Does anyone else find it harder to clean when their spouse is
home? Hi, I'm Ronnie and you're
listening to Clean with me, the podcast where I talk you through
cleaning your house step by step.
And in today's episode, we're going to tackle a messy kitchen.
And of course, if your kitchen is not messy, you can do some
deep cleaning tasks while we're in there.
I But I suspect a lot of you have a sink full of dishes,
maybe a countertop full of dishes, a lot of things left out
of place, a floor that needs to be swept and mopped, and so on.
Let's get right into the episode.
It's time to gear up for your cleaning session.
If your kitchen's a mess, you're probably going to want to put on
some shoes rather than walk on a gritty or sticky floor, and you
might also want to straighten up the front entrance area of your
home real quick. I like to straighten up my front
room before I do pretty much any household task, just so that I
can feel like my house is under control and whoever walks in
will get a good impression. Another thing I like to do at
the beginning of a cleaning session is simply start a load
of laundry. Basically, I like to get my
machines running fairly early in the cleaning session.
And by machines I mean my washing machine, maybe my dryer,
and my dishwasher. And I realize you may or may not
have a dishwasher, but if you do, we're going to get that
machine running too. But right now, you might need to
start a load of laundry. OK.
You also might want to freshen up for the day.
And I know I can talk faster than you can do things.
I'm just giving you a few ideas on how to kick off your cleaning
session. And then I'm going to be more
specific once we get to work on the kitchen.
Another thing you might need to do is gather up any dirty dishes
from around the house, whether you have mugs on the night
stands or a forgotten plate on a dining room table or in table or
coffee table. Let's get all that stuff
gathered to the sink area as soon as you're done starting
that load of laundry or straightening up that front row.
If you have little ones, you might need to get them occupied
often. When you've got a messy kitchen,
the best way to keep your kids occupied is have them play
somewhere nearby that room that can be seen from the kitchen.
I remember at one house I had a little play area that was
actually in the kitchen because this particular house had a lot
of square footage kind of wasted.
I felt in the kitchen area like there was a huge kitchen with
room for a table and then some kind of the dining part of the
kitchen that was still over a hard floor.
I felt like it was kind of wasted.
So my mom ended up having the idea of me making a little
corner for my preschooler and toddler to plan.
And what we did is we put a little area rug in one corner of
the kitchen and a little toy box bookshelf with like 2 shelves or
something that allowed the kids to play away from the sink, away
from the stove, but where I could see them and hear them
while working in the kitchen. And that was super helpful.
So just something for you moms of little ones for a while At
our current house, we had a gate where we gated off the kitchen.
And we originally did this when we were raising a litter of
puppies, but then it came in handy when the grandkids would
try to get in there while we were cooking or loading and
unloading the dishwasher. Just times you don't want a
little toddler around. And that way we could see them
playing in the living room nearby while keeping them out of
the kitchen. So just a few things to think
about while you're gearing up for today's kitchen cleaning
session. Now that you've gotten your
shoes on and maybe started a load of laundry straight in your
front room, you know whichever of those things that you did, if
you haven't already done so, gather up all of your dirty
dishes. I want you to stay in the
kitchen during this episode if at all possible.
So I want you to get everything you need.
OK? All of the dishes and some fresh
cleaning rags. OK, Like at least a fresh dish
rag and a clean, dry towel. You're going to need those
items, and I don't want you to get sidetracked by leaving the
kitchen. The first thing we're going to
do is kind of assess the situation.
You may have a dirty stovetop right now.
You may have clutter all over your countertop or your island
or even a kitchen table. You may have a dirty high chair.
You've probably got a lot going on if you clicked on an episode
about a messy kitchen. I get that and you probably feel
overwhelmed, but the first thing I want you to do is get any
difficult items pre rinsed and soaking.
You know, maybe you've piled things in the sink and you need
to empty it out so that you'll have a space to work.
Or if you have the the kind of sink that has two sections,
maybe you need to empty out the section with the garbage
disposal where you're going to be pre rinsing those dishes.
OK, maybe you have a little dish pan that you use as a basin,
especially if you have one of those single basin sinks.
