Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, I'm going to
talk you through a laundry reset.
And what I mean by that is you're going to start a load of
laundry, maybe do a laundry switch before you begin, and
you're also going to fold and put away at least one load of
clean laundry. While you're folding and hanging
up and putting away laundry, I'm going to give you some of my
best tips for keeping up on housework.
I'm Ronnie and you're listening to Clean With Me, the podcast
where I talk you through cleaning your house step by
step. The first thing I want you to do
is gather up any dirty laundry from around your house, whether
it's in hampers, laundry baskets, or even if you need to
gather it up off of the floor. Let's get it together and let's
get it to the laundry room. You don't want dirty laundry
cluttering up your house. And you might be saying, Ronnie,
I don't have dirty laundry, but I sure have some clean laundry
piling up. Don't worry, we're going to take
care of it during this episode. And then while you fold, hang up
and put away your clean laundry. I'm going to give you some of my
best tips for keeping up on housework.
And we're going to talk about each area of your home.
But what I want you to work on during this episode is laundry.
By the way, I know it's been a while since I've done a bathroom
reset episode. You need to clean your bathrooms
after this. Scroll back to March 16th and
there's a bathroom reset episode.
But I also cover bathrooms and a lot of my whole House episodes
that are available for financial supporters.
So special thanks to those who are who have already unlocked
those episodes and are supporting the show with a small
monthly fee. Hopefully by now you've brought
any dirty laundry to your laundry room or your laundry
area. Of course, you're going to check
and see if you have any clean laundry in the dryer.
If your dryer is empty, though, I suspect you might have some
clean laundry elsewhere in your house.
But as with any episode, if you don't need to do the thing that
I'm talking about, you can be working on something else while
you listen. OK, maybe you already have a
laundry system where you're folding things straight out of
the dryer. You can do something else during
this episode if some of this doesn't apply.
But for the rest of the episode, I'm going to be talking to you
as if you had a residual clean laundry pile, and we're going to
take care of that. OK?
So if there's something in the washing machine that you need to
switch into the dryer, of course you're going to put the clean
laundry somewhere first. Maybe you have a basket for
that, or maybe you need to quickly make your bed and plop
that laundry on top of your freshly made bed.
It only takes about 60 seconds to make your bed if if that puts
it in perspective for you. If you haven't been making your
bed in the mornings, it's a great habit to implement.
I know some of you have someone still sleeping in the bed when
you first wake up, so then it doesn't really always happen.
And for that reason, I used to make the bed closer to when my
husband was getting home. But if you're tempted to put
your clean clothes in a pile somewhere like on the couch and
just leave it, I recommend that you put that pile on your
freshly made bed because then worse come to worse, you're
going to fold and put away that laundry before you go to bed.
That's that's my mom's secret for keeping up on laundry.
Also, you might want to think about the fact that folding and
putting away laundry on the floor isn't always a good idea.
If you have kids or pets who are prone to kind of knocking over
your piles and unfolding it, that can be frustrating.
That's why I recommend either make either folding and put away
putting away your laundry on the bed, or having a folding table
somewhere. Hopefully by now you've put your
clean clothes somewhere where you're going to fold them, and
maybe you've also switched the laundry from the washer into the
dryer. If not, do that now.
I know sometimes I can talk faster than you can clean.
Don't feel like you have to be exactly In Sync with what I'm
saying. The important thing is that
you're moving and you're working on laundry during this episode.
And of course, if you forgot a load in the washing machine,
it's always a good idea to put a little bit of white vinegar in
there along with some more detergent when you rewash that
load. But let's hope that's not your
situation today and you you're able to do a laundry switch and
start a new load. Or maybe you didn't even have
anything in the washer and some of you need to start setting
timers. I set timers for so many
different things in my life. For example, I was talking to my
sister yesterday where she wasn't going to be in kind of a
dangerous situation and she wanted me to call and check on
her in 15 minutes. Well, you better believe I set
an alarm on my phone because when I get to talking and
multitasking, I forget about things.
