Have a seat at the table and look around.
That's what your guests are going to be seeing when your.
House is a mess and you're feeling the stress.
What you need is a friend in your ear.
Start the job and you'll see it through with Ronnie talking to
you. Make the chaos disappear.
Clean with Me podcast is here. Welcome back cleaning Besties.
In today's episode, we're going to clean your dining room, and
this episode is part of my Deep Cleaning for Holiday guest
series. So it's time to gear up for our
cleaning session. Maybe you need to freshen up for
the day, put on some shoes, run a brush through your hair,
whatever else. Or maybe you need to start a
load of laundry or straighten up your immediate front entrance.
Whatever will help you feel ready to dive into deep cleaning
your dining area. Like I said, this is part of a
Deep Cleaning for Holiday guest series, but even if you're not
hosting a holiday dinner soon, it's always a good idea to deep
clean any area of your home. And in this episode we're going
to focus on the dining room. Just a quick recap of what I've
been talking about lately in case you're new to the show and
you want to go back and listen to some recent episodes.
Last Monday, I just talked you through a kitchen reset because
obviously as we're preparing for the holidays, we still need to
keep up with those everyday tasks.
And then the week before that I did an episode entitled Holiday
Cleaning Motivation. And then my most recent episode
for financial supporters was entitled Declutter Your Hall
Closets with Me. So if you haven't heard that one
yet, I, I encourage you to check that out.
You can subscribe to bonus content for a small monthly fee,
and you can do that either on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
Patreon. But the point of that episode
was not only having, like, your coat closet presentable in case
a guest opens that up, but more importantly, freeing up storage
space so that you can begin to store more items out of sight so
that the rest of your house will look good.
Hopefully, you're off the couch, you're off the bed, and you're
up and moving and starting to gear up for your cleaning
session. Whatever you needed to do to get
started. But one of the themes of this
holiday deep cleaning series is storing more of your belongings
out of sight. OK, now's not the time to fall
for the convenience fallacy, where you tell yourself it's
more convenient to have things visible, you know, and and you
worry that you might forget you have them, or it might take too
long for you to get them out when it's time to use them.
Don't tell yourself that lie. And if you do decide later that
you'd rather keep certain things sitting out, great.
But if you're entertaining holiday guests in the near
future, you're going to want to store as much as possible out of
sight. Eliminating that visual clutter
can work wonders, and it will also make it faster when it's
time to deep clean your surfaces.
When preparing for guests, you mainly need to do 4 things #1
store more out of sight like I just talked about #2 deep clean
your surfaces #3 purchase any necessary items and maybe a few
extras. Let's face it, sometimes you're
low on silverware or glasses or you need a fresh welcome mat or
a scented candle or something like that.
Maybe add some things to your shopping list for later.
The 4th 1 is only for those of you who will be having overnight
guests, and that is to wash the bedding in your guest room.
And if you're going to be maybe displacing one of your kids,
you'll want to do that closer to the event.
But I know that at least one of my guests will be staying in my
back office, so that bedding's going to get washed several days
in advance. I'm recording this episode about
2 1/2 weeks before Thanksgiving, but I'm hoping that people will
use this episode to get ready for any holiday in the future.
And you may be thinking, 4 things, I have to do a lot more
than that. Well, those are very broad
categories. And over the next 2 1/2 weeks,
we're going to be tackling each area of your home and basically
checking those boxes. Let's get started in your dining
room. And as you're working, I'll talk
more about what's to come. The first thing you need to do,
of course, is remove any clutter, any obvious clutter.
Do you have items sitting on the table?
Maybe you have something on the table that belongs there, like a
fruit basket or centerpiece. Or maybe you have things that
don't belong, kids, art projects, your husband's tools.
There's no telling. But now's the time to clear off
that table and put everything where it goes.
Or if it goes on the table, just set it aside so that you can
clean the table. OK, That would be, you know,
what you would do in the case of a centerpiece.
And we're going to talk about the rest of the room and even
the surrounding areas. But for right now, I just want
you to clear off the tabletop. This week's bonus episode is
going to be another holiday deep cleaning episode about
baseboards, doors, and windowsills.
However, if you don't subscribe to bonus episodes, you can of
course clean your baseboards, doors, and windowsills during
these episodes or while listening to music or another
podcast. But I'm going to go into more
detail about how to clean those areas in the bonus episode.
And then in next week's regular episode, I'm going to talk about
cleaning your master bedroom and bathroom and the guest room.
And then next week's bonus episode will be cleaning your
guest bathroom, and that's going to be a deep clean.
But don't worry, for those of you who are not subscribers, you
will get some instruction on cleaning your guest bathroom and
the final episode of the Deep Cleaning for Holidays series,
which will come out on the 25th. That'll be the Tuesday before
Thanksgiving. In that episode, we'll be
talking about your guest bathroom and the floors
throughout your whole house. The day before that, on Monday
the 24th, you'll be doing a holiday deep clean of your
kitchen. You know, and that'll include a
a reminder to clean out your refrigerator and microwave, wipe
down walls in the kitchen, etcetera.
OK, by now you've cleared off your dining room table.