You might have a little dish pan.
I've I've got the old school 2 section sink, or maybe the the
one section is the old school and we went back to that as a
society. I don't know.
But I've never had the sink where it's just one sink.
It's it, mine has the two compartments.
And so I always, you know, empty out the sink when I'm getting
started because I'm going to use one side and fill that up with
the hot water and dish soap. And then the other side I'm
going to use to pre rinse and run that garbage disposal.
And you may or may not have a dishwasher.
That's OK. This cleaning session is going
to work whether you have a dishwasher or not.
I'm going to talk about hand washing.
And if you're like me, when you're facing a dish shaster,
you've got more than what's going to fit in the dishwasher
or certain items you don't want to put in the dishwasher.
And so you might be doing a little bit of both.
But let's get that sink ready. Let's get it emptied out, you
know, just by placing things next to it and getting them out
and then, you know, rinsing it out and just getting it ready.
OK, so maybe you're filling up the sink or maybe you just wash
your dishes completely under running water.
I know some people do that, But I get my water running to heat
it up. I run the garbage disposal in
case there's anything in it. OK.
And then I put some hot soapy water in that right hand side
for me. It's on the right, you know, I
plug it, start filling it up, and then I look for any dirty
silverware and drop that in. Those obvious items that need to
be soaked, I drop those in as I'm filling up one side of the
sink with hot water. You might not be doing things in
exactly the same way I'm describing.
Obviously just work on pre rinsing your dishes however you
like to do that, but I think it's important to deal with the
difficult items first. When you come across something
that needs a lot of scrubbing, I give you permission to
procrastinate on washing that one.
I just want you to pre rinse it and get it soaking.
If it's a cup that's just soiled or a bowl that's just soiled in
the bottom of it, you can just fill that item up with hot
water, some liquid dish soap and set it on the counter or set it
in your basin or your sink. OK, but things like the
silverware I submerge plates, I submerge, I pre rinse them
first, of course, because you don't want to get, you know, a
lot of debris in the water. You're washing your dishes then.
So I grab a dishwashing brush and I'll, I'll scrub a plate
under running water. I'll, I'll scrub a silverware if
there's chunks on it. A lot of times with the
silverware I'm just dropping it in but I'll I'll scrub the food
off the plate, submerge it OK. But a lot of times if there's a
lot of cups and pans and things like that I'll scrub and pre
rinse them under running water. But the way I'll soak them is by
filling them up and then placing them on the countertop.
This is definitely a good strategy.
If not everything's going to fit in the sink or if you're going
to be doing multiple sink loads, you know where you're changing
the water after washing several items.
But even though I'm going to be putting a lot of items in the
dishwasher, I will get the most difficult items.
Soaking those obvious difficult items, the the pot and pan from
dinner where the food has kind of dried on or that container
that you pulled out of the refrigerator and threw away the
leftovers. By the way, if you haven't dealt
with leftovers, I'm talking leftovers, you're not no longer
going to eat old leftovers. Go ahead and deal with those.
You've got plenty of dishes to do anyway.
Might as well wash those containers that are in the
fridge because you're going to need those later.
OK, so let's get all these difficult items pre rinsed and
soaking. You might still come across
items that are more difficult than others that you're going to
procrastinate on in a good way, but we'll talk about that.
Let's get the obviously difficult items pre rinsed and
soaking and let's get started on those easier items.
OK? I'm talking about things that
can go straight into the dishwasher or just need a quick
rinse and scrub and then can be placed in the dishwasher.
Or if you're hand washing. I'm talking about those items
that are ready to go in the dishwater or just to be washed
under running water. If that's the way you do it, I'm
not going to keep talking about washing under running water
because that's not the way I do it.
I pre rinse under running water. I submerge, scrub and then rinse
under running water. Again, no judgement here if you
don't do any type of a submerge. I feel like it it takes more
effort and uses more water so it's not my method of choice.
But just be working on dishes obviously whatever that means
for you today. But as I'm pre rinsing items and
placing them in the dishwasher I I'll often come across something
that I didn't notice needed to soak during that first step, if
that makes sense. OK, that item is going to get
submerged or filled up whatever the soaking method is.
