Thanks for joining me. In case you're new to the show,
I'm Ronnie and you're listening to Clean With Me, the podcast
where I talk you through cleaning your house.
Let's get right into the episode.
It's time to gear up for your cleaning session.
Maybe you need to open a few windows and get some fresh air
circulating through the house. Or if you're listening to this
on a cold day, you could light a candle or put some fresh wax in
the wax warmer and turn that on. In this episode, I am going to
take you through each room of your house.
You may be saying I don't think I can clean my house in 50
minutes. I get it.
But we're going to do something in every room of your house.
So it is going to be a whole house reset in that sense.
OK. And depending on the current
condition of your house, it might look pretty good after
this. Don't worry about the end result
just yet. All you need to do is put in
some earbuds or turn on that Bluetooth speaker and follow the
prompts. Another thing you might need to
do to gear up for your cleaning session is freshen up a little
bit. Maybe you need to run a brush
through your hair, or wipe those old makeup smears out from under
your eyes, or put on something comfortable yet presentable.
Even the clothes that we clean in should make us feel good.
And if a lot of your clothes don't make you feel good, it
might be time for a wardrobe purge.
But that's a whole other episode.
OK, just get freshened up for the day.
Get your house smelling fresh. And an important way to get your
house smelling fresh is to take out the trash and reline it.
Often I will dump the bathroom waste baskets into that larger
kitchen trash, then I'll tie the bag, take it outside to the
outdoor bin, and then I'll put a fresh liner in the kitchen
wastebasket. So if you need to take out your
trash, now's the time. And then lastly, one of the best
ways to kick off a cleaning session if you're not expecting
company and it's just kind of a routine whole house reset, is to
get some laundry going. That way your washer and dryer
are working while you're working.
Maybe you have some wet clothes in the washing machine that need
to be switched into the dryer. Or maybe both machines are empty
and you just need to stir a load of wash.
But if you don't have any emergency items that just
absolutely need to be washed, like you're out of towels or
you're out of underwear, this might be a great time to strip
your bed sheets and get those washing.
That can be your first load today, your sheets and
pillowcases. And then for those of you who
are starting a load right now, I'll try to remind you near the
end of the episode to switch that laundry from the washing
machine into the dryer. And maybe as your break after
this episode, you could sit and fold some laundry and pause the
episode if you need more time for these preliminary
activities. But that having been said, you
don't have to be doing exactly what I'm saying while I'm saying
it. You can always catch up.
There's no need to be perfectly In Sync with the episode now
that most of you had have probably geared up for your
cleaning session. You've freshened up, you've got
your house smelling good, and you've started a load of
laundry. It's time to reset the kitchen.
And before you do that, I want you to go ahead and gather any
dirty dishes from around the house, whether it's a mug on the
night stand, a forgotten cereal bowl on the table, or something
else somewhere else. Let's get those dirty dishes to
the kitchen and either place them in the sink or place them
next to the sink. And if you have dishes kind of
all over your kitchen counters, let's bring those over to the
sink area and kind of consolidate the mess.
We'll deal with other clutter on your counter tops in a minute.
But right now I want you to focus on just getting all of the
dishes to the sink area. OK, I'll give you a couple more
minutes to do that. And I'm calling this the Whole
House Reset Spring 2026 edition. But it's kind of funny.
I feel like it's already summer. I work at a school and my
teenagers attend that school. Our school is already out and I
think my grandkids in Texas are on their last week of school so
in some ways it feels like the kickoff of summer.
But I went ahead and called this the Spring 2026 edition because
I do plan to do another whole house reset episode over the
summer when it is officially summer.
Now that you've had time to gather up those dishes, we're
going to get started by putting away any clean dishes.
I'm talking about emptying your dishwasher of clean dishes or if
you hand wash, emptying your drying rack.
Or if you're like me, you dishwasher wash and hand wash.
So there's a chore at your house where someone needs to empty the
dishwasher and the drying rack or drying pad.
By the way, in my recent bonus episode, How to Load the
Dishwasher, I tell you kind of my personal rules for loading
the dishwasher. So if if you're new to using a
dishwasher because your previous house didn't have one,
definitely listen to that episode.
