Thanks for joining me in today's episode.
I'm going to talk you through a morning routine that will help
set the stage for a clean house all day long.
Let's get right into the episode.
It's time to gear up for our cleaning session.
Maybe you need to freshen up for the day.
Put on something comfortable yet presentable.
Run a brush through your hair, wash your face, or even put on a
little makeup. Whatever makes you feel ready
for the day. Now's the time to do that.
Another thing that people like to do when gearing up for a
cleaning session is straighten up the immediate front entrance.
Those 10 feet by your front door or sometimes people want to get
their house smelling fresh. And if you take out the trash,
that'll get your blood pumping and get you outside and get some
sunlight on you. Or maybe you just want to light
a candle or put some fresh wax in the wax warmer.
If you're new to the show, this is the podcast where I literally
talk you through the process of cleaning your house.
I'm going to be creating a new intro soon since my daughter
Jessica is no longer on the show.
If you haven't already noticed, she has left Clean with Me and
she'll be focusing on her spin off show that she's had for a
while now and it's Cleaning with Jessica.
So if you like true crime and you like these cleaning talk
throughs, be sure that you're also subscribed to Jessica's
show Cleaning With with Jessica. But I'll be creating a new intro
for my show soon. While you're gearing up for your
cleaning session, I'll just give you an update on something
that's going on at our house. My 18 year old son has joined
the Marine Corps. Yes, that happened.
So he's still in high school. So he's in what's called the
delayed entry program. He's also in the early college
program, meaning he's going to be graduating with both a high
school diploma and an associate's degree.
But he's in the delayed entry program for the military because
he's going to leave after graduation.
So he has little meetings that he goes to with the other guys
who are waiting to go to basic training this summer and he's
super excited about it. So that's definitely a surprise
for us. And we're we're proud of him,
but we're also a little nervous about it, I guess, which I think
is natural. He's a super smart kid.
He scored really high on the ASVAB.
He has his choice of careers that he can choose from in the
military. Hopefully by now you've done
whatever you needed to do to gear up for your cleaning
session. The first thing I'm going to
want you to do is make your bed. And I know some of you might be
saying I can't make my bed in the morning because someone's
still in the bed. I go sleep with a toddler or I
get up before my spouse does. OK, if there's someone still in
the bed, you have my permission not to make the bed.
But making the bed in the morning is definitely a good
habit to get into if it's possible.
And obviously you can come back later when everybody's up and
make the bed, unless you head off to work while people are
still sleeping and then someone else can make the bed or it can
get left unmade. I get that.
But for most of us, we can make our bed in the morning and it is
definitely a springboard task because it instantly makes your
room look better. And then it also kind of does
something magical where it makes you want to straighten up your
room. It makes you want to pick up
dirty laundry off the floor and makes you want to clear that
coffee mug off the night stand. And it just helps get you
started on cleaning your room. Don't take this in the wrong
way, but show me someone who does not make their bed in the
morning and I'll show you someone with kind of a messy or
cluttered bedroom. Just it is what it is.
I'm sure the exception proves the rule, but usually people who
make their beds keep their room tidier.
So there's your little pep top there.
If it's been over a week since you've washed your bedding, you
might want to strip your bed and put your fresh set of sheets on
it. And you know, even your
alternate comforter. We even use an alternate
comforter when one of them's in the wash or sometimes I just
make the bed with just sheets, wash the comforter and put the
same one on. But I like to have a complete
set of everything ready and, but if this is not a day that you're
washing your bedding, it's only going to take you about 60
seconds to make your bed. Whether you're changing your
sheets or quickly making the bed.
Once your bed is made, I want you to spend a couple minutes
straightening up your room. I want that to be part of your
morning routine. Although you may be listening to
this at any time because you'll find that morning routines and
evening routines are similar in a lot of ways, except for the
bed making part. So if you're listening to this
in the evening, maybe ignore the part about making the bed unless
your spouse is about to come home from work and you want to
have the bed made so it's nice and welcoming for that person,
but the ship might have already sailed as far as making the bed.
