Staging doesn't have to be just for a potential buyer or even
just for guests. It can help you enjoy a more
aesthetically pleasing home. 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 Hey
us, disappear Clean with Me podcast is here.
Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, I'm going to
provide some pre holiday cleaning motivation to help you
deep clean and reset your home for guests and for you.
In this particular episode, I'm going to have you work in one of
your priority areas, which is either going to be the immediate
front entrance or front room or your kitchen.
So grab your supplies and let's clean together.
And remember, you don't have to do it all.
Just start somewhere and I'll keep you company while you work.
And many of my episodes are very step by step.
If you're new to the show, you might not realize that yet, but
in this episode I want to provide some general holiday
cleaning motivation to kind of prepare you for some of the
upcoming episodes as well as some of the episodes I've
already made that are part of my Deep Cleaning for the Holidays
series. OK, as we're approaching the the
holidays, many of my episodes are geared toward getting your
home ready for guests. However, even if you're not
having guests over the holidays, of course, you'll benefit from
deep cleaning your home for you. So it's time to gear up for your
cleaning session. Remember, when you look good,
you feel good. So maybe you need to do a couple
of things to feel presentable. Sometimes we put off getting
ready for the day on those low energy days.
And I'm talking about fixing your hair, maybe using a spray
bottle, washing your face, maybe putting on those minimal
touches. Like for me it'd be a tinted lip
balm and some mascara, maybe some under eye concealer these
days. So if you haven't already gotten
ready for the day, now's the time.
Or maybe you are ready for the day, but you're behind on
laundry. Maybe start a load of laundry.
Do you need to start an emergency load of towels and
underwear just to kind of keep your family functioning?
Or do you need to wash your bedding because it's been a
while? Maybe start that first load of
laundry. Obviously, I can talk faster
than you can do these things. I'm just providing a few
suggestions for getting started. I'm trying to get you moving, so
whether that's fixing yourself up, starting a load of laundry,
or just diving into that problem front entrance area where you've
got some clutter, the important thing is that you are moving.
While I talk and this is a more general episode than usual.
Sometimes we just need to adjust our mindset and get excited
about our homes again. Doing housework feels mundane
and it feels like something that we always have to do.
We're never going to get it done and so therefore we don't feel
excited about it. And kind of my philosophy is to
mix in some tasks that make a lasting impact along with those
mundane household chores because you don't really get that same
dopamine hit from doing the dishes yet again.
However, you might get excited at the thought of what you can
do after you do dishes. Maybe you're going to wipe down
your table and then go outside and pick some flowers and put
them in a vase on the table. Or maybe you're going to go to
the store for a holiday centerpiece of some sort.
So far it's looking like we're going to be celebrating
Christmas at my middle daughter's house Christmas Eve
anyway. But we are having company for
Thanksgiving and it's going to be overnight guests.
I'm not sure how many are coming.
We have a couple for sure's and several maybes and just be
working in your kitchen or front room while I talk.
But an example of something that I did to kind of get excited
about my kitchen is that I set up a coffee station.
It's something I do off and on, and don't get me wrong, there's
always a coffee station, but usually it's just on the
counter. I put a piece of furniture that
I was using for the TV stand in my dining area and set up the
little turntable that has different K cups.
A little basket with other things like tea bags, cocoa
packets, my Keurig. There's another coffee machine
there, but I'm going to put that one away before the guests come,
just to kind of simplify it. I'm going to have the one that's
easy to use on display. I also purchased a small sign
that says like hot cocoa station $0.05 to put next to a sign that
I already had about coffee. And then I got a tablecloth and
a matching towel. The little towel is going to be
at the coffee station to kind of tie things in with the
tablecloth. And I'm actually doing kind of a
coffee theme because the tablecloth has different
pictures of specialty coffees, but some of them have like a
pumpkin on them. So you can tell it's kind of a
fall theme and it's in fall colors.
I know some of you decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving.
It's not my thing. I like to have the house
decorated in fall stuff. And I'm not saying like I go all
out in decorations or anything, but I refrain from decorating
for Christmas until at least the evening of Thanksgiving, after
the meal has been served. And don't get me wrong, I don't
even want to do that. But sometimes I'll allow the
kids to start decorating later that evening.