And also, I've had people ask me for an episode that teaches
their kids how to load the dishwasher, so that would work
for that too. By the way, special thanks to
everyone who is already supporting the show financially
by unlocking the subscriber only episodes for a small monthly
fee. I appreciate that so much.
And if you're not yet doing that, you can subscribe either
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Patreon.
But if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, that option is
already being advertised to you. Some of you might need a little
more time to put up put away clean dishes.
On my current chore chart for my teenagers, one of the assigned
mandatory chores is for my teenage daughter to put away the
clean dishes by 3:30 PM. That way, when my husband or I
go in there to cook, those clean dishes are already put away.
I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next step, which is
starting your dishes, OK? And then we're going to tackle
some of that clutter on the countertop once we complete step
one of washing the dishes. OK, Step one could be loading
your dishwasher with the easy stuff.
Anything that doesn't really need to soak that you can just
rinse under running water and scrub out with a scrub brush on
a handle, whether it's a dishwine or just a a scrub
brush. And then place those items into
the dishwasher and then get any difficult items soaking as you
come across them. Like, oh, there's a chocolate
milk ring on the bottom of this glass.
I'm going to put some hot water and a drop of liquid dish soap
in this and set it aside and just continue loading the
dishwasher with the easy items that already appear relatively
clean and don't need a lot of pre scrubbing.
OK, but with the plates and the silverware, I am kind of doing a
lot of scrubbing under running water before I place those in
the dishwasher. But if something isn't really
coming clean, that item might need to soak.
So I might fill the right side of my sink and submerge a few
items. I might have a few glasses
sitting around the sink filled up with water and soap, and I
might have some dishwater going where I've submerged a few
difficult items that need to soak.
Same goes for large pots and pans.
As I'm pre rinsing and putting things in the dishwasher, I fill
those up with hot water and liquid dish soap.
And if it's a difficult pan with dried on or baked on food.
Kind of the secret weapon is to toss in a dishwasher pod right
into that pan and kind of supercharge that soaking
session. But I do realize that some of
you are hand washing, so your first step might be to pre rinse
the glasses and silverware and get those submerged for your
first sink load. I do realize that a few of you
like to wash your dishes just completely under running water.
If that's your method, if you don't have toddlers or whatever,
having your hot water heater on a setting that lets the water
get very hot, again, that could be a safety concern in some
households. But if your water's super hot
and you're using a dish wand that has the liquid dish soap in
the handle, I really like the the Scrub Daddy brand one, but
there's also a Scotch Brite one that I've been using off and on
for years. Those are great tools for those
of you who wash all of your dishes completely under running
water. But a lot of you probably wash
dishes the way I do it when you're hand washing.
And that's pre rinsing and then filling up the sink and placing
the the glasses and silverware in there first and then moving
on to things like plates, bowls and then ending with pots and
pans. And of course changing the water
as needed. I mean, if you're only cleaning
up after a couple people, you might be able to wash everything
in that same dishwater, just depending on what you made and
how well you pre rents things. There are a lot of variables
involved, OK. But some of us have large
families and there are lots of sink loads involved.
Or maybe just you're facing what I call a dishaster.
A dear listener coined that phrase away a while back and I
asked her if I could use it. And I've been saying it ever
since. I love it and I I say it in my
own house. For me it's when not everything
fits into the dishwasher. And maybe one sink load.
If everything fits into the dishwasher except maybe one
large pan and a cutting board or a pot and a pan, that's not a
dishaster. But if I'm going to do multiple
sink loads plus fill up my dishwasher, that's what I call a
disaster. It kind of happened to us
yesterday. I loaded the dishwasher with all
the small stuff, glasses, plates, bowls, silverware, and
large cooking utensils and even a large knife.
I got all of that in there, got it running, and then I said OK,
I loaded the dishwasher, but I'm really hoping someone else hand
washes the rest of the dishes. And that's because I had some
homework to do. Just be working on dishes,
whatever that means for you, whether you're doing multiple
sink loads, washing everything under running water, loading,
loading the dishwasher, or doing a combination of all of those
things. OK, so keep plugging away on
that, but sometimes you get to a point where you've gotten the
dishes started and you can move on to another task.