If you're going to bed soon, I get that, But spend the next
couple minutes straightening up your bedroom, whether someone's
just dropping clothes on the floor, you or your spouse, or
maybe you're a little neater than that, but you're draping a
lot of laundry over a chair or something.
Let's put that stuff away. Let's make sure that the shoes
are in the closet, in the shoe rack.
Let's deal with those handbags and tote bags.
By the way, if you're getting ready for work right now, I'll
just tell you my little routine because I currently work part
time. Some of you know this, but in
case you're new to this show, I currently work part time as a
substitute teacher slash teacher's aide and I normally
only work Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I'm not counting this podcast as work because it's definitely a
labor of love. Arguably I could call it working
from home, but it's a labor of love.
It's what I love. So they say if you do what you
love, you'll never work a day in your life.
But sometimes you have a part time job on top of that anyway
and don't feel like you can't relate to me if you work full
time or you are a full time homemaker.
I've done it all. I've worked full time, part
time, just cared for my family and kids, which isn't a just
because it's a lot. But anyway, when I'm getting
ready for work, I will put my tote bag and my purse on the
piano bench as I'm placing items in those bags to get ready to
go. That's that's my launchpad, so
to speak. Your launchpad by the front door
might be a bench or a little table.
Mines the piano bench because we have a perfect spot for a piano
in our entryway. I noticed it when we were buying
the house. And so our piano is there in the
entryway and the piano benches where I put things that are
heading out the door immediately.
Sometimes something that's going to head out the door at a later
time will go on the back of the piano.
It's an upright piano, like a package I need to take to the
post office tomorrow would go up on top of the piano.
That's also where I keep the key basket where we put our keys
when we walk into the door, in the door.
I highly recommend having either a key rack, but you hang keys
on, or a key basket and it should be out of reach of any
toddlers who might lose your keys.
And also some kind of a launchpad area for things that
you're taking with you when you head out the door.
So if you're getting ready for work or something, maybe put
your tote bag and your purse and keys and whatever else out there
at the launchpad. Because I'll put everything out
there while I'm getting ready for work so that I don't have
any panics at the last minute. And then I'll go make my lunch
and then put it into the tote bag that's already there and
whatever. So anyway, just a thought on
launch pads. By now you've probably
straightened up your room and made the bed.
It doesn't take that long, so let's talk about getting your
machines running. OK, you guys know that I like to
get both machines running, maybe 3 machines running even.
But the first machine I'm referring to is your washing
machine. Maybe you need to switch the
laundry from the washer into the dryer and start a new load.
Or maybe both your washer and dryer are empty and you want to
just start a load of wash. OK, that could be your first
machine. And definitely set a timer about
doing a laundry switch. And if you're heading off to
work outside the home, I do not recommend starting a load of
laundry right before you leave unless there's going to be
somebody to switch that load. OK, but some of you want to
start a load of laundry. If you don't need to start a
load of laundry, you can use this segment of the episode to
straighten up your laundry area. OK, whether it's a laundry room
with dusty shelves and random items on the floor or it's an
area of your garage and you need to vacuum the rug that's in
front of your washer and dryer because I hope you have a rug.
If you do laundry out in the garage, I think I think you
should have a rug. That way you can go out there
barefoot and if something falls, it's not on the bare garage
floor. Just a thought, but when I had a
washer and dryer in the garage, I had like throw rugs in front
of the washer and dryer. Maybe your washer and dryer is
in your kitchen pantry. We had that at one house and I
know some of you across the pond, your house is designed
with a washer and dryer in the kitchen as well.
So that's a thing at this house. We have one of those typical
laundry rooms that is on the way out to the garage, and our
laundry room is pretty small, but there's room for a hamper
and there are shelves above the washer and dryer, which I love,
a place for the detergent and whatnot.
So that's super convenient. But hopefully by now you've made
your bed and you've started to get your load of laundry going.
More important than laundry though, is putting away your
clean dishes, and this could give you a chance to make your
coffee or tea or heat something up in the microwave or boil some
water for your oatmeal. I don't know what your morning
routine is, but what I've been doing lately is when I go to the
kitchen and start my little coffee Brewer, I put away the
clean dishes that are in my drying rack and dishwasher.