I think last year we went out of town and my middle daughter was
watching over the house and she put up the Christmas tree for us
while we were gone. And then that kind of motivated
me to pull out the other Christmas decorations that I
have and put those out. But all that to say this, we're
doing fall decor for Thanksgiving.
No judgement here if you do something different.
Like I said, I got a tablecloth and a little towel in a very
frugal mode. You've heard of No Spin
November. That's kind of what I'm going
for, but I'm just excited that I set up the coffee station.
It freed up more counter space and it's kind of a domino effect
as far as decluttering my kitchen.
I have a particular cupboard that I use for appliances that I
almost never used and I'm kind of like out of my Instant Pot
era. I'm more into the crock pot
again lately. I want people to be able to go
into the pantry looking for a snack.
And so yeah, I don't want all those appliances stored there.
So I'm going to be moving in them into more long term
locations, except for the items that I'm going to use at
Thanksgiving like the stand mixer and this I guess you'd
call it a hot plate, but it's a couple of extra burners that I'm
going to plug in. I just want you to be thinking
about how your house is going to look for guests while you're
doing your routine chores over the next few weeks.
And and the goal is to to help you avoid that overwhelming
chaotic feeling that you would have if you were doing
everything at the last minute. Obviously you want your house
freshly cleaned before the guests arrive.
But if you've done all the deep cleaning tasks and the
decluttering and whatnot, you'll be down to mainly just giving
your surfaces A swipe, giving your countertops A swipe, giving
your bathroom a little touch up and you know, vacuuming,
sweeping and mopping. And even that can be a lot if
you're going to be preparing food for guests.
So you want to have the mindset that you're preparing for the
holidays weeks in advance because you, let's face it, you
have a cleaning routine, whether it's daily, weekly, multiple
times a week, you spend a little time anyway cleaning and you're
going to be more excited about the cleaning.
If you think about some lasting changes, For example, setting up
the coffee station and relocating some of my appliances
makes a lasting difference in the kitchen, whereas doing the
dishes is just something that I have to do and then kind of
reorganizing is the reward. So that's kind of your kitchen
pep talk. And I'm going to go into some
other stuff in the bonus episode for financial supporters.
I'm going to talk about my mom's trick for whitening a bathtub
because our bathtub shower combo in the guest bathroom has some
discoloration due to a leaky faucet that we had for a while
in there. So if you'd like to unlock the
subscriber only clean along episodes, check out the link in
the show notes. Of course, the option to
subscribe is probably already being advertised to you.
If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, there's
also a Patreon option, or you can simply visit
cleanwithmepodcast.com and there's a link in the show
notes, and then there's almost always a link in the individual
episode notes. But even if you're not able to
pay for a monthly subscription, if you're enjoying this episode,
please take a quick second to follow Clean with me by clicking
Follow or the plus sign on whichever app you're listening
on. That way you'll have me handy
for your next cleaning session. So basically, you want to reward
yourself with tasks that make a more lasting impact.
For example, if you move your couch to clean under the couch,
maybe you could reward yourself by rearranging some of the
furniture. And I talked a lot about the
kitchen. But as you move through your
house, just straightening up and picking up, I want you to look
at your house from someone else's point of view.
We have sold three houses, and when you have a house on the
market, not only do you want to keep it immaculately clean, but
you also kind of stage it, meaning you position your throw
pillows a certain way or the pillows on your bed a certain
way. You have an attractive
centerpiece on the table, you have a fruit bowl somewhere, you
know, things like that. I just find it helpful to walk
through my house and try to look at it objectively by imagining
that I'm a real estate agent kind of checking to see if the
house is staged properly or if there are any problem areas that
need to be cleaned. Your agent walks through and
might even make some suggestions.
But staging doesn't have to be just for a potential buyer or
even just for guests. It can help you enjoy a more
aesthetically pleasing home. For example, in my bathroom, I
have the garden tub and separate shower.
The way the bathtub is positioned, there is an area
behind the faucets that's not visible from the rest of the
bathroom. So my idea of staging that tub
is putting the shampoo, the conditioner, the soap items that
I use in the bathtub kind of behind the faucet in that corner
because it can't be seen from the rest of the bathroom.