For example, maybe everything fit into your dishwasher and you
got 2 difficult items soaking. Maybe a large skillet and that
chocolate milk or mocha cup that had a ring in the bottom of it.
That would be the perfect time to walk away from the sink and
start decluttering your countertops.
Some kids are notorious for leaving cereal boxes out.
Hopefully you're just buzzing around your kitchen putting
items away and then once you do that, go ahead and tackle any
difficult items. But if something was super dirty
and needs more time to soak, you can always come back to that
after the episode. At this point, I want you to
either finish washing any items that you had soaking, and of
course you can pause the episode if you want more time.
At this point, I want you to either finish any remaining
dishes that you need to wash or just get those submerged and
start cleaning the surfaces of your kitchen.
OK, Often times I put a little bit of liquid dish soap on the
stove top, scrub that with an abrasive sponge.
I have a glass cook top, but some of you might need to, you
know, remove those burners and things like that.
I understand that, but I do like to scrub that with liquid dish
soap and something abrasive. And then sometimes if it's a day
where I'm kind of deep cleaning the kitchen, I will also do that
with my cabinet doors and the front of the dishwasher, the
front of the stove. Sometimes you need to do some
scrubbing, but this might be a day where all you need to do is
just give your countertop and stove top a swipe and clean out
your sink and clean the faucet and the area around the faucet.
I mentioned using liquid dish detergent on those difficult
areas, but some areas all you need is just a an all-purpose
spray, something that's safe on your countertops and you know a
rag, a damp rag. But typically I use a
combination of both. I scrub any difficult areas.
Then I give the kitchen a once over with a with a cleaning
spray and wipe everything down with a rag.
And then typically I'll use a different spray that's either a
glass cleaner or a glass and surface cleaner to spray the
stainless steel portions of my appliances.
And I encourage you to put away as many items as possible.
The less you keep on your countertops, the easier it is to
quickly spray it down and give it a swipe.
You want to remove as many obstacles as possible.
But of course a lot of us have items we use every day.
Maybe it's a toaster, a blender, a coffee maker or Keurig.
It could be any number of things, but if you're over the
phase of using something every day, like maybe you were making
smoothies for breakfast but like now you're having cereal, might
be time to put that blender away for a while.
You want more of a streamlined look on your kitchen countertop
so that these cleaning sessions will be easier and will happen
more often. Giving your countertops and
stove tops a swipe should definitely be a daily thing,
even if you're not always scrubbing cabinets and
appliances. OK.
And of course, I encourage you to clean the floors after this
episode. Maybe put on some music or phone
a friend if you're using a broom and you know there's not going
to be a vacuum blaring in the background and tackle those
floors. Sweeper, vacuum and then mop.
OK, that would be a great way to really shine up your house and,
you know, give it that finishing touch.
Nothing says a clean house like dusting, vacuuming, sweeping and
mopping hard floors. Those are great finishing
touches, but a lot of us have clutter to deal with before we
get to that step. And that's a big part of what
this show is about, getting through those tedious mundane
household chores. OK, most of you have had enough
time in the kitchen. No judgment here if you want to
just stay in the kitchen and maybe skip the living room
portion. But for most of you, it's time
to deal with your living room and or family room.
Maybe starting with the front entrance of your home and
working your way into those other common areas.
I'm talking about putting away stray blankets.
I'm talking about straightening throw pillows.
I'm talking about dusting crumbs off of your couch, your spot
cleaning it with a rag and an upholstery spray or even a
laundry pretreater spray. You know, whatever you have on
hand. I feel like a lot of those
products have similar formulas, just something that's designed
to clean fabric basically, you know, giving the TV stand,
coffee table and windowsills a quick swipe.
And you can even do that with just a micro fiber cloth.
But maybe you have a dusting spray that you like to use like
ledge or or some other product. Go ahead and quickly do that.
Dusting is pretty easy, but sometimes we don't do it as
often as we should because it just doesn't feel like it's that
pressing. I live in a super dusty area
though, so dusting is kind of a priority for us.
