Thanks for joining me in today's episode.
I am going to help you get started on some housework so
that you can get a lot done in as little time as possible.
You're listening to Clean With Me, the podcast where I talk you
through cleaning your house step by step.
Let's get right into the episode.
The first thing I want you to do is make sure that you are
dressed and feeling presentable, OK?
Put on something comfortable yet presentable, maybe something
that makes you feel feminine and take a little time to do that.
One thing that's just really transformative for me, it's
putting on mascara. For you, it could be something
else. And of course, you may also need
to run a brush through your hair or brush your teeth.
You know, whatever you haven't done yet, now's the time to do
those minimums, those personal grooming tasks, plus that one
thing that makes you feel extra good about your appearance
because when you look good, you feel good.
Some of you might already be dressed for the day.
So I'm going to go ahead and tell you what's ahead.
We are going to be starting with getting your machines running,
meaning your washing machine and possibly your dryer, and then a
few minutes into the episode, maybe even your dishwasher if
you have one. We're going to straighten up
your front entrance and whether you just need to get your house
under control before you run off and do something else or you
need me to help you jump start a longer cleaning session, this
episode is for you. Hopefully you're getting up and
getting presentable. Some people like to wear lace up
shoes while they're they clean. Other people like to slip into
some slides or flip flops. Or if you're like me, you go
barefoot a lot. The only exception is if my
grandkids get the kitchen floor sticky or something I'm going to
want to put shoes on. Or if I go out in my backyard I
need shoes because there are goat heads.
I'm my my feet are pretty tough but we have these terrible
stickers in our yard so I do have to put on shoes before
going into the backyard. But when I'm just going out
front, taking out the trash, I'm typically barefoot.
Sometimes even in the day of winter, I just move quickly.
I guess that's part of being from California.
And if you're slow to get ready in the morning, maybe consider
laying out your clothes the night before until you're able
to get your wardrobe organized enough that you can quickly grab
something and put it on. I talked about this in a recent
bonus episode. But some of you just need more
hangers so that you can get all all those clothes hanging up
instead of having a residual laundry basket or things draped
over a chair. Another thing you might want to
do to gear up for your cleaning session is straighten up your
immediate front entrance. I like to have that first
impression area looking good. For me, it's the entire living
room. And if I'm actually expecting
someone, that extends to my kitchen island, which kind of
gets cluttered a lot, but you can see it from the front door.
So I like to pick up my living room floor, which includes my
entryway. It's part of the same room.
Straighten the throw pillows on my couch and clear off that
kitchen island just so that those first several feet when
you walk into my house are clear and the view is clear.
And for those of you who don't have small children, you might
be keeping your entryway in front room perpetually clean.
But right now I have a 2 year old and three-year old living
with me, so that room gets cluttered a lot because I've got
a toy box out there. By the way, some of you have
asked about this fitness watch slash smart watch that I wear.
It's an amaze fit and I'll put an Amazon link in the
description. Hey, I am an Amazon affiliate.
By purchasing something through my link, you're, you're paying
the same price. But I I get a little little cut
of that. So I appreciate those who do
that. Hopefully by now you've done
whatever you needed to do to gear up for your cleaning
session. I realize that was kind of a
long introduction. The next thing I want you to do
is start a load of laundry. OK?
That's the first machine that I want you to get running it.
Maybe you need to strip one of your beds, or maybe you just
need to wash some underwear or some towels or some work or
school uniforms for somebody in your house.
You know, one of those survival loads.
Just let's get that first laundry load going.
That way that machine is working for you while you're cleaning.
Super efficient, right? That's how you do your housework
efficiently. The order of operations matters.
OK, once you've gotten that load of laundry going, I want you to
do a few things to get your house smelling fresh.
You've already straightened the front entrance, so your house is
starting to look better. But is it starting to smell
better? We were gone all day yesterday
and got back and the house wasn't smelling its best.
We simply needed to take out the kitchen trash.
So take out that trash and reline it.
But before you do that, you might want to check to see if
your bathroom waste baskets are getting full or even
overflowing. You can always dump those into
your larger kitchen waste basket if there's room, and then take
out that bag of trash and of course, come back and reline it.
I feel like I'm treating you like my kids when I'm telling
you to reline your kitchen waste basket.
I know you're going to do that automatically.
And when you're done with that, you might want to take some
additional steps to get your house smelling fresh.
Maybe you like to light scented candles or put wax in the wax
warmer. It kind of surprises me how many
people clean their house first and then light a candle kind of
for the ambiance. Why don't you light the candle
first so that you can enjoy that scent and that ambiance while
you're cleaning? That could definitely boost your
spirits. If it's a nice day out, just
open some windows throughout your home.