And there's a temptation when I walk into a clean kitchen to
kind of give myself a mental pack up pat on the back for
getting down to dish 0 the night before going to bed with a clean
kitchen. But it's important for me to put
away the clean stuff that's been air drying overnight.
Not just because having stuff in the drying rack could be look a
little cluttered if especially if it's going beyond the drying
rack and there's a towel next to it with even more dishes.
Because all the clean stuff might even be in the dishwasher
and it's out of sight. It's because having that stuff
put away makes it easier for you or someone else to wash dishes
as they use them. Whether your system is rinsing
things and placing them into the dishwasher or just hand washing
them and placing them into the drying rack, it's more likely to
happen if you separate the whole putting away step from the
washing step. It's just so much easier.
You're going to be amazed. People don't want to be playing
dish Django when they wash their dish and try to find a spot in
the drying rack. They also don't want to be
guilted into putting all the clean dishes away just so they
can wash their cereal bowl. Trust me, trust the process.
If there's nothing in the drying rack, nothing in the dishwasher,
people are going to wash their dishes.
And even if they're not, you can't control others.
It it's probably going to work, work on you because you're the
one who cares about cleaning, because you have clicked on this
podcast. OK, you're probably the primary
cleaner at your house, or at least the home manager.
I'm the one creating the spreadsheet of who does what.
But that having been said, when it comes to your spouse, who you
are not necessarily assigning chores to, they are more likely
to clean up after themselves if you make it easy for them and
you leave a clean environment for them to begin with.
So that's where getting down to dish 0 the night before comes in
and then emptying the drying rack and dishwasher in the
morning. And I know some of you are
feeling a little bit overwhelmed.
You're thinking, wait a second, I have dirty dishes to wash.
That's OK because another purpose of the morning routine
is to clean up anything that did not get cleaned up during the
evening routine. Life happens.
Sometimes we drop the ball with the evening routine.
Life isn't about just never having a dish in the sink and
being perfect. We're going for progress over
perfection. We're going for having a good
routine on most days, and facing a dish after in the morning
should be the exception and not the rule.
OK, but if you're new to the show, don't worry, baby steps.
We're going to give you time to do some dishes in case you have
dishes that carried over from the night before.
But you really don't want to bring today's mess into
tomorrow, so keep that in mind going forward.
Again, sometimes it's OK when something unexpected happens and
you have to just you know, you get home late at night and just
crash, but you really want to have a good evening routine so
that your morning routine can be quick.
This is supposed to be a quick morning routine that helps you
start your day, but I'm still going to make it a 30 minute
episode because some of you have some dishes that carried over
from the night before and I get that.
So put away those clean dishes and then if you have dirty ones,
start that first sink load, get the pots and pans soaking.
Load the dishwasher with the small stuff.
If you have a dishwasher that you use, cups, silverware,
plates, bowls. If not, pre rinse those items
and get them soaking in that first sink load.
And then you know, make sure you have the the dirtier items
soaking as well. Once the water cools down a
little bit, hand wash some stuff.
Or if you're like me, you get everything you can into the
dishwasher, especially the small stuff.
And then you hand wash those big pots and pans.
When I think of it, I get them soaking before I load the
dishwasher. But if not, I just might have
more scrubbing to do. And if you're home all day, you
might be able to leave something to soak until the afternoon.
Those of you with little kids, you might want to rest a little
bit during the nap, but sometimes you get up for a few
minutes during that nap and you do a quick afternoon routine.
Or if you're like me when I was doing a 40 hour remote position,
you might do an afternoon household routine on your lunch
break. If you're working on a computer,
you can probably just randomly eat while you're working.
I mean, you know it's probably rude to eat during the Zoom
meeting, not that I've never done that, but you're kind of
not supposed to eat during the Zoom meetings, but when you're
just working off camera, you can just quickly heat something up
and eat it. I recommend just eating while
you're on while you're working on the computer, or maybe take a
10 minute break if you want to walk away and eat at the table
or something. But during your lunch break, I
recommend exercising a little bit and doing a more doing an
afternoon routine. As far as doing something
protect productive around the house, I was typically doing a
laundry switch, washing some dishes, and then ideally going
for a brisk walk around the neighborhood.