It's not a daily thing by any means, but you don't want to go
more than two weeks without dusting those surfaces.
And if people are eating on the coffee table and such, it's
going to get wiped down a lot more often.
But I'm talking about, you know, just dusting to remove dust.
It's OK to do that once every couple of weeks, you know,
straighten those couch cushions and throw pillows.
I think I might have said that. And of course, pick up anything
off of the floor. One of the biggest things you
can do to make your house look presentable fast is get the
floors picked up. And I'm not just talking about
items that were dropped on the floor or left on the floor by a
child or a pet. I'm talking about items that you
might be storing around the perimeter of the room.
You might have a box or a bag or a suitcase sitting out that
doesn't really belong there. Let's put away that item.
And by the way, if you always have little random stray items
in your living room left by your kids, grandkids, nieces and
nephews, or even a pet, I definitely recommend having a
small toy box or maybe a Wicker basket so that you can quickly
put those items away when you don't feel like, you know,
taking them to their homes in your house.
Just kind of a temporary solution is to quickly get them
into a basket so that you can get that floor vacuum ready or
sweep ready. I have both.
I have a little box, it's a toy box and then I also have a
Wicker basket. And that's because I currently
have my 4 year old grandson and two year old granddaughter and
their mom, my daughter living with me.
So there's a lot of toys around and little little shoes and
things like that. And we like to be able to
quickly get those items picked up, you know, when we go to
vacuum. So be working on those outer
areas. And while you're doing that, I
wanted to remind everyone that Clean with Me podcast is on
social media. So if you're on TikTok,
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, definitely follow Clean With Me
podcast because I do plan to share some visual cleaning hacks
this summer and I don't want you to miss out on that.
So be sure to follow the show on whichever social media apps you
use, OK? Hopefully you've gotten your
outer areas picked up and maybe dusted.
It really doesn't take that long.
Maybe in the next cleaning session you can dust the blinds
and ceiling fans and wipe down switch plates and all the
things. But in this episode I'm just
having you do some of the most high impact cleaning tasks like
clearing the floor and dusting those main pieces of furniture.
OK, because this is a whole house episode and we've only got
50 minutes, so let's move on to the bathrooms.
Now when you're resetting your bathroom, you need to quickly
take out the trash because nothing says a messy bathroom
like an overflowing wastebasket. You might have done that at the
beginning of the episode. If not, now's the time.
The other thing you need to do is gather up any cleaning
products. Maybe you have a cleaning caddy,
or maybe you'd keep your bathroom cleaning products in
the bathroom. But make sure you have
everything you need, like your toilet brush, maybe some Comet
or Ajax or Scrubbing Bubbles or whatever product you use to
whiten your sinks in the inside of the toilet bowl.
Or maybe you use a dedicated toilet bowl cleaner.
You're going to need something to clean the mirrors, maybe a
micro fiber cloth and some glass cleaner, and maybe use
disinfecting wipes for the outside parts of the toilet.
Just gather up whatever you typically use when you clean
your bathrooms, OK? And then of course, you're going
to do a quick pre clean. You're going to remove any rugs
or bath mats. You're going to clear the vanity
area. You're going to remove things
that don't belong there and put them away.
But you're also going to remove those items that do belong
there, like the toothbrush holder and the soap dispenser.
You're just going to move everything out of the way so
that you can quickly spray and clean.
And by the way, my hack for cleaning bathroom mirrors
involves one of those Swiffer mops.
You know how you attach the pre moistened pad to that type of
mop? You can attach a micro fiber
cloth the same way and then you can spray your mirror with a
glass cleaner and mop the mirror.
I showed that hack to my teenage daughter yesterday when she was
cleaning the sliding glass door and she absolutely loved it.
She was like, why didn't you tell me that sooner?
I'm like, I talk about it on my show and I guess I forgot to
tell you. So definitely grab your Swiffer
if you're planning to mop your mirror.
But of course you can clean it by hand.
Just that other way is just great.
And those type of mops are probably under $20 like in
Walmart or something. Those are on my website,
cleanwithapodcast.com. But mainly I just put that there
so that you can see, you know, a list of cleaning products in
case you aren't sure what to buy.