So my first tip for keeping up on laundry is setting a timer
for the duration of the cycle if you're going to need a reminder
to put the laundry into the dryer.
I remember my daughter Jessica had a system at her old house
where she would be sitting on the couch right across from her
washer and dryer closet. And then when it made that buzz
signaling that it was done, she'd hear it because she was
right there. It was right in her ear,
basically. But for some of us, that's not
always the case. And we need to set an alarm to
remind us to do the switch. But the caveat with setting too
many alarms is you might just start swiping it away if it's
happening a lot. I don't know if anyone else
struggles with that, but I'm kind of careful about what I set
alarms for and what I don't set alarms for because I don't want
to train myself to ignore the alarms.
But again, if you have a habit of forgetting about your laundry
and letting it rot in the washer to where you have to re wash it,
set a timer for 50 minutes or whatever the length of your
cycle is. Now that you've started a load
of laundry, it's time to turn your attention to your clean,
dry laundry that needs to be folded and put away.
And some of it doesn't really need to be folded, it just needs
to be smoothed out. I do a hang up pile and then I
do the folded piles of things that are going to go into
drawers. Everybody does things
differently, but sometimes I see my husband folding things that
I'm just going to hang up. But of course, you know, I'm
just, I'm grateful because they're getting smoothed out.
I just unfold them to hang them up.
But when I'm folding, I just smooth out the items that I'm
going to hang up and I place those in a different pile, like
the stuff that's mine that I'm going to hang up, the stuff
that's my husband's that I'm going to hang up because, you
know, we have a different side of the closet, obviously.
So, yeah. And you might be wondering about
kids. My youngest is 14.
All my teenagers do their own laundry.
Well, I say all my 19 year old is overseas in the military, but
my 16 year old and 14 year old, they both do their own laundry.
They've been doing it for a long time.
My middle daughter who's an adult is living here right now
with her two kids and she does her laundry and their laundry.
So I'm just responsible for my laundry, my husband's laundry
and just towels, kitchen towels, bathroom towels, all the towels.
But I definitely did my time in the trenches.
I have 6 kids so you know, when they were younger I had a lot
more laundry to do. I think now my challenge isn't
having a lot of laundry, but it's having the washing machine
already going when I go to wash something.
You know what I mean? Because so many people are doing
their own thing as far as laundry.
But there are different challenges to every season of
life. Hopefully you are folding and
putting away some clean laundry. I'm assuming that you have a
pile for each family member and you're just kind of lining them
up. That's the way I used to do it
when my kids were younger. I'd fold their clothes and put
them in piles. And then those who are old
enough to put away their own laundry, I would call them in,
you know, so and so come get your pile and put it away, that
sort of thing. I do still kind of have a few
piles going because inevitably random articles of clothing find
their way into my laundry loads sometimes.
And so I have a person come get get their items or I drop them
off. When it comes to laundry, you
have to have a system. And some people have these
elaborate laundry systems where they've got hangers and
containers for each person to where they're taking things
right out of the dryer, hanging them up on like, a bar that's in
the laundry room, and then folding the, you know, the
smaller stuff and like, socks and underwear and putting it in
these little baskets that are labeled for each family member.
And that's great, but you won't hear me going into that on this
show unless I have a guest on the show.
I should have someone on as a guest.
I know my sister has some kind of laundry system like that.
I need to either have her on as a guest on the show or have her
take some pictures that I can show you guys.
But you won't hear me talking about it because my laundry room
is just this really narrow corridor just when you're on
your way out to the garage. Some of you can relate.
There's not a lot of room for all of that.
And at this point, I've trained everybody to do their own
laundry. So I'm not just overwhelmed with
my laundry, my husband's laundry and the towels.
And I say my husband's laundry, but he usually does his own
laundry because he's retired. I work a couple days a week
outside the home. He sometimes does loads of just
his stuff, but he sometimes does mine as well.