And then on the little visible ledges around the tub, I put
decorative candles. Now for real estate staging,
you'd take that a step further because the person would be
walking all the way over to the tub looking at it.
And you'd probably just have your shampoos and conditioners
shoved in a cupboard out of sight or put into some
attractive containers, you know, kind of debranding.
They don't need to see what brand you use or whatever.
And it would look more elegant to have them in fancy
containers. But my everyday version of that,
just to make it look attractive to me and my family and my
guests who aren't going to walk right up to the tub, is to just
have that that stuff behind the faucets kind of in a corner
where the cabinet is obstructing the view of those products.
You know, as you're doing your routine cleaning in the upcoming
weeks, you might want to jot down a list or add it to the
notepad of your phone of items that you need to buy.
Again, I'm being really frugal right now, but I need a little
rug for my hallway to cover a cord that goes across that
hallway and keep people from tripping over it.
I already had one there, but I moved it to another location and
I'm probably going to get a couple of candles and fall
scents and colors. Normally I just use a wax
warmer, but candles are more festive and often have stronger
scents, and I like to use candles when I'm entertaining
guests for special occasions. And then I'm also planning on
getting some large, sturdy Oval paper plates and some actual
napkins from day-to-day. We're using, you know, paper
towels where it allows you to just kind of tear off that half
piece of a paper towel. If my mom were listening right
now, she'd be cringing because she thinks that napkins are
always a separate thing from paper towels.
And she always has both. But my husband grew up in a
household where they use paper towels as napkins, you know, and
just tore off the smaller piece. You know how it's perforated to
let you just take half a sheet? That's the napkin.
But obviously, when you're setting the table for
Thanksgiving, you would use real napkins.
Usually before either Thanksgiving or Christmas,
whichever holiday I'm having, you know, guests for dinner, I
will purchase a new set of glasses.
For some reason, glasses don't last very long at our house.
OK, so we get them to look like we have matching sets of glasses
and then overtime they get broken.
My point is, as you're cleaning before a holiday, you're going
to want to maybe make a small list of items to purchase if
needed. Maybe you already have
everything you need. By the way, one of my listeners
mentioned that I should have kind of a cleaning product Rep
recommendation at the end of each episode.
So I'll just mention as you're cleaning your baseboards in each
room, especially the rooms where your guests are going to visit.
I'm not talking about right now, but I'm talking about as we're
approaching the holidays. You might want to try the Don
Power wash spray and a sponge that has an abrasive side and a
soft side. Whether it's a Scotch Brite, a
scrub mommy which is my favorite but I also recently purchased
the dawn equivalent it it's a circle but doesn't have the
happy face. Doesn't really matter just a
sponge that has an abrasive side and a soft side.
And then maybe the dawn power wash spray.
I saw another video where they were using the Pledge multi
surface spray, which in general I love that product because you
can go through your house cleaning virtually every
surface. I'm not talking about the type
of Pledge that's just for wood, I'm talking about one that's for
glass and surfaces. Love that four times when I
don't want to switch products while cleaning.
It's great for speed cleaning. Those are a couple of
recommendations for baseboards, but really you can use anything
you have. And keep in mind you want to dry
dust your baseboards before you wet clean them.
So maybe try using the vacuum attachment with the little brush
to vacuum your baseboards before wet cleaning them.
So that's kind of my tip for the day.
I've hope I've gotten your creative juices flowing about
maybe some staging that you can do, and hopefully I've motivated
you to start your deep cleaning in advance of the holidays.
But if you want a more detailed whole house cleaning session
that's going to incorporate some guest preparation like whitening
your bathtub, I'm going to talk about that in the next bonus
episode. That's going to be a whole house
cleaning hour. If you enjoyed this episode, it
would mean so much to me if you left a five star rating and
review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
It helps more people find Clean with me and it helps me keep
making episodes like this one. And again, if you'd like bonus
clean along episodes which are typically longer, check out the
link in the show notes. I know you have a lot to do
leading up to the holidays or just leading up to having a
clean and organized home for yourself, but the key is just
doing something each day or each week that's getting you closer
to your goal of a clean and organized home.
Happy cleaning and I'll talk to you in the next episode.