I don't mind at all if you go ahead and get those at Walmart
or whatever. I get a better Commission if you
purchase skin care for Mary Kay. And that link is there as well.
I know a lot of you are already doing that kind of stuff and I,
I greatly appreciate it. Let's see, because I know some
of you don't want the recurring charge of a subscription, but
there are a lot of kind of one off things you can do.
For example, in my link tree you can click Buy Ronnie a coffee.
I run on caffeine. Folks, now that you've gotten
your bathroom pre cleaned, you've got the products ready
and everything, it is time to quickly clean up that bathroom.
OK, get some cleaner in the toilet bowl, give the inside of
the bowl a swish with that scrub brush to coat it with the
cleaner and remove any discolored areas or whatever.
And then let that cleaning product have some time to do its
work while you turn your attention to the vanity area.
That's where you're going to spray down the sink faucet and
mirror and shine those up. But sometimes before you use the
glass cleaner or the glass and surface cleaner, you know,
unless you just cleaned your bathroom a few days ago, you
might need to use a stronger product to scrub the inside of
the sink basin 1st and just really whiten that.
But if this is just a touch up for you, you may not have to.
For example, if I find out I've got company coming on short
notice, I'll just use the same spray, typically just a glass
cleaner, you know, just to quickly shine up the faucet,
mirror, sink, countertop all in one step.
And sometimes I just use paper towels in that situation just
because it's the quickest. And I realized when you clean a
mirror with paper towels, it can leave tiny little fuzzies or
whatever, But that's better than just a a dirty mirror with those
dental floss home runs on it. You know, when you're popping
that floss in and out and inevitably these little things
like can hit the mirror. I know it's gross, but it
happens to the best of us. When I'm just speed cleaning
that bathroom, it's not really like a disinfecting session.
I'll take glass cleaner and just hit everything, the exterior
parts of the toilet, the the floor, even everything with just
some glass cleaner and paper towels.
That's kind of my in between touch up if I'm in a hurry.
But when I'm sanitizing my bathroom, often times I just use
a disinfecting wipe on the inside of the the sink, the
countertop, and then I also use a couple different wipes to
clean the exterior parts of the toilet.
Then I've disinfected those surfaces that we touch either
with our hands or with our body. And I can just use glass cleaner
on the mirror and I can shine the faucet after I've
disinfected it with the wipes. So I don't have just exact set
process as far as how I clean the bathroom.
It's just whatever I grab, whatever I feel like doing and I
kind of like to mix it up a little bit and do it
differently. I think when I use the Comet and
just be cleaning your bathroom while I talk, you know what
needs to be done in there. But I think when I use the Comet
or Ajax, those bleach powders to scrub out the inside of the
sink, if I tend to do that when I know I'm going to be cleaning
the bathtub or the shower floor because I already have that
product out. Or maybe if that's what I'm
cleaning my toilet bowl with and I just have it there, I might do
that. But if I'm using a dedicated
toilet bowl cleaning product in the toilet bowl and I'm not
cleaning the tub or shower that day, the disinfecting wipe, I
get the abrasive ones. So that does a good job of
cleaning out the sink basin and getting any little blobs of
toothpaste and any discolorations out.
And it is sanitizing as well. And that does a great job on the
countertop portion of the vanity.
So just just some thoughts on products and methods of cleaning
the bathroom. But once you get that vanity
area cleaned up, it's time to turn your attention back to the
toilet and clean the exterior parts of the toilet.
Whether you use you're using paper towels and some type of
spray or you're using disinfecting wipes, whatever you
use, you want to clean the seat, behind the seat, the rim, around
the little hinges, all the things.
Yes, I realize you can remove the toilet seat, but I find that
it's not necessary because you can use some spray to kind of
penetrate those hinges and just scrub those without fully taking
them apart. And then you do need to get on
your hands and knees if you're healthy enough to do so.