Depending on the size of the item, I tend to soak those large
pots and pans outside of the sink.
Another thing I and just be working on your pre rinsing
while I talk because you're setting yourself up for an
easier dishwashing session when you do the preliminary work, OK.
And obviously, if you're ahead of the game, you can be cleaning
surfaces in your kitchen that, you know, for instance, if you
didn't have any dishes to do today, OK, if you've been
keeping up on your dishes, but I'm assuming you've got at least
one big meal to clean up after possibly 24 hours worth of
dishes, maybe more. No judgement here.
I do want you to have the goal of doing all of your dishes
every 24 hours and, you know, getting them done before bed.
If if you're perpetually struggling with that, definitely
listen to my crawling out of the whole series.
It's one of the bonus episodes that's for financial supporters.
If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, that option is are
already being advertised to you. Another way to unlock those
episodes is through a Patreon membership and there'll be a
link in the description to my website.
And you can you can learn more about the options for supporting
the show for a small monthly fee, which unlocks more
episodes, three or four more episodes per month.
And that can really help you get on my full program.
You get a lot more done if you have access to those episodes
and they're typically longer and I get a little more personal in
those episodes because I figure haters aren't going to subscribe
to them, you know? But that's besides the point
anyway. When you come across an item
that is not easily pre rinsed and placed in the dishwasher,
you submerge it if you're using a dishwasher.
That's my method. OK, I know what else I wanted to
tell you why you're pre rinsing. One of the other things that I
don't submerge is anything that's sharp.
I don't put steak knives, butcher knives, chopping knives.
You know, I don't put any sharp knives in the dishwater.
You know, I'm not hiding these dangerous objects under the
bubbles and I hope you're not doing that either.
Butter knives, sure, but my sharp knives, and I typically
have large ones that I need to wash, will submerge those in one
of the large pots that I have sitting on the counter soaking.
Because if I've used a large knife to prep, chances are I've
used my large skillet as well and I've filled it up with hot
soapy water. It's a perfect way to soak place
to soak the knife. Or sometimes I soak it in a
large salad bowl or a large mixing bowl if there's stuff
kind of caked on the knife. If not, you know, if you just
used it to chop onions and it's, you know, going to be easy to
clean, clean it under, you know, running water or whatever, it's
real quick. But you don't soak a sharp knife
in the sink under the bubbles. OK, safety tip there.
But as I'm I'm pre rinsing items and loading the dishwasher
lately, I don't run the dishwasher immediately.
I used to say like if you have a dishwasher, you know, maybe you
need to do an empty reload, reload and run of the dishwasher
and then wash the remaining items by hand that either didn't
fit or that you didn't want to put in there.
I used to say that, but I, I worry about the water pressure
not being enough. And since I've had some issues
with that. So what I do is I don't actually
run the dishwasher. I just load it and some often
times I don't run it at all until I'm completely done hand
washing everything. I'm going to hand wash, but I'm
putting things in there, you know, as much as as possible.
OK. That way when I come across an
easy item, I pre rinse it and place it in the dishwasher.
When I come across a difficult item, it's going to do some time
to soaking to soak. And you may be thinking, OK,
well I've got some items soaking, but I've already either
washed the easy items, you know, rinse, washed, rinsed and place
them in the drying rack or I've pre rinsed them and placed them
in the dishwasher. And those difficult items
haven't had very much time to soak.
Maybe I could just leave them till tomorrow.
No, no, no, no, no, you're not getting off that easy.
When I said it's OK to procrastinate, I did not mean
overnight. Very rarely do you need to let
something soak overnight, you know, unless you have an
extremely baked on dish. Maybe you made a lasagna and
then reheated it in the same container in the oven.
Or maybe you you cook something in a crock pot and it's just
really stuck on OK. There might be like one item
like that. I don't want you to get into
that cycle of having something perpetually soaking.
Even if it seems like your items need to soak a long time, they
probably don't need to soak as long as you think.