That didn't happen as often as washing dishes did.
I now have a treadmill. So if I was still working at
that remote job, I would do this thing called exercise snacks.
This is a little off top topic. Just be working in your kitchen.
If you're caught up on dishes, of course, organize your pantry
or wipe down surfaces or sweep and mop your floor.
There's always something to do in the kitchen.
Be working on your kitchen. But there's a thing now called
exercise snacks where they're saying if you're home all day,
it's good instead of just having like, let's say a 30 minute
walking session, breaking that up into little mini breaks where
you get on the treadmill for a few minutes throughout the day.
Or if you don't have a treadmill, you can do squats or
diagonal push ups off the countertop.
I mean, you know, lifting small weights, whatever type of
exercise that you want to do, obviously you want to get some
cardio, you want to get some strength training.
That part's not important. It's not what the show's about.
But I'm really big on doing something on the lunch break
other than eating, because you can eat any time in my mind.
So that's the way I did it. And there was an afternoon
routine where I switched the clothes from the washer to the
dryer and wash dishes. And it made such a huge
difference. And I'll tell you why.
During that era, my husband would get home at like 3:30 or
4, and if he came home and the kitchen was clean and I had some
meat thawing out on the countertop and I hadn't texted
him saying what I was making for dinner, he would definitely just
take action and cook whatever he saw that I placed on the
countertop. And a lot of times I place, you
know, the side dish ingredients. I just have everything kind of
out and the dishes would be done.
Remember I talked about separating the step of putting
away the clean stuff from having to wash dishes.
How about separating the step of cleaning the kitchen from
cooking? Because if somebody's going to
cook dinner after work, they certainly don't want to clean
first. OK.
And it could be you that's having to do that, or it could
be someone else, could be your significant other.
So we kind of alternated nights. It wasn't right, like
officially, like, it's your night to cook.
But if I didn't feel like cooking, I'd clean the kitchen,
put out the ingredients. If I did feel like cooking, I'd
text him like, I'm making such and such tonight so that he
wouldn't just jump the gun and make something else.
So anyway, or he might text me like what?
What are you planning on making anything for dinner?
Because I was thinking about making such and such anyway.
Hopefully you have gotten some kind of dishes done.
If you're facing a disaster. No judgment here.
Pause this episode and phone a friend or listen to some music
to do more work in your kitchen. But this is about a morning
routine. The next step is to open your
curtains or blinds in your outer area.
This could be your entire downstairs.
It could be a front room. I don't know the layout of your
house, but I want you to let some light in and that's going
to help you feel energized. And it might also kind of shame
you into picking up your house faster because people, passers
by, can now see into your home. OK, I'm half kidding there, but
maybe I'm not. My mom is the type of person who
is mortified at the idea of being put on display, She calls
it. So if that's you and you have
blinds, you can kind of tilt them upward to where you're
letting the light in. You're feeling energized.
You're seeing the dust around the room that you need to, you
know, clean. But you're not on display
either. That's an option, but I
definitely encourage you to open the curtains or blinds and let
in some natural light. You're going to feel a lot
better. And then I want you to do a
quick 5 minute pickup of your house.
Your mess might be concentrated in one area.
You might have a perpetually clean living area, an entryway
but kind of a disaster bedroom, or you might have clutter evenly
distributed throughout your home.
The important thing is to spend the next 5 minutes picking up
and some of you might be thinking, there's so much to do,
I'm overwhelmed. Just stay in motion for 5
minutes and you will get a lot done.
You'd be amazed. A lot of the procrastination
that happens when it comes to housework happens because we're
overestimating how much time it's going to take for us to do
the thing that needs to be done. So be picking up.
It could be your outer areas, it could be things that people
dropped in a bathroom, clothes, towels.
It could be sweeping a mess under a high chair that a
toddler made. It could be picking up foam from
the stuffed animals your daughter's dog shredded the
night before. It could be clearing jackets off
of a chair that you've draped way too many things over in your
bedroom. It could be picking up a
toddler's toys. It could be a lot of things.