If not, assign this task to someone else to clean the
exterior part of the toilet bowl, in the base of it, down
where those bolt covers are. And maybe the covers are missing
at this point, I get it. But you want to get down there
and scrub. And when I'm already down there
on my hands and knees cleaning the exterior of the toilet bowl,
you know, I'll wipe down things like the plumbing hose or
whatever, and the baseboard behind the toilet and the floor
around the toilet. Just while you're down there,
you know, you just kind of go scrub happy and clean that
surrounding area because a lot of the area behind the toilet is
hard to get with a mop. So you want to do that by hand
while you're down there cleaning.
We're not going to clean the tubs and showers in this
episode, but maybe you could just spray kind of an everyday
shower spray on the inside of any shower curtains to freshen
those up. Or maybe when you clean your
mirror, you can clean your glass shower doors at the same time
because you've already got your glass cleaner out and your
microfiber cloth and maybe even your mop.
OK, But this is not going to be a shower and tub focus because
you can shut the shower door, you can shut your curtain or
whatever. And I also recommend to save
time if you're overwhelmed or you're just in a busy season of
life to clean your bathtub and shower when you're getting into
it or when you're getting out of it, maybe on the weekend or some
other day when you don't have a lot going on.
So that's that's the time to kind of combine your shower with
cleaning your shower. So just a thought there.
That's one of the reasons I don't always include the tub and
shower in every bathroom cleaning session.
OK. But once you've finished and and
scrub the toilet bowl again after you clean the exterior and
it's had time to soak, scrub it again.
And if it still has discoloration, maybe use a
pumice stone. Another way besides the pumice
stone to really whiten your toilet bowl is late at night
after everyone's in bed and you've used the bathroom for the
last time, you know, put in some toilet bowl cleaner in the
toilet, coating the inside of the bowl with it, and just
letting that sit overnight. That can work wonders.
OK, but once you've finished the toilet, the vanity area, look
around for any other problem areas.
Maybe you need to dust a fixture or wipe down a switch plate or
you know the door around the door knob, whatever.
But once you've done all that, it's time to sweep and mop your
way out of the bathroom. Or if it's a tiny bathroom,
maybe even clean the floor by hand.
I talked about the Swiffer pre moistened pads.
I like to use those and this is not sponsored.
I just a lot of you guys want to know what I use.
I take those pre moistened Swiffer pads and I wipe down the
bathroom floor kind of in the same way one would wipe down the
kitchen counter after making toast and leaving some bread
crumbs. You're grabbing up any debris
while wiping it. Basically you're taking care of
sweeping and mopping in the same step.
I only do that in my super small bathroom, my larger bathroom and
I'm using a a broom and a mop. You know, doing it the
traditional way, but with a tiny bathroom, there's just a tiny
amount of flooring. You might be able to clean that
by hand sometimes and you know, or if you're sweeping and
mopping, of course, sweep and mop your way out of the bathroom
so you don't walk over where you've already cleaned.
You always want to sweep and mop your way out of a room, whether
it's a kitchen, a bathroom, or another room with a hard floor.
If you're done, you can go on to the finishing touches, but no
problem if you're cleaning a bigger bathroom and you're still
working on it, or you needed to scrub out your bathtub because
it it really needed attention right now, I get it.
But for some of you, it's time to just hang up some fresh,
clean towels and make sure that there's plenty of toilet paper,
some on the roll, plus some more.
My mom has this pet peeve where she doesn't want to have to
search for toilet paper when she's a guest in someone's home.
She feels that the extra toilet paper should be on display for
guests. Sometimes I make like a little
pyramid of toilet paper, like I'll line up 3 rolls and then
I'll put 2 rolls on top of that and then one on top of that.
And that can be cute. Or maybe you can put some on a
shelf. But she believes in storing the
extra rolls visually. I don't really prioritize that
if I'm not expecting company because I can just throw some in
the cabinet and my kids can find it in there.
And if you do keep your bathroom cabinets super organized, you
might not mind if a guest opens that up and, you know, to look
for toilet paper or whatever it. Whenever I think about guests
rummaging around looking for things in the bathrooms, I think
about that commercial where somebody gets nosy and opens the
medicine cabinet and then it just comes, everything comes
crashing down and it's like, want to get away?
But yeah, the finishing touches are are hanging up fresh towels,
making sure there's plenty of toilet paper and of course,
putting things back, you know, putting your your toothbrush
holder and your soap dispenser and maybe that little dish for
people's rings back on the vanity and putting the rugs back
where they go if you're not going to wash them.