Another case for that is the light that comes in when you
open your curtains or you raise your blinds.
Now that you've got your house smelling fresh, your front
entrance straightened up, your washing machine running, it's
time to gather up any dirty dishes from around the house.
Different people have different routines.
Maybe you're the parent of a teenager who sometimes forgets
to clear a plate from their little gaming area of their
room. Or maybe you and your husband
leave coffee mugs on the night stand.
I don't know where you need to check, but it's time to gather
up any dirty dishes from around the house and get those to the
kitchen. Even though I talk about this
all the time, sometimes I start cleaning the kitchen without
gathering that stuff up. And that's why I like to remind
you of that on this show. Because it's super irritating to
clean my kitchen and then walk back into my bedroom and realize
there are things on both of our night stands that should have
gone to the kitchen. Or once in a blue moon, I don't
notice that there is a plate and a fork on the kitchen table and
I'm ready to walk out of the kitchen.
And then I realize I'm not done. So let's gather everything to
the kitchen and get started on those dishes.
Maybe you need to empty a drying rack.
And of course, if you're going to load the dishwasher, you've
got to empty that. If you're new to the show, you
might not know this, but I'm really big on separating the
task of emptying the drying rack and dishwasher from those actual
dishwashing sessions so I don't have to do that before I begin
and then make it take even longer.
So at our house, my teenage daughter has the daily chore of
putting away all the clean dishes, which includes the
dishwasher and drying rack. But even if it falls to you, one
way of doing that is doing it in the morning, maybe while your
coffee's brewing. Or, you know, even if you're
using a Keurig and it's only going to take a few seconds to
fill your cup, you can put away the clean dishes and then come
back to that cup of coffee. It needs to cool down a little
bit. Anyway.
I had one person write in that she knows she's not going to
empty her drying rack in the morning, so she does it at
night. And that's fine too.
But the reason I suggest people do it in the morning is because
some of you are doing dishes right before bed instead of
right after dinner, and the items simply aren't dry yet.
I know when you watch an old show from the 1950s, they stand
there and dry their dishes with a towel, and maybe you do that,
but I didn't come from a household that does that, so I
don't do that. By the way, you don't have to
use the drying cycle in your dishwasher if you don't want to.
If you're trying to save money on your electric bill or
something, you can put it on that setting where it doesn't
heat, dry the dishes, and then you can just kind of crack it
open afterward if you want to. Maybe some of you were emptying
your drying rack and dishwasher while I was talking.
The next step is to get any difficult items soaking.
I'm talking about pre rinsing a pot or pan under running water
with a scrub brush or maybe an abrasive sponge if that's what
you have on hand, Getting that food out of it and then filling
it up with hot water and liquid dish soap, setting it on the
counter to soak. You know, maybe there's a
casserole dish that you baked a lasagna or enchiladas in and it
it's it's going to be a little bit difficult to wash.
You might want to also use the secret weapon where you drop one
of those like Cascade platinum dishwasher pods.
That's another thing I've got an Amazon affiliate link link for
is the Cascade dishwasher pods, but of course you can just pick
them up in the grocery store as well.
But by dropping that dishwasher pod in there, it's going to work
hard on getting that cooked on food loosened from the pan and
then you won't have to scrub as much.
OK work. Work smarter, not harder.
Just don't let kids handle dishwasher pods because if
they're trying to pull apart the ones that are stuck together or
whatever, that stuff can get in their eyes and it's super
dangerous. That's how powerful those pods
are. Like you should not let children
handle them. Little safety tip there.
Once you've gotten those difficult items soaking, it's
time to either load your dishwasher and maybe start a
sink load of whatever didn't fit in the dishwasher, or maybe
items that are hand wash only that you like to hand wash.
Because I don't want the larger items taking away valuable real
estate in my dishwasher. OK, I don't want doing dishes to
be tedious, so I put what I call the small stuff in the
dishwasher. I'm talking cups, mugs, glasses,
plates, bowls, silverware. And I do pre rinse those long
like cooking spatulas and place those strategically in the top
rack. But what I usually don't do is
put large pots and pans in there.
That having been said, if you go to your kitchen and maybe you've
been using disposable plates and silverware and all you have to
wash is pots and pans, by all means pre rinse them and place
them into the dishwasher. And you probably even have a
pots and pans setting. I'm not telling you not to do
that, But when I have a lot of small stuff to wash, to me it's
easier to wash maybe three large items than to wash a bunch of
small stuff and put the bigger things in the dishwasher.
And sometimes those bigger items need more scrubbing anyway.