OK, so once you deal with all the easy stuff, whether you
washed it, rinsed it and placed it in the drying rack or you pre
rinsed it and placed it in your dishwasher that's not yet
running, you might need more soaking time for those pots and
pans that you have soaking. OK.
And don't feel bad if you're not completely to that point, you
know, just keep working on the pre rinsing as long as it takes.
I realize it can take a while if you know, dishes have piled up
on you. Obviously on this show, I
encourage you to try to either do dishes after every meal or,
you know, two to three times a day, especially if you have a
tendency to feel overwhelmed. Or maybe to have a system where
you load things in the dishwasher throughout the day
and then you run it at the end. You know, that system works for
some people, not us. But I realized that there are
these pile UPS, you know, you get busy for.
It happened to me recently. You get busy for a few days and
you're just constantly on the go.
And maybe you have kids who are dirtying up dishes.
And definitely, I've found that even when we have a system in
place and rules in place, if my husband and I haven't been doing
dishes, it's it's kind of hard to get the kids to clean as they
go when they're walking into a kitchen that's messy to begin
with. So I definitely encourage you to
get caught up on your dishes and then turn over a new leaf.
I'm talking about teaching by example.
If you have kids who are old enough to dirty up their own
dishes, meaning like prepare their own snacks and meals.
Yeah, I realize some of you, your kids are toddlers and, you
know, you're cleaning up after them.
I get that. But our current system is that
when someone fixes their own breakfast or lunch or snack,
that's not one of the family meals, which typically happen in
the evening, they have to wash that bowl and spoon or that
plate and fork by hand and place it in the drying rack.
It's not that hard. And then some people have a role
where their kid has to pre rinse it and place it in the
dishwasher. If you just say like rinse it
and place it in the sink, sometimes they're just
sprinkling a little bit of water on it and then you're still
dealing with dried on food. They're not actually filling
that cereal bowl up with hot soapy water and the cereal is
just cemented on the bowl, or the Top Ramen is just cemented
into the bowl. So we have that system and then
at dinner time, they're allowed to do that more traditional
method where they just clear and rinse their plate and fork or
their spoon and, you know, and bowl if it was chili or
something and you know, clear it, rinse it off and place it in
the sink. Then my husband or I do the
dishes when we quote UN quote close the kitchen.
You know that that all important closing shift needs to happen
after dinner or before bed, whatever's best for you.
But I don't want people just going in throughout the day and
making these little meals and then just letting the food dry
on. And then we have to deal with
this disaster again. OK, but it it does happen, you
know, when the family's busy and just things come up or just you
haven't had that talk with them in a while, you know what I
mean? Definitely I encourage you to
create some kind of system like set an expectation if you have
kids who are able to prepare their own food on how they're
going to manage cleaning up after themselves as they go.
OK, And then more importantly, follow that rule yourself, OK,
and also hold people accountable.
And it can be it can be hard if you have a large family, it can
be hard because you don't know who left what nobody's admitting
to it or whatever. But like when you're down to two
teenagers, it's pretty easy to know like whose container it is
just by what what they made you know, because I know what they.
So it definitely gets easier as your kids get older for those of
you who are still in the trenches.
But you you definitely want to hold them more accountable and
teach them to clean up after yourselves and you know, in
these and hopefully you're pre rinsing your dishes.
But like I was saying, you might feel like you need more time for
them to soak, move around the kitchen and do some other stuff.
That's the right kind of procrastination.
You know, you could walk away and start scrubbing your stove
top. I have a glass cook top, so I
just say scrub your stove top. But I realized you might need to
remove burners and clean burner trays.
You know, it might be a little bit of a more complicated job
for you. You might have items on the
counter that don't belong. You might have cereal boxes and
seasoning sitting out from when people prepared meals and that
the by people, it might, it might be you, you might be the
problem. OK, let's let's get that stuff
put away while those super difficult items have a little
more time to soak. I feel like sometimes I'll look
at something and be like, whoa, this is going to need to soak
for like an hour or something, but really it just needs a few
more minutes. It some of those items need you
to go scrub your stove and go clean your countertops and then
come back and then maybe drain the sink and refill it with
hotter water. Submerge the items again.