So I'm just not that overwhelmed with laundry.
But even if I wanted to have one of those systems, I just don't
have the space. Your new revolutionary laundry
system could be as simple as following this one rule.
Don't start what you can't finish.
What I mean by that is don't start a load of laundry when you
have clean clothes in the dryer that you haven't folded yet.
Or you know, worse, just mount fold more some huge pile
somewhere. Take care of that first.
Don't just keep washing and washing your laundry.
And I realize there are exceptions.
You may just absolutely need a school uniform or work uniform
to be clean this morning or whatever.
I don't know what time of the day you're listening to this
episode, but in general, you need to stop washing clothes
until you've put away the clothes you've already washed
and dried. While you're working on laundry,
I want to talk to you about some other personal rules that are
not related to laundry, but that can help you with your
housework. This is a part where you might
want to write it down or you might want to just kind of
absorb it while you're working. I'd rather you just fold
laundry. Don't worry.
I'll probably reiterate this and in the next few episodes, but
something that's kind of trending right now on social
media, because I'm definitely like on the cleaning side of
TikTok or whatever, is don't put it down, put it away, OK?
Basically, if you have something out that you're using, once
you're done, put it in its home. Don't set it in some temporary
home, OK? And something that I've tried to
live by for a long time that my mom definitely follows is don't
leave a room empty handed. If there's something out of
place in the room where you are, take that with you when you move
to the next room, OK? For example, I fix my coffee in
the morning and sometimes I kind of crawl back into bed to finish
that in bed. And then I set it on the night
stand and, you know, scroll on my phone or whatever for a
while. Well, when I do get up, I try to
take that cup for that mug, depending if it was iced coffee
or hot coffee, to the kitchen with me.
OK, Because why would I leave the room and then just leave
that there? Some of us tend to do things
like that absent mindedly, so that's definitely something to
work on. But if you need to talk yourself
into completing a task that's maybe a little bit more involved
than just walking your happy self to the kitchen with a cup,
follow the 62nd rule. OK?
If a task takes less than a minute, like putting shoes in
the closet, hanging up a coat, or taking out the trash, just do
it immediately. Simple as that.
And you may have to tell yourself that at first, like,
hey, this is only going to take 60 seconds.
But when it becomes a habit where as you're just moving
through your day, you're putting things away.
For example, you brush your hair and there's a drawer for your
brushes. You put it in the drawer.
You don't set it on the bathroom vanity first.
And then later when you quote UN quote clean the bathroom, you
put it in the drawer. No, you put it away immediately.
And I know this is easier said than done when you've
established some bad habits. OK, now, now the putting things
away as you go, you know, applies in every area of your
house. But we all know that we're
supposed to clean as we go when working in the kitchen, right?
Like our moms told us that. And, you know, we all know it's
a thing, but sometimes it can be difficult to put it into
practice because of some of our existing habits.
OK, what's really helped me a lot is not leaving the kitchen
during waiting periods. You know, I'm talking about
you're making spaghetti and you're bringing the water to a
boil. Sometimes there can be a
temptation to go off in some other room and do something
else. There's probably something you
could be doing in your kitchen, you know, maybe you made a mess
while chopping vegetables for the salad or whatever.
Clean that up while you're waiting for the water to boil.
Empty the dishwasher while you're waiting for the water to
boil. That way, when you start to
dirty up more items when you get farther into the cooking
process, it'll be easy for you to wash and dry those dishes.
Using those waiting periods wisely to get clean dishes put
away to maybe get some hot soapy water in your sink ready for
cleaning as you go cleaning up the stuff you've already
prepped. If you get in the habit of not
leaving the kitchen and another waiting period is something's
cooking in the oven. But if you can get used to
staying in the kitchen during this these waiting periods,
you're going to get a lot done and you're not going to forget
about your food. You're not going to burn the
bread because you left the room or, you know, leave something
boiling on the stove until it's evaporated.