By the way, it's OK to go through a phase of buying more
disposable things, paper plates and so on, if that helps you,
because arguably you're going to be using less hot water, less
electricity for running the dishwasher, less soap, things
like that. And especially if you buy those
disposable plates, bowl, silverware, whatever it is
you're buying, you know, in bulk, maybe at a Sam's Club or
Costco, it might be a lot more affordable than you think.
I even like to buy the I don't have one of those big box stores
in my small town. For those of you who know me in
real life, you, you know the struggle.
But when I did live near a Costco, I used to buy several of
the aluminum pans in bulk for things like lasagna, and then I
sometimes washed them and reused them, but I reserved the right
to throw them away, for example, if I cooked a lasagna one night
And just be washing dishes. Whatever that means for you,
whether you're loading the dishwasher or washing a sink
load of dishes. If all you had were those items
that were soaking, of course, just be cleaning the kitchen.
But a lot of you are washing dishes at this point.
The important thing is that you stay in the kitchen and you do
what needs to be done in the kitchen.
For example, if you fill up a sink of hot soapy water and you
pre rinse some items and submerge them, but you need that
water to cool down a little bit before you want to put your
hands in it, that's a great time to start straightening up the
kitchen. Just try to stay in the kitchen
the whole time. That's the key.
You want to avoid distractions of wandering off and starting
some other project around the house because doing your dish is
such a springboard task that's going to kind of lift a weight
off of your shoulders. Because for a lot of us, that's
one of our least favorite jobs. And cleaning surfaces is kind of
fun compared to the tedious task of washing a bunch of dishes.
So let's get that over with, OK? Like I was saying, I used to buy
those disposable aluminum pans. And what I would often do is I'd
cook a lasagna, put, you know, put what was left of it in the
refrigerator after covering it with foil.
And then maybe the next day for lunch, pop it back in the oven
in that same aluminum container. Well, once you've cooked it
twice in the same container, it's going to be hard to clean.
OK, That's, you know why I talk about the dishwasher pod going
into it. I do that when I cook it in a
glass casserole, and I try not to ever double cook it like
that. It's better to put the leftovers
on a plate and microwave it in my opinion.
But when we'd have like half a lasagna left and decide to eat
it for lunch the next day and we had it in an aluminum pan, I
didn't mind popping it back in because then I could just toss
that pan after we ate. OK, but if I didn't end up doing
that, I'd wash the pan and reuse it and I treated it as semi
disposable. OK, Hopefully you are chipping
away at those dishes, not chipping them, but you know what
I mean? Of course you're going to want
to spray and wipe down the surfaces in your kitchen.
I'm not going to get into detail with that.
You know what's what needs to be done.
But what I will say is one of my financial supporters recently
asked a question. She was saying how her cabinets
were not getting clean with a multi purpose spray.
Sometimes you need to use some hot water and dish soap.
You know, basically you're diluting the dish soap because
you don't want to just put it on the cabinets at full strength,
right? So you could fill a bucket or
your sink or some other basin with hot water and a little bit
of liquid dish soap. And then you're going to take in
a a sponge that has both an abrasive side and a soft side,
like a scrub mommy or a Scotch Brite sponge.
You'll scrub first to remove any chunks, if you will, and then
you'll use the other side to remove any greasiness.
It's it's the same way you wash your dishes, but you can do that
on your wooden cabinets, assuming that the dishwashing
liquid is diluted and assuming that you're going to dry your
cabinets afterward. Anytime you're getting wood wet,
you want to dry it afterward. So that's my tip for wiping down
cabinets. I tend to do it that way on my
lower cabinets. I don't know why I haven't
talked about it in a while on the show.
The upper cabinets stay more pristine, but little fingers
touch those lower cabinets and they can get food on them.
So if you are wiping your upper cabinets, you do that before you
wipe the countertops. You know, you want to kind of
clean from the top down. Not that your cabinets are that
messy, but when area where it is important to clean from the top
down in your kitchen is when you're cleaning the inside of
your microwave and it's one of those elevated microwaves.
Like maybe it's above your stove.
You might be brushing crumbs down onto the stove top and
that's when it really matters to clean from the top down.
OK, so don't forget to wipe all the surfaces in your kitchen.
Maybe this is a day that you're cleaning the inside of the
microwave. But if it's not using a glass
and surface spray of some kind on the fronts of your large
kitchen appliances like your dishwasher, your oven, your
refrigerator, and maybe a microwave can make your kitchen
look a lot cleaner. Than if you skip that step and
lift those fingerprinted up and then just wipe the countertops,
stove top, sink and so on. OK, once you get those kitchen
surfaces sprayed, scrubbed, wiped down.