There's just something about looking at items with some dried
on food and wrongly assuming that it's going to take longer
than it really does to soak. OK, but you have other things
you can do in your kitchen. If you're down to just a few
items, even four or five, even 10 items that need some extra
soaking time, you can basically clean your whole kitchen and
then come back to those. You can wipe down your stovetop
and countertop, and I usually scrub the stovetop before wiping
it down. I'll put some liquid dish soap
on it, get an abrasive sponge and just really scrub it.
And then I'll let that soap sit there for a few minutes while I
clear the countertops and I get my favorite multi purpose spray
and spray and wipe down those countertops.
Then I come back with a, you know, my maybe my dish rag and
wipe off that stovetop. Then when I go back to the sink,
those dishes are magically easy to wash because they've had some
extra time. And sometimes they do need
hotter water put in them for one last two minutes, soak and some
hotter water. But you don't stand around while
your items are soaking. OK, you're either washing easier
items or you're cleaning the rest of your kitchen.
And don't forget about wiping your cabinets, the fronts of
your large appliances. You know, you start with your
upper cabinets and once your countertop, stove top are clean,
you can move down to wiping those lower cabinets.
Sometimes the lower cabinets get neglected and they get
fingerprints on them. And and by fingerprints, I'm not
talking just a fingerprint, I'm talking about, you know, food
smudges and whatnot, OK. And you can even sweep.
And I wouldn't mop before washing all the dishes, but you
could sweep, finish washing the dishes and then mop.
OK, This is productive procrastination.
The important thing is that you're staying in your kitchen
and, you know, letting, maybe letting that dish soap do its
work while you scrub other areas of your kitchen.
You know, sometimes you can even, you know, kind of take a
little detour and organize your pantry or your, you know, 1
cupboard or whatever. Often I need to reorganize my
seasonings because we have this tiny skinny cabinet.
Because you know how you, you organize and just be working on
washing your dishes, whatever that means for you, whether
you're loading the dishwasher, you know, and maybe you had to
empty a drying rack or dishwasher first.
Definitely. I like to keep that task
separate. But I realize you might be doing
it all right now. Or maybe you're just playing
dish Jenga and adding clean dishes to an existing pile.
I forgot to tell you to put away any clean dishes.
And that's because that's not part of my dishwashing session
anymore. I have delegated that to my
teenage daughter. Her job is to empty the drying
rack and dishwasher, of course, put those items away where they
go correctly. And she's, she does great with
that. Her job is to do that before
4:00 PM when we're starting to prep dinner, OK?
That way it it's even easier to clean as we go when we've got a
nice empty drying rack and an empty dishwasher when we go in
to make dinner and clean up after dinner.
OK, but I realized that task might fall to you.
A lot of you might want to implement the the habit of
emptying your dishwasher and drying rack in the morning while
your coffee is brewing or while you're making breakfast or
something. Just a thought there.
I'm really big on separating tasks into manageable bite size
parts. OK, Breaking things down to
where I don't have to put away a bunch of clean dishes when I
wash them. OK, so just a thought.
But I realize some of you needed to put stuff away, so you might
still be washing dishes and there might be a lot.
I get it. I'm trying to give you plenty of
time for that. But if if you get nothing else
done other than just your dishes in this episode, or if you don't
even get all your dishes done in this episode, I definitely want
you to finish the job. I encourage you to baby put on
some music after this, get all your dishes done and wipe down
your upper surfaces and then sweep and mop your kitchen
floor. And maybe you'll need a little
break, a little rest break before you sweep and mop.
Oftentimes when I'm cleaning a messy kitchen and I get all the
dishes done and the upper surfaces wipe, meaning my
countertops, my appliances, my cabinets, OK, you know, cleaning
the stove, cleaning the sink. I will sit down and drink some
water before getting back up to sweep or mop.
Or I'll delegate the sweeping and mopping, OK, because I've
done the hard part, which is washing a bunch of dirty dishes.