I mean, I get it that we've as a culture moved away from having
those like carpeted toilet seat lid covers and then the little
carpeting around the base of the toilet.
I get that those can be a little germy, but just a, a rug to step
out of the shower on to. Nothing gross about that.
Hopefully you got your bathroom cleaned up.
I know I can sometimes talk faster than you can clean, so I
apologize if I'm, I'm going kind of fast.
But if you don't like this episode, don't worry.
I'm going to start trying to make whole house episodes more
often, like at least once every two months.
I do make them all the time for financial supporters to be on my
full program. You've got to subscribe.
OK? Once you're done with the
bathrooms, I want you to head to your bedroom, make the bed and
pick up your room. Put any dirty clothes in the
hamper. Let's get the floor picked up.
Sometimes when you have a messy bedroom, there can be a tendency
to get sidetracked by something and then you don't pick up the
floor. But I want you to make the bed
and pick up everything off the floor.
Don't overthink this to the point where you're tackling a
laundry basket full of laundry. Remember I said maybe after the
episode? You can either sweep and mop
your floors, or you can sit down and fold some laundry if you're
tired and put it away. But since I keep my residual
clean laundry bin in my room, often times I tell myself that
I'm going to straighten up the room and I end up getting
sidetracked by the laundry or I get sidetracked by something
else. Just an interesting object that
kind of sends my mind into a different direction and I end up
going on some side quest. OK, I discourage you from doing
that. If you do have a lot of clean
clothes draped over furniture, whatever, this would be a good
time to put that stuff away after you've picked up the
floor. I alluded to this earlier, but
clutter on your floor is the most egregious problem in your
house. And so you've got to make
yourself pick up the floor first.
Then when you can see the carpet or you can see the tile or
vinyl, then you can start dealing with that.
The the clutter that's higher up, like the clothing that's
draped over a piece of furniture or the night stand that has some
clutter on it or that needs to be dusted.
You see what I'm saying? And notice I mentioned making
the bed before I mentioned picking up the floor.
That's because there's something magical about making your bed
that instantly makes your room look cleaner and kind of
motivates you to pick up. So yes, you make your bed first.
That gives your room an instant makeover.
Even if there's stuff all over the floor.
Then you're going to pick up everything off the floor.
Then you're going to look up. And deal with things that are up
a little bit higher, like things that are on the furniture.
Then if you do have a residual clean laundry basket, maybe dump
that stuff onto your freshly made bed as a visual reminder to
fold and put away that stuff before the day is over.
OK, especially if you're never getting to the bottom of that
basket. Like you fold and put away a few
things, but there's a bunch of like children's socks in the
bottom of the laundry basket or laundry bin if you're using a
larger container. If you're not getting down to
article of clothing 0 when you try to fold that laundry and put
it away, you might need to dump it onto the bed.
OK, you also might, and I'm just talking about later when you do
the laundry, be cleaning your room while I talk.
But just while we're on the subject of laundry, you also
might want to lower your standards about putting laundry
away. What I mean by that is if you're
living out of laundry baskets, laundry piles, laundry bins,
you're just digging for things to wear or to to give your kids
to wear, you might need to lower your standard about how you put
things away. Meaning maybe while you're
overwhelmed or for whatever reason, or you're just in a busy
season of life, maybe just had a baby or you're homeschooling a
bunch of kids. You know, maybe you could just
put all of little junior socks into a pile and then put them
into his drawer without matching them together.
Just an example. And that might be like totally,
you know, disgusting to you or something.
Everybody has different, you know, things that they're good
about and bad about, but if you're never putting the laundry
away, you need to make it easier.
You could also come up with some kind of system, and this is for
the people with large laundry rooms where you're putting
things directly into a container for each person.
Like you're folding things as they come out of the dryer and
then setting them into a bin for a particular person.
That way they can go to their specific basket to find things
instead of having to go to like a community laundry basket.
Definitely consider washing different people's laundry
separately. OK.