It's time to focus on your kitchen floor after this
episode. You might need to sweep and mop
your kitchen floor or vacuum and mop your kitchen floor, but it's
an important finishing touch when you're cleaning the
kitchen. OK, if you live in an all adult
household and don't have dogs, you might not be sweeping your
kitchen or vacuuming your kitchen as often as those of us
with kids and pets bite. If it needs to be done, be sure
to do it after this episode. A great way to end your kitchen.
And I know you're probably still working on surfaces or even if
you're still doing dishes, if you get all your dishes done
during this episode, I've done my job because I feel like
you're going to automatically wipe down the surfaces after
doing dishes. It's it's just kind of automatic
that you know you would do that because that's the fun part,
just the surfaces. I mean, ask any kid if they'd
rather do dishes or spray and wipe down surfaces.
They're going to want to spray and wipe down surfaces.
And as adults, a lot of us are the same way.
But a great way to end this session when I'm done talking is
to sweep and mop or vacuum and mop your kitchen.
When I do dishes and wipe down surfaces, I'm often listening to
a podcast with earbuds. But then when I'm working on the
floors and, you know, really getting active, I like to switch
to a large Bluetooth speaker. It's super fun to clean along
with some music. I can't emphasize enough how
much I love keeping track of my steps using this watch because
I'm able to compare how many steps I do when I'm doing
housework versus when I'm working as an administrative
assistant at the school and like going up and down stairs all
day. When people, you know, bring
their kids lunches and things like that, I get a call, I need
to go downstairs and unlock the door and, you know, collect a
lunch and I'm moving around a lot.
The other day I got in the same number of steps at home because
I did a bunch of housework. So so, you know, getting in
those steps isn't always about going outside and taking a walk.
Now I'm really big on that because you need sunshine and
exercise and you know, that's that's super good for your
physical and mental health. Maybe you want to sit on your
patio and drink a cup of coffee in the morning to soak in a
little bit of vitamin D and then spend the rest of the day
cleaning your house. That way you're getting the
sunshine and the steps in, but getting caught up on housework.
So some days I do skip the walk if I have a lot to do around the
house. But until I got a fitness watch,
I didn't realize how many steps I was actually getting in with a
serious housework session. By the way, I'll put a link in
the description to this watch because it's a lot cheaper than
getting an Apple Watch, and for me, it's easier to use and I
like that it holds a charge a lot longer.
I can't reply to a text or phone call on it, but I get notified
of them and then I can decide whether to go get my phone and
reply there. Especially if you work somewhere
and you don't want to constantly be looking at your phone because
that's not a good look when you're supposed to be working.
What's normal is looking at your watch.
It's like, you know how long till I need to complete my next
task at work but you're getting a text or whatever.
I love it because if my husband texts I'll go over to my phone
and reply. But if it's not my husband, it
can probably wait because I'm at work.
There's a little tip there for you ladies who work outside the
home, but even if you're a full time homemaker, you're going to
want it for tracking your steps and not getting distracted by
your phone. Hopefully you're doing dishes or
scrubbing your kitchen surfaces right now.
Maybe you've got all all three machines running.
If you did a laundry switch at the beginning, if you had
something in the dryer, I do give you permission to start a
load of laundry before going to bed if you're going to remember
to put it in the dryer the second you get up.
If not, it'll be in there too long, it'll stink.
You're going to have to re wash it with a little bit of
detergent and vinegar. But sometimes I start a load
right before bed and I'm too tired to stay up and put it into
the dryer. But maybe you did a laundry
switch at the beginning of this episode.
So your washer, dryer and dishwasher are now running.
How good does that feel? Your house is working for you
while you're working for it, so to speak.
Anyway, special special thanks to those who support the show by
unlocking bonus episodes for a small monthly fee.
That helps me more than you know, but I realize not all of
you are able to subscribe. Even just listening to these
free episodes helps me. But the subscription will really
help you. You won't be on my full program
and have an Immaculate home unless you're listening to bonus
episodes too. And yes, you can re listen to
episodes and I encourage you to do that during your daily
cleaning sessions, but you're going to have access to a lot
more episodes and have to listen to fewer reruns if you become a
subscriber. So there is my little plug for
subscribing to the bonus episodes.
They're typically longer. I get more personal in those
episodes. But there are also ways you can
help me without, without spending a dime.
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you don't miss it when I post a new episode.
Regular episodes do come out on Mondays, and then at some time
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I guarantee three bonus episodes a month, but typically I'm
putting one out every week, so it's definitely worth that small
monthly fee and it helps me justify spending time on these
episodes. Hey, it's cheaper than a maid.
Ladies, I hope you got a lot done.
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate each and every one
of you. And as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.