OK. So hopefully I've I've given you
kind of a strategy for dealing with all of these dishes and
hopefully I've given you that extra push not to assume that
things need to soak longer than they do.
The trick is to get the items pre rinsed and soaking, wash the
easy stuff and then if you still need more soaking time, maybe
reboot with hotter water and then do some other stuff around
the kitchen. Clean your kitchen and then come
back to those items. Work smarter, not harder.
OK, I don't love scrubbing that much, and one of the reasons
that I might be tempted to procrastinate on doing my dishes
is if I see that there's going to be a lot of scrubbing to do.
But I don't have to scrub that hard because I rely on soaking
things and even re soaking them again with hotter water.
OK, that's the way. Now, obviously there are
exceptions. Obviously there are times where
you might just need to really bust it out and get those dishes
done. Somebody's coming over and you
don't want them to catch you with a sink full of dishes or
something and you want to just scrub.
OK, there's a time for that. That's why you probably have a
few different tools, you know, various types of scrub brushes.
I've got one that's always my pre rinse scrub brush and then
I've got one where I keep soap. You know it.
You can put soap inside of it that's for actually washing
dishes and that works well for those difficult items if you
need to wash them quickly. I also use the like the scrub
daddy's sponges. Lately I've been getting the
ones by that same brand that are just rectangular that still have
a soft side and an abrasive side.
It's cheaper to get a pack of several of those, in my opinion,
and I definitely use this for scrubbing the stove as well as
difficult dishes. But a lot of you by now have
finished your dishes. Let's focus on those upper
surfaces. Do you need to remove some
clutter from your countertops? Sometimes?
If there's someone else in your house who helps you with dishes,
that person might not be as bothered by clutter.
Let's say you know, whether you ask your your, your teenager to
do dishes or maybe your spouse does dishes, sometimes that
person might be letting some some clutter accumulate on your
countertops. I always feel like when I go in
and do the dishes, like I'm actually kind of resetting my
countertops to be the minimalist countertops I want them to be.
I'm not just a complete minimalist as far as my
housekeeping, but one area where I love to go minimal is the
countertops. There's nothing that says a
clean house like uncluttered countertops.
OK, in my opinion, obviously there are people who keep an
Immaculate home and have a lot of decorations and knickknacks,
but I don't want to work around all that stuff, OK?
I like to go really minimalist in the kitchen and to me that's
kind of the fun part. You know, when I get my stuff
pre rinsed and soaking, then it's time for me to just really
put everything away and like expose my countertops again that
my family's been cluttering up, OK and spray and wipe that down
and make it shine. And the more stuff I can put
away, the better. I mean, there's always that item
that you need to keep out. Maybe it's a toaster, maybe it's
your Keurig, but I even have a separate coffee station so that
I'm not cluttering my counter with my Keurig.
OK, I have another piece of furniture over across from the
dining table. It's still in the kitchen, per
SE, where I have my Keurig and the little ice maker.
It's kind of just a little drink station and the newest addition.
You know those 5 gallon water jugs.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this yet on the show, but I
bought a pump for 999 on Amazon that has you you set the five
gallon jug wherever you want it. For me, it's on my coffee
station slash drink station area.
I set it on that piece of furniture or my husband does
because it's pretty heavy. I mean, I can lift it, but
that's one of those things your husband typically helps with if
you're married. Instead of turning it upside
down onto a dispenser, the openings at the top and then you
set this pump into it. You know, you take the lid off,
you set this pump on it, and there's a tube that goes down.
Basically the pump. You charge it like every 30 days
with a USB cord, but it's just battery operated on that water
bottle. I mean, the only drawback from
using that versus a water dispenser is that it doesn't
chill the water. But like I said, we've got a
little ice maker too, so we can put ice in the water.
And we're saving so much money it it costs us $1.75 to fill up
one of those jugs at our favorite water station, OK?
And I mean, by our calculations, it's saving us at least $100 a
month, meaning we were spending $100 more than what we're
spending on those jugs when we were buying cases of individual
bottled water, OK. And I realized there's a happy
medium you could get, you know, gallon jugs and different things
like that. But we've just found that this
works well for us. So I just wanted to throw it out
there in case somebody's interested in in trying one of
those pumps. I'll put a picture of it in my
Patreon and I'll also put it in the group that's for the
Facebook group, that's for supporters.
