there, just resetting their room on a
regular basis. OK, with younger kids that it
needs an adult's touch from time to time for sure.
Hopefully you're straightening up a room.
Look for problem areas in the room.
Is there something that needs to be dusted or wiped down?
I talked about my clean laundry bin that needs attention in my
room right now. The other area is there's ATV
stand that needs to be dusted. So that would be the other
problem area. The key to these whole house
walkthroughs is just being observant, because if you were
expecting a guest who for some reason was going to tour your
entire house, you need to just kind of visualize this.
Even though it's probably not happening, you would go through
and kind of see it through their eyes because you know you know
they're going to be seeing it. Another kind of mental exercise
you can do to help you be more observant as you go through each
room of your house and deal with problem areas.
You could pretend that you're a real estate agent walking
through someone's house and giving them recommendations on
how to stage their home and make it more visually appealing by
removing clutter and wiping down surfaces.
So you want to look at each room of your house through the eyes
of a visitor or a real estate agent because sometimes you can
get in a rut because your visitors are only seeing you,
maybe your living room, kitchen and dining area and that guest
bathroom. They're not seeing your bedroom.
They're not seeing the master bathroom.
They're not seeing that spare room.
That's become kind of a catch all.
And I know those of you with a lot of kids are cursing me right
now for saying that you have a spare room.
I, I have a spare room for the first time in a long time and
it's in use right now. Right now it has people in it.
So I get it. But some of you do have a spare
bedroom and sometimes that can become a catch all.
Now there there probably is going to come a time where
someone's going to, to walk through every room of your
house. Maybe it's going to be some kind
of an emergency situation. Maybe you're going to have an
electrical problem. Maybe you have, you know, the
cable company comes over and or maybe you're in the hospital and
your mother-in-law is babysitting at your house.
I mean, I don't know, there's different scenarios.
You're going to have to figure out what the scenario is in your
head. But once in a while, there are
times where you think somebody might be going through every
room of your house, whether it's an overnight guest or something.
But unfortunately it doesn't happen very often.
But you still want those rooms clean and you know what I mean?
Whether you're expecting anybody or not.
So I want you to kind of perform the necessary mental gymnastics,
whether you're envisioning a certain person going through
your house or selling your house and a real estate agent walking
through there with other people. Like, what would you do?
OK, we have sold three houses before, so we definitely know
what it's like to need to have every room of our house
Immaculate and ready for a whole house walkthrough.
But maybe maybe you haven't experienced that because I feel
like other people don't move around as much as as we have.
OK, But I grew up moving a lot and we've moved several times.
That having been said, we've been in this house since 2018,
so it's definitely been a long time and this might be our
forever home. Hopefully you've picked up a
bedroom and dealt with some problem areas, but I understand
if if you need to continue working on that after the
episode. I feel like in some of these
these episodes, I'm getting you started, getting you moving,
getting you thinking about what needs to be done.
And you're probably continuing after the episode or if your
house isn't that messy, you're getting everything done that I'm
talking about. Either way, you're moving,
you're making progress, and maybe you're wearing a fitness
watch, so you're getting credit for these steps.
OK, let's talk about and I realize you're getting the
exercise whether you're wearing the watch or not, but I feel
like when you're wearing the watch, you're more active
because you're like, well, I still need to get in 1000 steps
today. And it's toward the end of the
day. And then, you know, you start
moving around more or maybe go for a walk around the
neighborhood. The last area that you might
want to check on is your laundry room or laundry area.
I know you might not have a dedicated laundry room, but I'm
talking about wherever your washer and dryer are, whether
that's an area in your garage, an area in your kitchen pantry
or in the laundry room or in a closet.
I lived in different houses with all of those different
situations, but you may need to clear some clutter.
Throw away the lint that's in your little lint bin.
Hopefully you have something that you keep lint in.
I have a cute little can that my middle daughter bought me for
lint that needs to be emptied from time to time.
And I also need to, you know, pick up items off the floor from
overflowing hampers and, of course, clear and wipe down the
washer and dryer surfaces and the shelf above them.
Sometimes I need to throw away empty containers.
I saw this reel where this lady was saying kids do not know how
to put away their toys or their clothes, but what they do know
how to put away is an empty food container.
I think that also applies to the laundry detergent.
I'm the only one in the house whoever throws away an empty
laundry detergent container So. This is your reminder to
straighten up your laundry area and maybe wipe it down if
necessary. By the way, my bonus episodes
are typically longer than these free ones.
Special special thanks to those of you who are already
supporting the show financially. It means more than you know, but
even just listening to these free episodes helps me,
especially the video versions. But do whatever's convenient for
you. I hope you got a lot done during
this episode. I definitely recommend running a
vacuum after this or maybe mopping some floors.
But maybe this was all you had time to do today and you can do
more tomorrow. The important thing is getting
those dishes done every 24 hours and doing at least 5 or 10
minutes of tidying every day. OK, thank you so much for
listening and as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.