When your house is a mess and you're feeling the stress, what
you need is a friend in your ear.
In today's episode, I'm going to guide you through the closing
shift of your home. In case you're new to the show,
Clean with Me as the podcast where I walk you through
cleaning your house step by step.
And today as I guide you through washing your dishes and spot
cleaning your kitchen before bed, I'll also be revealing some
of my favorite things to do the night before.
If you have work the next day or kids to get ready for school,
let's get right into the episode.
One of the most important tasks to complete at the end of the
day, whether it's right after dinner or just before you go to
bed, is washing your dishes. Getting down to dish 0 right now
is one of the keys to an easy morning and day tomorrow.
I know you're tired, but I'm here to talk you through this
task, OK? The first step is going to be
gathering dishes from around the house.
Maybe there are cups or mugs on your night stands, or maybe
someone forgot to clear their bowl and spoon or plate and fork
from the dining room or kitchen table.
If you have teenagers who are allowed to eat in their
bedrooms, be sure to check there too while you're gathering the
dishes and bringing them to the sink.
I'd like to remind you that your short morning and evening
routines are what keep your house under control.
And those routines make it easier to complete your deep
cleaning tasks. Whether you do those deep
cleaning sessions one room at a time during the afternoons.
OK, usually if you're a full time homemaker, you know there
might be an afternoon session, maybe during the kids nap or
something. Or you might do your cleaning
all at once if you work outside the home and do most of your
cleaning on your day off, or even if you work at home for
that matter. Either way, your daily routines
are crucial to keeping your home tidy and sanitary between deeper
cleaning sessions. Now that you've gathered
everything up, it's time to get any difficult items pre rinsed
and soaking. I'm talking about pots and pans
or anything else with dried on food.
It might be a mug with a ring in the bottom of it.
You might want to also check your refrigerator for any old
leftovers so you can clean out those containers and get them
soaking. But if you're in a hurry, you
can of course skip that step. After you're done pre rinsing
your quote UN quote difficult items, you could either fill
these items with hot water and dish detergent and submerge them
in the sink, you know, under the dishwasher, or just set them on
the countertop full of dishwater.
Or alternatively you could pre rinse them and then spray them
with a product like Don power wash or maybe a generic
equivalent. When I say soaking, I'm
including all of these possible methods.
OK. If you hate scrubbing, which is
probably true of most people, giving your dish soap time to
work on those difficult items while you wash the cleaner stuff
first will minimize the scrubbing you have to do.
It's all about the order of operations when doing dishes
efficiently. OK, now if this were a morning
or afternoon episode or one of my whole house sessions, they're
typically bonus episodes. I'd have you clear all clutter
from your countertops before continuing with washing your
easy dishes, just to kind of give you that quick win of
eliminating visual clutter. But the evening session is often
the hardest because you've got the dinner mess to clean up and
you're probably tired after a long day.
So I'm keeping this session real minimal.
If you struggle with consistently working these
closing shifts in your home, it means you need to simplify it.
OK, now that those difficult items are soaking, it's time to
unload the dishwasher or drying rack so you'll have a place to
put things. However, going forward, I do
recommend completing that step each morning to make your other
routines easier. I like to separate putting the
clean dishes away from washing the dishes, you know, which
makes for a shorter dishwashing session.
But no judgment here, of course. If you need to do it right now,
just start loading your dishwasher or hand washing your
dishes once you have a place to put them.
Hopefully you've started washing your easy items while you're
loading the dishwasher or hand washing that first sink load if
you're hand washing everything. But typically you'll start with
cups, glasses, silverware, plates, and bowls.
I like to, you know, rinse them under running water with a scrub
brush on a handle. Or sometimes I just grab a scrub
daddy or scrub Mommy. If you're like me, you you also
position some large knives and cooking spoons in the top rack
of your dishwasher. Don't submerge those in the
dishwater though. Somebody could reach in and grab
a sharp knife. Side note about loading the
dishwasher. Don't you hate it when someone
loads the dishwasher and they do it wrong?
With a lot of dishwashers, you've got to be strategic and
how you put things so that nothing stops the moving parts
from moving. So if you're a teenager and
you're listening, check the bottom 1st and make sure
nothing's going to fall down and stop that spinner.
OK, my kids are already trained in this even though my husband
and I do most of the dishwashing ourselves lately.
But whatever doesn't fit in the dishwasher, we typically hand
wash. But the system's different for
everyone. It can even vary from day-to-day
or meal to meal. You know, sometimes you want to
hand wash because it's just a few things and you don't feel
like unloading the dishwasher. Or you might not have a working
dishwasher, or you just prefer not to use one.
Now, the closing shift is not supposed to take long, but if it
does, it might need it might mean you need to work on
cleaning as you go while cooking.
This is so crucial. Don't beat yourself up if you
have kind of a disaster after dinner, but you can do so much
during those waiting periods in your kitchen.
Instead of leaving the kitchen while something's in the oven,
you can wash your cutting board, your knives, your mixing bowls,
whatever you've dirtied that you can wash at that step, you would
wash. So maybe try to get in the habit
of staying in your kitchen if you're creating a huge mess
while cooking. I mean, staying in your kitchen
during the cooking process, like while you're waiting for water
to boil or while something's in the oven.
OK, for now, either keep plugging away on those dishes,
including the difficult items you have soaking, or if you're
ahead of the game, start spraying and wiping down your
kitchen surfaces that need it. I'm talking about your food prep
area and your stove top and your kitchen table and highchair if
you have messy little ones. OK, we don't eat at the table
every night, so we don't always have to wipe down the table.
The closing shift is one time where I don't mind cleaning
around a few things on the countertops.
I might I might put some seasonings in the spice cabinet,
but if there's papers and other random items, tools, whatever
stacked on the kitchen island I might just kind of move them
aside and clean the food prep area.