OK, If you know, you know. One of the ways to clean as you
go in the kitchen is to simply stay in the kitchen and keep
moving. Get out of the habit of leaving
the room because you feel impatient about water coming to
a boil. There's probably something you
can be working on in the kitchen, like putting away clean
dishes or cleaning up whatever mess you've made so far.
OK and cleaning as you go isn't just while you're cooking, it's
throughout the day. When you dirty a cereal bowl and
spoon or a plate and fork. If you microwave something, it's
it's washing those dishes as you go.
And I like to hand wash dishes as I go and save the dishwasher
for those bigger projects. You might have another system
and that's fine. Maybe you like to pre rinse
things and put them in the dishwasher throughout the day
and run them at the end. If you've been listening to the
show for a while, you know that that system just has never quite
worked for us. So we encourage people to just
wash their dishes throughout the day.
You know, you, you fix a bowl of cereal, you're going to wash
that bowl and spoon immediately and place it in the drying rack.
Well, one of the obstacles to that is if for some reason the
kitchen's kind of messy and there are already dirty dishes
in the sink, it's really hard to get people to keep from adding
to the mess. Like when you start with that
clean, clean slate of a clean kitchen and you're like, OK, if
you dirty a dishwash it, they're likely to remember it.
If they walk in and the kitchen's spotless and they've
dirty to bowl and spoon, they're more likely to wash it because
they know it's going to be real conspicuous when they don't.
And somebody's like, hey, who just who just had cereal come
clean this. But when there's already dishes
in the sink, there's a tendency for them to just add to the
mess. Here's the solution to keep
people from adding to the mess. Get one of those dish ones that
has a place for dish soap in the handle.
Keep that near the sink. That makes it super easy.
Even if the sink's got some dishes on one side and they
can't really, you know, fill it up with dishwater or whatever,
they can just grab that wand that you know, has the built in
dish soap dispenser and wash and rinse that item under running
water. Even if there are some dirty
dishes on the other side of the sink.
So some of you need to get that. By the way, whenever I talk
about cleaning products on the show, I I do put links to them
on my website as an Amazon affiliate.
I make a tiny amount of money when you purchase something and
there's no extra cost to you. What benefits me even more is if
you use my makeup and skin care link which is also on that same
page. So I'll put all the links in the
description. And of course, you can always
visit cleanwithmepodcast.com if you don't know how to get into
the episode notes. I know some podcast apps make
that a little tricky, but you can always visit
cleanwithmepodcast.com to do all the things like purchase
products, access my social media link, read articles, and of
course, support the show financially.
And a way to support the show without spending a dime is just
to give this podcast a five star rating on whichever app you're
listening on and maybe follow it on whichever social media apps
you use like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
OK, all those links are going to be in the description and on my
website cleanwithmepodcast.com so that's my little plug there.
Got to pay the bills. Special thanks to those who are
already supporting the show in some way by purchasing products
or subscribing to bonus episodes.
It means more than you know. So yeah, that dish wand could
help you clean as you go, whether it's while cooking or
just throughout the day. It might be a solution for you
if you know if having a sink full of dishes sometimes is
causing people to add to the mess, the dishwand and then you
can say, hey, even if there's dishes in the sink, use this
dishwand to wash your dish under running water and don't add to
the mess. That's one of my sayings.
Don't add to the mess. Which don't get me wrong, my
goal is always to clean the kitchen because that's showing
people by example that I care how the kitchen looks.
And people tend to keep clean environments clean, OK.
But your second line of defense against people leaving dirty
dishes is to have that dish wand, OK, keep it filled and
ready. And the the 62nd rule kind of
comes into play here too. If you can wash and rinse
something in less than 60 seconds, it doesn't need to
soak. OK, That's for those difficult
items. And most things don't need to
soak for more than an hour. If you, if you leave something
to soak, come back an hour later and wash it rather than getting
into this perpetual cycle of leaving things soaking.
And I've had so many people tell me that they, they always leave
their crock pot soaking for a couple days.