For example my daughter has 2 girls who are close in age and
wear the same size clothing. So all when I was at her house,
I washed all of their laundry together, but I didn't put other
people's laundry in with it. That way everything in the load
was theirs. So that can be a way to kind of
streamline your laundry process. I used to just mix everybody's
laundry together because that's the way my mom did it.
But as my kids got to an age where they were old enough to
start doing their own laundry, I realized how much easier it is
to keep different people's laundry separate.
So maybe that'll help somebody. That's that's just my tip of the
day for doing laundry is maybe separated by person or by
people. OK, sometimes I do a load that's
all my clothes. Sometimes my husband does a load
that's just his clothes, and I feel like it's quicker to put
things away when it all belongs to the same person.
OK, so maybe somebody wants to try that method.
There's no right or wrong way to do laundry, but I'm just
throwing out some ideas. While you're cleaning your room,
by the way, don't forget to sweep and mop your floors.
Or vacuum and mop your floors. Or just vacuum After this
episode. Sometimes when I'm feeling lazy
I will vacuum the kitchen floor. I'll vacuum the other rooms and
not necessarily mop. But when my kids were littler I
had to mop so much more often. Especially when I was at a house
where the kitchen basically had two entrances and we had white
carpeting. We definitely had to constantly
sweep and mop because I perpetually had a kid in a high
chair during that era. My youngest 3 kids are pretty
close in age. They're they're each about 2 1/2
years apart. So definitely there was a phase
where sweeping and mopping the kitchen was a constant thing.
But these days, the vacuuming or sweeping of the kitchen is
constant, but the mopping can wait till the end of the week.
OK, I didn't really mention your laundry room.
You might have other areas of your house that you want to
straighten up once your room's under control.
Maybe there's a kids room that you're responsible for.
Maybe your laundry room's a mess.
I encourage you to at least walk into each room of your home and
do a little something. I mentioned at the beginning of
this episode that you might not be able to clean your whole
house during the episode, but it's important that you had a
whole house. But it's important that you have
a whole house approach when doing these resets so that
there's not just one room that's turning into an out of control
dungeon that you never visit. OK, you know that craft room or
that guest room? Make sure you enter that room.
When you have school aged kids, it's always a good idea to tell
them to clean their rooms right after you've cleaned the entire
house because you've just shown them by example that you you
clean your environment and you did a lot more work.
So cleaning their room is the least they can do OK, so don't
forget to delegate if you have kids who are home right now.
Random announcement for those of you who are tired of hearing
about how I style my bangs because I'm.
I've been in the 10 to 15% of women who even have bangs in
this day and age. I'm trying to grow my bangs out
after like 42 years of having bangs that I styled with a
curling iron. And I'm not saying that I always
like curl them, but I shape them with a curling iron.
And you get to quit hearing about that soon because I'm
growing them out. We'll see if I stick with it.
Yeah, I've been using a curling iron on my bangs since I was
like 11 or something. So anyway, I think I'm finally
getting what the times and moving on from it.
I realize bangs are an option and every time period, but I
think I'm ready for a change. So if you're watching the video
version, you see that I have them more off to the side
because I'm trying to get used to exposing my forehead.
Anyway, I hope your house looks amazing.
If you're new to the show, I do have specific episodes where we
go deeper and in into more detail.
For example, bathroom cleaning episodes where I have you clean
your tub and shower or kitchen episodes that have more detail
or you know, a refrigerator cleaning episode for financial
supporters, things like that. So definitely, if you still have
time and energy, listen to another episode, but don't wear
yourself out to the point where you're not going to feel like
doing any housework tomorrow or the next day.
Slow and steady wins the race, OK?
I mean, even just spending 15 minutes or 30 minutes a day
working on housework, if you're efficient, can help you get your
house under control. And I've got episodes about
virtually every house cleaning topic.
I hope you got a lot done during this episode.
If your house is still out of control, please don't feel
disheartened. It might take you a while to get
caught up, but if your house is looking good, try to maintain it
for a while. Remember, it's easier to keep up
than to catch up. Thank you so much for listening.
I appreciate each and every one of you.
Don't forget to check out the links in the description.
Happy cleaning and I'll talk to you in the next episode.