Some of you have been letting your bedroom just fall by the
wayside because you've been so busy.
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. Thanks for joining me.
In today's episode, we're going to be cleaning your bedroom,
your bedroom closet, and we're also going to be dealing with
your laundry. Whether you keep your clean
laundry in your bedroom or not. Let's get right into the
episode. It's time to gear up for your
cleaning session. One of the first things you
might want to do is start a load of laundry.
Maybe you need to switch the laundry from the washing machine
into the dryer and start a new load.
Maybe you've got some dirty clothes to wash, or towels to
wash. Or maybe you want to strip your
bedding and get your sheets and pillowcases washing or your
comforter washing. By the way, something I've been
doing lately is when I wash my comforter I hang it over a room
divider and let it air dry. This might not be practical
everywhere but we live in a super dry climate so it it dries
overnight and keeps me from having to keep like readjusting
the comforter and restarting the dryer.
It saves money and yeah, that's what I have been doing with
that. Same with any heavy blanket.
And maybe you don't have a room divider, but you have something
else to hang it on. Just get your laundry started,
whatever that means for you today.
The other thing you're going to want to do before cleaning your
room is empty your bedroom wastebasket, if you have one.
We have two wastebaskets in our bedroom.
And I'll tell you, when we had this flu, I moved my wastebasket
right next to the bed in case I were to get sick in the middle
of the night. DMI, I know it's just another
reason to have a wastebasket in your bedroom.
I did not end up using it though.
But having a bedroom wastebasket and then putting it by the bed
when you're sick is a lot less gross then using a large bowl
that you serve popcorn in or something.
You know what I'm saying? But you're going to want to
empty any bedroom waste baskets. You're also going to want to
grab a trash bag because when I empty my bedroom waste baskets
and my room's only a little messy, I'll put any trash that I
find into that freshly emptied wastebasket.
However, if it's been a while since I've cleaned my room and
there are lots empty water bottles or whatever else, I like
to have a separate trash bag to put the trash into.
That way I'm not immediately refilling my wastebaskets, if
that makes sense. I'm going to give you about one
more minute to start your laundry or do that laundry
switch and empty your bedroom wastebasket and make sure that
you have a trash bag. I hope everyone's having a happy
New year so far. We had a great visit with my son
who's in the Marines. And what was nice is he didn't
end up using his leave to visit us over the holidays because he
signed up for something called RA Recruiter Assistance, meaning
he reported to work a few times at the Marine recruiter's
office. I mean, they had some days that
they were, you know, just officially off, like, you know,
Christmas, New Year's and whatnot.
But on many of the other days, he reported to work that way.
He didn't use up his leave. So he'll be able to visit us
again in a few months. Basically, they had him, you
know, making phone calls at the recruiter's office.
They also gave him a lot of days off that didn't count toward his
leave. So we got to spend a lot of
quality time with him despite the rest of us being sick some
of the time. I also got to spend a lot of
time with our local daughter and our local grandkids and since I
work a couple days a week at the school and school was out for
the holidays, I was off. All I had was the podcast and I
know I didn't do a lot of recording.
I did a regular episode one week I think and then a bonus episode
the next. But I wasn't feeling well and my
son was staying in the room where I usually record.
So I I did what I could under the circumstances.
OK, the next thing I want you to do is quickly make your bed.
Unless you're washing the bedding and planning on putting
that same stuff back on. Lately when I wash our bedding,
I put on a different set of bedding.
That way I'm able to quickly make my bed.
And this might not even be a day that you're washing your
bedding. Just making your bed is such a
springboard task. Trust the process.
Your room's going to look instantly better and it's going
to give you a staging area where you can put things that you find
on the floor and you can deal with laundry and whatnot.
So let's at least spread something over the bed if you
know your sheets are washing or something like that, because
you're going to need a nice clean area to place things.
And as far as dealing with clutter in your room, there are
a couple of ways to go about it. You can do kind of the
geographical method where you start in one corner and simply
work your way around the room just dealing with everything you
come across. Oh, this is trash.
Oh, this goes in The Dirty laundry hamper or this needs to
be hung up. So I'm going to lay it on the
bed for a while until I get a few things together that I need
to hang up and you can just work your way around.
The other method is cleaning in layers where you work by
category. You deal with all the trash, you
deal with all the clothes and shoes, and then you deal with
other miscellaneous items. But since you clicked on this
episode looking for some guidance, I'm going to pick the
geographical method for this episode because in most of the
bedroom cleaning Episode I episodes, I have you, you know,
cleaning layers by category. So in this episode, we're going
to do it geographically. One of the pros of the
geographic cleaning method is that it, it forces you to deal
with every single item. And then you, you kind of get
that instant satisfaction of having a certain corner done.
And I definitely like to start in a visible area.
The way our room is set up, you cannot see the floor on my
husband's side of the bed from the front door, so that's
usually the last area that I clean.
Not only that, but he usually cleans that area himself,
especially if he notices I've cleaned the rest of the room.
That's going to cause him to deal with his little corner.