I can definitely relate. But look into crock pot liners.
They're a thing, OK. And that that can help you with
that. I hope you're still folding and
putting away laundry. You're going to be so glad you
did. Maybe you need to put all the
socks in a pile and sort them at the end, But hopefully you're
folding and putting away laundry.
And if you come across items that are stained or ripped, you
might need to get rid of those items or outgrown items might
need to go into a donation pile. And when I say donation pile, I
also mean a hand me down pile because you might have things
that you're giving to people, especially if you have kids.
You probably know someone with kids who are a little younger
than your kids and you're passing stuff down to them.
Hopefully you have a designated spot for that.
Or maybe you're saving them for your younger kids or your future
kids, you know, have a have a container for that, maybe have a
large plastic tub for that, you know, labeled 2T to 3T,
something like that. If you've had, if you have like
a residual laundry pile and just one last tip about the kitchen,
don't leave dirty dishes unwashed overnight.
That closing shift is crucial. You just need to determine what
time is a good time for your closing shift.
I'm not talking about an exact time per SE, but you know, if
nobody eats anything after dinner at your house, the
closing shift could happen right after dinner.
Or maybe if you have teenagers and adults, you could say like
once I cleaned up after dinner, you'd better wash your dishes
that you create after that. You'd have that rule.
Or maybe you're someone who is high energy late at night.
Maybe 11:00 PM is the time that you would want to wash all of
your dishes. Maybe you have small children
and a good time for you to wash all your dishes would be after
they've gone to bed. I used to be more of a night owl
when I was younger, but not anymore.
I'd rather just do dishes right after dinner.
Sometimes that means people dirtying stuff afterward, but at
some point when you get older, you start going to bed earlier
than your kids. Obviously you can't do that when
they're little, though. But there's incentives, there's
consequences. School's going to be out here
and I know a lot of you look forward to me changing up the
kids chore lists and I'm going to create a new system where
there's dollar amounts attached to different chores and I'm
going to create a spreadsheet. It's going to be a whole thing
for once school gets out in three weeks and then when I do
that I'll make that available to the financial supporters.
So if you unlock bonus episodes, I'll will tell you when the time
comes how to access the latest chore spreadsheet.
And I guarantee you your chore spreadsheet is going to be
different because everybody's lifestyle and situation is
different. But it might give you an idea.
So that's something that's coming up.
You can incentivize chores with money, but that's not the only
way. You can also be like no screens
until you get this done, things like that.
But just don't leave dishes unwashed overnight at a if at
all possible. But if you do that a lot or you
do that sometimes, no judgement here.
I'm just trying to help you. I'm not criticizing you or
whatever, because sometimes we drop the ball in that area at
our house. So don't, don't get the
impression that I'm this perfect housekeeper.
Yeah, I'm, I'm just a regular person who has learned some
things and improved. And I think of myself as just
the only one who's talking about some of this stuff, not the
person who's the expert on this stuff, if that makes sense.
But obviously by my age, I have a few tricks up my sleeve when
it comes to housekeeping. And I, I love sharing them with
you, but nothing I say is coming from a place of judgement.
So definitely no judgement here. If you're always leaving dishes
overnight or something, it's just not a good cycle to be in.
It's, it feels so good to go to the kitchen to get your coffee
or your juice or make your kids breakfast and just to wake up to
a clean kitchen. And it, it, it's just, it sets
you up for a successful day. It really does.
Among other things. I mean, for me, when I read my
Bible in the morning, I get a lot more done in the course of
the day. But starting with a clean
kitchen helps too. So Speaking of starting your day
in the morning, some of you need to implement the morning task of
emptying your dishwasher and drying rack while your coffee is
brewing. Even if you're using a Keurig,
it needs to sit and cool down for a minute anyway.