But that's been kind of a kind of a game changer.
My point is, I go to great lengths to keep my countertops
sparse. I think it makes a huge
difference in the look of a kitchen.
Obviously keeping your kitchen sanitary is the most important
thing, but the minimalist look helps too, Especially if your
clutter is not cute decorations. It's just stuff that you're
piling on your countertops. OK, you definitely need a system
for putting away clean dishes too, so that those aren't piling
up too much. Clean dishes are better than
dirty dishes. You know, if you're going to
have a pile of something, but your kitchen is going to look so
much better if you're getting those put away and you have it
kind of a streamlined countertop.
OK, Once you've cleaned all those upper surfaces in your
kitchen, again, you're going to sweep and mop and maybe listen
to some music while you do that. Your spouse might, might like
sweeping and mopping. Yeah, this is, this is just a
generalization, but men a lot of times don't like the more
tedious aspects of cleaning. So they're more likely to want
to run a vacuum or a carpet shampoo or, you know, you even
use a broom or a mop. So just a thought there.
Same with teenage boys, really. But don't get me wrong, if you
have teenagers, OK, regardless of their gender, they need to
learn how to do every aspect of housekeeping.
OK. And in our house, you know, my
husband, my husband does a lot of the housework, especially
because he's retired. But he, he's always enjoyed
cooking and he's always, you know, cleaned while he cooked,
you know, and cleaned up his mess afterward.
So my boys do see a role model of a man who does work in the
kitchen. I do want to encourage you to
continue after this episode if your kitchen is kind of a
disaster. I will say this.
It can take up to an hour to clean a really messy kitchen and
that's working efficiently. Sometimes it does get that out
of hand. I get that, and I want you to
finish the job, but like I said, you might need to take a little
break, sit down and drink some water before you deal with the
floor. As I realized, not all of you
are able to delegate that task. Today.
It might fall to you today, it might fall to you all the time.
But definitely as my kids get older, I teach them to do more
complicated aspects of housework.
You know, by age 9, your kids should be helping with the
dishes, vacuuming. They should, they should learn
how to do all that. And then by the time they're in
high school, you should be starting to teach them how to
clean a bathroom. And sometimes they do it at
their summer camps. Have you noticed the shift of
the culture where? Because I've heard other people
talk about it too, like their kids are helping to clean the
bathrooms at summer camp. And at first I was thinking
what, like, we're paying for this and they got the kids
cleaning the bathrooms, but it's probably good for them, OK.
And I found out it wasn't just the camp that our kids go to.
My friend's daughter had to clean the bathroom at camp too.
But just in case they're not teaching the kids that a camp,
you need to teach them that at some point.
You know, obviously it would be gross to have a little kid
cleaning a toilet, but when they're in high school, they're
more than capable of of doing that.
And they should know how to clean the kitchen at an even
younger age, OK? I'm not saying that they're
they're always doing it. Sometimes it's a rotation,
sometimes it's a once a week thing.
But you do need to teach your kids to clean, OK.
And by the time they leave your house, they should know how to
complete all aspects of housekeeping.
They should know how to shop for groceries.
They should know how to cook a few meals.
I mean, they don't need to have a bunch, but they need to know
how to cook a few homemade meals, OK, And follow a recipe
in a cookbook, OK. And I've taught all my kids
those things. I will say my girls have taken
more of an interest in cooking than my boys have.
But my boys. Can make a few meals, you know,
and they know how to follow a recipe.
Anyway, I hope you got your dishes done, but don't beat
yourself up if you haven't. Spend the next 20 minutes
finishing up your dishes and cleaning the surfaces in your
kitchen. Maybe take a break and then go
back in and sweep or vacuum. Special special thanks to my
financial supporters who've already unlocked bonus episodes.
But even just listening to these free episodes helps me.
I realize not everybody's able to subscribe.
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate each and everyone
of you. And as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.