The next thing I want you to do is have a seat at the table and
look around. That's what your guests are
going to be seeing. Maybe you need to sit in
different chairs or just do kind of a 360 and look all around.
Do you see any problem areas in your home that are noticeable
from the dining room table? For example, a few days ago our
cat litter box was still in the line of vision and I had my
daughter relocate that to her bedroom as we're gearing up for
entertaining holiday guests. And I'm kind of hoping she'll
just keep it in there permanently.
Just saying. I think I like having it in her
room because it's going to force her to scoop the litter more
often when it's right nearby. So those of you cat owners, it's
not that your guests can't see your litter box at all, but it
needs to be far, far away from where they'll be eating or where
they'll be sitting, you know, in the living room or whatever.
And most people, I feel, probably keep it in their
laundry room. I wish I had a bigger laundry
room, but that litter box thing was just an example.
I want you to just kind of look around and, you know, see if
there are any other eyesores that need to be dealt with and
then deal with those. And then of course, you want to
also look at your immediate dining area.
Are there any items being stored on the floor that need to be
moved or just forgotten? Items under the table?
Maybe it's been a while since you've vacuumed or swept under
the table. If you don't eat at that table
very often, basically just pick up the floor over the next few
minutes. By the way, with any of these
holiday deep cleaning episodes, I realized that thorough deep
cleaning takes longer than this. My goal is just to get you
started and remind you of the tasks that need to be done in
any given area. But keep in mind, my holiday
deep cleaning has already begun, and I'm typically spending
several hours on it every Saturday.
So you may need to, you know, pick a couple of days leading up
to Thanksgiving or whichever holiday you're preparing for.
Since you might be listening to this at a different time of the
year, you might need to set aside a couple of full days for
deep cleaning. OK, I'm not going to sugarcoat
that, but I'm trying to just go over some things that might need
to be done and at least get you started on them.
Or if you know you're in kind of a good place with your house, it
might already be in good condition and you're just
needing to do some finishing touches during these episodes.
The point is to be up and moving and I realize you probably have
some non cleaning related podcasts on your playlist that
you can listen to as you continue on after the episode.
Or better yet, binge. Some of my older episodes I have
a lot of content for any room of the house.
If you scroll back you'll see other episodes where you know we
focus on outer areas and kitchens.
Although I will admit, I don't know if I talk about the dining
room in a separate episode normally, it's typically just
kind of tacked on. I think I probably don't talk
about it enough. So I'm I'm glad I'm finally
making a dining room episode. But for most areas in your home,
there are numerous episodes. The next thing I want you to do
is spray and wipe down your dining room table.
While you're doing that, I'll just say you might want to think
about putting the leaves back in your table.
If you have one of those tables that has removable leaves,
hopefully you know what I'm talking about by those.
But there are sections of table that make it longer.
If you're having company, that's the time that you want to make
the table bigger. I like to take out the leaves in
January so that we have just more space to walk around in our
eat in kitchen. But we have a couple leaves out
in the garage and my husband and I are going to put those in
soon. But before you do that, of
course you want to make sure that the table's clean.
And if you don't have any leaves, once the table's clean
and dried, you might want to find your holiday tablecloth and
put that on. I purchased kind of a semi
disposable one, I'll call it. I mean, it's not like a thin
plastic 1 like you see at a outdoor birthday party or
something like that. It's a little nicer than that,
but I don't know that it's one that I'm going to necessarily
keep year after year. It's it's a cheap one, but it's
cute. It has like a holiday coffee
theme. And when I'm getting ready for
holiday guests, I, I try not to save everything for the last
minute. That tablecloth is going to go
on as soon as we put the leaves in, and then we're going to just
keep the table clean. Be be scrubbing your table and
chairs. By the way, you don't want your
guests to grab a chair. And it's sticky.
But kind of my strategy when cleaning in advance of
entertaining guests is that once I clean an area, I raise the
standard in that area and try to maintain it.
And I realized in a perfect world, we'd do that all the
time. And, you know, that's always the
goal, but let's face it, a lot of us can't maintain that level
of near perfection, you know, throughout the year.
But we probably are able to step up our game for a couple of
weeks. For example, the last time I
cleaned out my microwave, I set this little plastic cover in
there and everybody's been really good about covering their
plate before they reheat food. That's something we try to do
all the time and we should do all the time, but especially
leading up to a dinner party where people are probably going
to heat up leftovers later. Maintenance is key.
And I want to give you a couple minutes to really detail your
table and chairs. You might also have a a high
chair that needs to be cleaned if you have a toddler or a baby.
So I'm going to give you a little time on that and then
we'll talk about baseboards and window sills.
But keep in mind there is going to be a specialized bonus
episode this week where I talk about that.
And even though I kind of gave you the schedule of what I'm
going to be talking about and when with this deep cleaning
series, I don't want you to feel like you should necessarily wait
for those episodes to deep clean any areas.
The more you can get done in advance, the better.