Your coffee can wait a minute, get it started, and then quickly
put away your clean dishes. And a friend recently reminded
me of this and it and I've said it on the show before, but it
definitely bears repeating. It only takes about 5 minutes to
unload your dishwasher and it only takes about 5 minutes to
load your dishwasher. So spend 5 minutes unloading
your dishwasher while your coffee is brewing or cooling
down a little bit. Mine doesn't need a lot of
cooling down time because I put a lot of milk in my coffee and
you say cream, no milk. Now if I go to your house, if
you don't have milk, I'll take some cream or whatever.
Or if I'm in a restaurant. But I really like to put milk in
my coffee. I like the stoke cold brew and I
just add some milk to that. Sometimes I also add a little
bit of chocolate syrup. Some of you pronounce that
syrup. I know I'm weird but I call it
syrup. But my point is, if the coffee
is hot, I put enough milk in it that I can drink it immediately.
But I still don't mind letting it sit there while I do
something in the kitchen. Lately it's my daughter's job to
empty the drying rack and dishwasher at some point in the
day before dinner. She's supposed to do it by 4 O
clock, but before that, that was my morning task while my coffee
was sitting there. OK, hopefully you're folding
laundry and putting it in piles. It might be time to get up and
start putting that stuff away where it goes.
Maybe you're going to call somebody in the room to pick up
their pile. Or maybe this is your own
cleaning session. No one else is around or old
enough to help you, and you're going to be putting the stuff
away. It's time to get up and hang
stuff up. Put stuff away because I don't
want you to to leave. I don't want you to leave a mess
or anything. OK, and maybe maybe you didn't
get all of your residual laundry folded and put away during this
episode, but hopefully we put a dent in that pile.
Couple more tasks I want to mention while you're putting
away your clean clothes that you've been folding or smoothing
out to hang up our bathroom resets at night.
OK, while you're brushing your teeth or doing your evening skin
care routine, you know, maybe use a wipe to quickly wipe the
faucet, sink and countertop and that's going to force you to put
everything away and clear off that vanity area.
Some people wipe down the vanity every time they wash their
hands, but I'm talking about more of a reset in the evening
when you're getting ready for bed where you're putting
everything away and really cleaning up the vanity area.
And you could even give your your toilet seat a swipe or, you
know, grab the brush and give it a little swish.
This doesn't take the place of deep cleaning your bathroom, but
I'm just saying, a bathroom touch up before bed can go a
long way and it can become part of your routine because you're
washing your face and putting on your moisturizer anyway.
OK, I've gotten a lot better lately about having a morning
and evening skin care regimen. Yes, the show is about taking
care of your home, but I want you to take care of yourself
too. Your face needs cleaning too.
I know with a teenager and young adult sharing my hall bathroom,
I have to remind them to put their products away in their
little cubbies under the sink. Otherwise stuff starts to
accumulate on the vanity. The last tip I want to mention
is making your bed every day. If you never make your bed,
you're more likely to have a messy bedroom.
It's just a psychological thing. Making your bed is a springboard
task that causes you to kind of quickly pick up your dirty
laundry off the floor and put your shoes in the closet.
You might not be able to do it first thing in the morning if
somebody's still sleeping in your bed, but try to implement
that habit of making your bed on a daily and then quickly
straightening up your room. But if you're like me, you're
not going to keep your room clean until you start making
your bed on a daily, and that's going to help a lot.
I hope you got a lot of laundry done during this episode and
remember to visit cleanwithmepodcast.com or the
links in the description. Don't forget to follow me on
social media. Support the show only if you
want to, but by unlocking bonus episodes, you're getting on my
full program. By the way, I'm going to be
starting a new bonus series soon called Messy House Makeover, and
it's going to be based on the concept that you can do anything
for 15 minutes. I'm going to be encouraging you
to clean your whole house, but include in that session a 15
minute decluttering or deep cleaning project.
And that's what's going to get your house clean over time
because a lot of us don't have these huge blocks of time for
housework. Thank you so much for listening.
I appreciate each and every one of you.
And as always, happy cleaning.