Now I usually use a Myers or multi purpose spray on the
countertops, but you can also just clean them with liquid dish
soap and a damp rag or maybe a scrub mommy sponge.
OK, By the way, you might also need to spot sweep your kitchen
floor, maybe in the food prep area or under and around the
table. For me, the food prep area is
the island. But for you, if you don't have
an island, it could be just a a section, a countertop.
Remember, this is not a deep cleaning session.
We're just getting your kitchen sanitary before bed.
But if you do too much tomorrow, you might be tempted to skip the
next closing shift because you see it as a time consuming task.
Or maybe you'll wake up just kind of burnout on cleaning and
skip your morning or afternoon session.
And I realized that this kind of phenomenon might not apply to
you. OK, but for those of us, you
might be a night owl. But for those of us who do kind
of dislike doing housework at night, we want to keep the
closing shift simple and short, something sustainable that we
can do on a nightly basis. OK, like I mentioned before,
some of you might have a high chair to clean, or maybe you
have a formal dining room that's in another room and you need to
wipe down that table. But definitely prioritize
getting down to dish 0 and sanitizing your kitchen and
dining room surfaces. Even if you don't make it out of
the kitchen during this episode. I've done my job.
OK, but if you've already completed those steps, you might
have time to straighten somewhere in your home.
This could be your front entrance and main living area.
Or, if those areas are already tidy, you could straighten up a
messy bedroom or pick up the towels and clothing on your
master bathroom floor. Just reset whichever area of
your home needs it. And if you don't have any
crucial tidying to do, you could always start getting things
ready for tomorrow morning. Remember I promised I'd talk
about that for those of you who work outside the home tomorrow
or have to take kids to school in the morning or maybe go to
church in the morning. A stress free morning begins the
night before. Consider laying out your clothes
and the kids clothes if you have little ones.
For my teenagers, I just say make sure you do your laundry
and plan your outfits anyway. Laying out clothes is
particularly helpful if you're behind on laundry and you're not
necessarily going to find everything you need in your
dresser drawers and closet. You don't want to be scrambling
to wash something at the last minute and, you know, going to
to work and damp clothing or digging through the clean
laundry to find socks for your little ones.
But if you keep listening to this show, you'll soon have
organized drawers and closets full of clean clothes.
Because I plan to do an episode about that soon.
I want to talk about organizing and decluttering your wardrobe,
organizing your closet, organizing your drawers, and
just generally getting caught up on laundry.
So be sure to click follow, subscribe or the plus sign on
whichever app you're listening on and also subscribe to the
bonus content. OK, Speaking of bonus content,
special thanks to my financial supporters who have unlocked
those subscriber only bonus episodes.
You too can unlock those episodes, which are typically
longer, for a small monthly fee. And if you're listening to Clean
with Me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, the paid subscription
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There's more information about all the options on my website,
cleanwithmepodcast.com, and of course I'll link that in the
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If you do happen to be listening on Spotify, please listen to
this show in video mode even when you aren't looking at your
phone, tablet, or computer, since video mode helps me out as
well. Please don't have me down at the
bottom, you know. Obviously, don't scare it.
Stare at the screen. I want you to be cleaning
anyway. Another thing you might want to
do is take inventory to make sure you have everything you
need for your coffee or other morning beverage or breakfast on
the go. Maybe you make a smoothie and
any lunches you'll need to pack for me, I, I need to make sure I
have sandwich stuff for one of my kids who brings a sandwich
plus, you know, a few snacks to put in there with it.
And I like to have at least one Tumblr clean.
OK. And you might be thinking, well,
we just did the dishes. Yes.
But sometimes you might leave a, a Tumblr in your tote bag
somewhere else in the house. If if you know that's your
system, so you want to make sure that that gets washed OK.
And if you're like me, you don't love going to the store at
night, but taking inventory as far as the lunch and breakfast
stuff will allow you to make plans to leave early and pick
something up in the morning if you're you're out of something.
You could also get a head start on tomorrow's dinner right now,
whether you're going anywhere tomorrow or not, by moving some
meat from the freezer to the fridge to start that thawing
process. Another thing you might want to
do is check to make sure the keys, and maybe your work
lanyard if you have one, are in the key basket by the front door
or whatever your launchpad system is.
Maybe you have a key rack? You could even start packing
your tote bag. You know, maybe you bring a
laptop somewhere. I just got a large laptop that
has a 17 inch screen and then realized it did not fit in my
tote that has a padded laptop compartment.
So instead of getting some really expensive tote bag that
does all the things, since I already have a lot of bags, I
just ordered a cheap sleeve, you know, a little cover case, if
you will, for my laptop so that I can put it in one of my
existing large tote bags that's not a laptop bag.
OK, so that I would typically put that laptop bag or a tote
bag, if you will, on the piano bench either in the morning or
the night before so that I can start placing things in there as
I'm getting ready. And by doing that, it reminds me
to wash any Tumblr or other container that I might have left
in there. You could also put your
toddler's shoes by the front door if they tend to carry them
off and leave them in random places to get ready for the next
morning. Whenever I'm I'm babysitting
kids lately, it's my grandkids, but I used to run a daycare.
I would line up their shoes by the front door and they put
their jackets that's near the front door so that I can get
them ready in a hurry when the time comes.
Well, it's probably time for you to relax with your family or get
ready for bed. So I'll go ahead and end this
episode here. By the way, the next bonus
episode, I think I already mentioned this, but it's going
to be about laundry, dressers and closets, and I'll be
releasing it soon, so please stay tuned for that.
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate each and everyone
of you. Have a great night if you're
listening to this at night, but I know some of you listen to
these episodes at all times of day.
There's no right or wrong way to listen to this show and use this
show. As always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.