And like I said, I have tons of other episodes dating back to
2018 for you to choose from. Of course, when you put leaves
in the table, if you are expanding your table in that
way, you want to walk all the way around it, pull out the
chairs, push them in. Just make sure that there's
plenty of space and that people aren't having to ask other
people to let them get by. I mean, obviously you might have
a real small house, real small dining area, and it might be
impossible to keep that space around the table to where people
can easily pull out their chairs and get around others.
But if you're able to create that space, then definitely
position the table in such a way that the people can easily get a
get in and out. Another thing to be aware of are
your curtains and blinds. I don't have blinds in my dining
room. It's a large, it's part of my
large Eden kitchen. There's a window by the table
and it has a a sheer curtain because outside of that window
is just my backyard and I have a really tall cinder block wall.
So we feel a lot of privacy as far as our backyard.
My mom and I were just talking about this the other day.
A new subdivision is going in in her neighborhood and many of the
houses are going to be two stories.
We were talking about how when you get a two-story behind you,
they can look down into your yard.
Well, in our neighborhood there are not any two stories and we
have a cinder block wall around our backyard and and these parts
they call it a fence. Where I come from that would be
a concrete wall, but it's almost 7 feet tall and the houses are
one stories. So somebody would have to go out
of their way to try to look into my backyard, as in stand up on
something, which is nice, you know, in case I want to step out
on the patio now and then in my nightgown.
So that's why I just have a sheer curtain on my dining room
window and then also the back sliding glass door.
So with those I could just throw them in the washing machine on a
delicate cycle. Obviously do that at your own
risk, but it it should be fine. But of course, if you have
blinds, you're going to want to either wipe them down, slat by
slat or take them outside and hose them off.
Although sometimes you can close them and kind of wipe them down,
you know, in larger strokes. So that's, you know, a
possibility. Hopefully by now you've wiped
down your table and chairs, high chair you, you've removed
clutter from the floor under and around the table.
You've made sure that people are going to have room to walk
around the table and you've also evaluated their view from the
table. Pause the episode if you need
more time, or just continue working on this stuff long after
the episode ends. But at some point, you're going
to want to wipe down your window sills, clean your baseboards,
maybe even wash your windows inside and out.
You know, you're not necessarily going to wash every window of
your house, but I want you to focus on the areas where your
guests are going to be spending the most time, like the table
they're going to be eating at or the living room couch where they
might be sitting down and watching the game.
Make sure that those windows, windowsills, and whatnot are
clean. While we're in the dining room,
be sure to look up. Hopefully you have a dusting
tool that's on a pole. OK, I have one and you can use
that to dust your fixtures. You know, whether it's a, a
chandelier above the table or, you know, just a ceiling fan
with a light on it or just a light, you might want to gently
dust that fixture. Of course, I should have had you
do that before you wipe down the table.
If you're knocking dust down, of course you'll wipe down the
table again. But don't forget to look at the
walls, especially in the corners.
Check for cobwebs and dust those off.
Of course if you don't have a dusting tool on a pole, you
could try using a step ladder or a regular ladder and a a smaller
duster. Or you could attach a micro
fiber cloth to a broomstick with rubber bands.
There are a lot of ways to do that.
Some of you have extremely, extremely high vaulted ceilings.
And I'm not even sure how you reach some of those areas.
You know, maybe your husband comes in with an industrial
ladder from his work or something.
But for most of us, the combination of a dusting tool on
a pole, even if it's homemade, using a room or mop and a step
ladder will suffice. And we can reach those corners.
Be careful, of course. And of course, after the
episode, you're going to want to sweep and vacuum or sweep and
mop. And then the fun part is going
to be a little bit of staging. You know, if you have little
ones who are always just, you know, making a mess on the table
or whatever, you might not want to put your Thanksgiving
tablecloth on in advance. But my kids are teenagers and
adults and I just have the two teenagers living here right now.
So all I have to do is have a family meeting and be like, hey,
don't mess up this tablecloth. There's they're not going to be
any oil painting projects happening at the dining room
table for the next couple weeks. My daughter, who's an artist,
has an easel in her room anyway, but she does some of her work at
the dining room table. That's just going to be off
limits. We're not going to dirty up the
new tablecloth again. Once you deep clean an area in
advance, you want to maintain it.
And of course you're going to do, you know, finishing touches
the night before your guests arrive or the morning of.
But you want to get all the deep cleaning out of the way and then
turn over a new leaf, even if it's for a short time, you know,
you can do anything for a short time.
You can raise the standard in every room and maybe you'll even
create new habits to the point where after this holiday get
together, you're maintaining your house at a higher level of
cleanliness. I hope you got a lot done during
this episode. Special thanks to my financial
supporters who have unlocked subscriber only episodes for a
small monthly fee. To learn more about how to do
that, you can visit my website cleanwithmepodcast.com.
There will also be a link in the show notes.
And by subscribing, you'll unlock my upcoming holiday
episode where we're going to focus on baseboards, doors and
window sills. And then a week later, there's
going to be an episode on deep cleaning your guest bathroom.
But most of all, just keep listening.
Click follower the plus sign on whichever app you're listening
on so you'll be notified when I make a new episode.
I appreciate each and everyone of you.
And as always, happy cleaning. I'll talk to you in the next
episode.