But definitely teacher toddlers to pick up.
They should be involved in that process when possible.
But there are times where we're picking up after our kids when
they're little, obviously. So let's keep plugging away at
picking up the house. Speaking of the curtain thing,
when we lived at our house in Fort Worth, our backyard was
positioned in such a way that several two stories, numerous 2
story houses had a view overlooking our backyard.
Like from there, the windows on the backs of their houses, they
could look down into our backyard.
My family of origin, meaning my, my siblings, my mom don't like
the idea of like neighbors looking at them all the time or
these privacy invasions. So I remember, you know,
standing in the backyard with my brother and he's like, wow,
there's like 20 houses that have a view right into your backyard.
So that was, that was kind of funny and I hadn't even really
thought about it much, but I do like it that at this house I
have a cinder block wall around all of the houses in our
development are one story. And then I have a tall cinder
block wall around the yard that serves as our fence, but it's
like six to seven feet high depending on where you're
talking, and it's pretty tall. And so it feels pretty private,
like nobody has a real direct view into our backyard.
So if I run out there in a nightgown, chances are nobody's
going to see me. But anyway, I guess the reason
I'm saying that is because I do have some sheer curtains in the
dining area, and I feel like that's fine because those
windows are not on the front of my house.
They're on the side in the back, and of course I have proper
coverage in the bedroom, especially because I have a
darkening drape over my sliding glass door in the bedroom.
Our back door in our room faces the east, so we definitely had
to get a black darkening drape so that that sun didn't wake us
up early. These days I'm waking up before
the sun comes up anyway though, so I'd probably be all right
without those, but I definitely don't want anybody to be able to
see in my bedroom. Obviously on a bedroom you want
you want proper coverage. That's not where you have the
sheer curtains usually. So anyway, I'm hoping you got
your house picked up. The last step is just wiping
some surfaces. Maybe you need to dust.
We talked about letting light in so that you could see the dust.
Maybe you need to dust your coffee table, end table, other
surfaces in your living areas. Or maybe you need to give your
countertops a swipe or wipe down some surfaces in your bathroom.
A great morning routine after you get ready is to wipe down
your vanity area and mirror, maybe give the toilet bowl a
swish. Just kind of some maintenance in
between. Deeper cleans can happen with
these morning routines. And I was talking about an
afternoon routine. If you're home in the
afternoons, think about what you want to do in the mornings
versus the afternoons. A lot of times the afternoon
routine is kind of a follow up to the morning routine.
Like if you start some laundry, you do the laundry switch, or if
you put away clean dishes before breakfast, maybe you're cleaning
up the breakfast dishes on your lunch break if you didn't have
time to do it when you were getting people off to school.
I realize not everybody has school aged kids, but it's just
an example. The key to a clean home is
tidying up, washing dishes, things like that at different
points in the day instead of just at one point because then
it becomes overwhelming. So whether you have a morning,
afternoon and evening routine or just a morning and evening, do
something that works for you. Hopefully you're wiping surfaces
while I'm talking. By the way, special special
thanks to our financial supporters who unlock bonus
episodes by supporting the show financially.
Your financial support means more than you know, but I also
understand that not everyone can do that.
That's OK because just listening to this show helps.
Be sure to click follow on whichever app you listen on so
that you don't miss upcoming episodes.
I'm super excited that I interviewed Dana White of A Slob
Comes Clean the other day and the episode is coming out
Monday, February 3rd. I'm super excited about that, so
don't miss that episode. By the way, this episode was to
replace the audio of an episode that had a lot of musical
interludes. Going forward, I'm only going to
put the musical interludes in the two hour bonus episodes.
And as far as bonus episodes, I'm going to be alternating
between two hour bonus episodes and one hour bonus episodes.
The regular episodes are typically going to be in the 20
to 35 minute range, whereas the bonus episodes are going to be
one to two hours long. Going forward, I hope you got a
lot done during this episode. I appreciate each and every one
of you. And as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you soon.