OK, so I do want you to start with a visible corner of your
room first or perhaps the front entrance and then end with the
least visible area. OK, so things that you come
across are going to fall into different categories.
Trash which you have a wastebasket and or trash bag for
that. Clothing and shoes, you know
shoes can go to the closet. Clothing you need to decide
whether it's dirty or clean. If it's clean, you can lay it on
the bed because we're going to be dealing with some clean
laundry in this episode anyway. If it's dirty, you're going to
put it into the hamper. If you have a hamper in your
room or take it to the laundry room, whatever you do with your
dirty clothes, and then miscellaneous items that need to
be relocated to a different room, you need a pile for that
or a basket for that or box for that.
But just decide what you're going to do with items that are
actually leaving the room. That way you're not constantly
leaving the room. And then another category are
items that have a place in your room.
For example, maybe a book goes on a bookshelf or in a
particular drawer. You'll just deal with that item.
The only things that are going to get piled up are items that
don't belong in your room at all.
You know, maybe kid toys, pet toys, tools from a recent
project, the scissors and tape from wrapping gifts.
You know, maybe your bedroom was a wrapping station before
Christmas and now the scissors and tape go in your kitchen junk
drawer, for example. OK, those could go into a
relocation pile. And when I'm cleaning the
clutter in my room, I tend to sit down if it's a real messy
corner. Like usually the corner around
my night stand accumulates and things, so I might sit down for
that part, but then when I'm moving on to less cluttered
areas of the room, I'm on my feet just bending over picking
up items. No judgment here.
If you have a super messy corner where you have to sit down on
the floor and grab all those items.
Now, I talked about putting clean clothes on the bed, like
things that you're going to hang up or put away.
And I also talked about starting some laundry.
Do you have a residual clean laundry pile or a plastic bin
where you keep clean laundry? Let's put that on the bed and
dump it onto the bed. Even if it's a big pile, even if
you've got a pack and play full of laundry.
I mentioned that we've been sick.
We've had, you know, company as far as you know, family and
recently I had set up the pack and play for my little 2 year
old granddaughter and it had just stayed open.
I didn't fold it back up after she used it.
And much to my dismay, my husband started doing laundry
one day and just piling all the clean laundry into the pack and
plate. Like, he reverted back to a
season of life where we were putting laundry in an unused
playpen, basically. And I appreciated that.
You know, he was washing clothes.
We were all kind of pitching in, like whoever felt the best on
any given day would cook or do laundry.
And I appreciated the help, but I got a little bit triggered
when before I knew it, that pack and play was just full.
And I was like digging through it trying to find an article of
clothing. And I was like, I do not want to
keep laundry in here. I, I started folding and putting
it away a couple days ago. And after I got it thinned way
down, I transferred the stuff into just a small plastic tub,
you know, which was mainly because there were a lot of
random socks from different family members.
That was another thing that was a little triggering.
Like a lot of people's laundry got mixed together.
I'm talking people who don't even live here full time from,
you know, when they spent the night and whatnot.
So I started putting their clothes in a different basket,
putting a lot of our stuff away. And I got everything out of the
pack and play and then asked him to fold it up.
I'm like, we need to fold this up because I don't want this to
happen again. And yes, you know, years ago we
did have a, a clean laundry pile that big, but I don't want to
ever go back to that with the pack and play is folded up and
it's going to go into my closet for a long term storage.
And, you know, until we need it, I do need to clean my bedroom
closet out first, which is another topic I'm going to be
discussing in this episode. So if you do have a home for
residual clean laundry, you don't want that container to be
too big because otherwise it's going to be very difficult to
find things and it's it's going to feel overwhelming.
And I mean, a possible alternative, it's kind of like
with toy boxes. You don't want to have one giant
toy box that your kids are emptying out.
You want to have a few smaller containers.
Same principle. If you are kind of living out of
laundry baskets, consider having a different colored laundry
basket for each family member. That way you don't have some
overwhelming container. OK, no, I'm not necessarily
giving you permission to have a residual laundry basket, but if
you do, let's keep it to one basket, or at least one basket
per person, and not have that giant pile of Mount Foldmore.
Far as miscellaneous socks, sometimes you need to put all
the unidentified socks in a pile and then call in your kids.
Like pull out your socks out of this pile.
Whatever's left must be so and so's.
Who doesn't live here? OK, hopefully you have some
clean clothes on your bed right now, whether they are items that
you found while cleaning your room or something you pulled out
of the dryer, or something you pulled out of a pack and play or
a laundry basket. Let's finish geographically
cleaning your room, working your way around the perimeter of your
room. Obviously you're picking up
items in the center as well, but sometimes it gets cluttered
around the edges. Let's get your room quickly
picked up so that we can fold and put away the laundry.
Another benefit of sometimes cleaning your room, you know,
corner by corner and just working your way around is that
it doesn't allow you to leave any clutter.
It it forces you to deal with everything because you're you're
doing it systematically. I also want you to do it with
the mentality that you're getting the bedroom vacuum ready
or sweep ready if you sweep your bedroom.
OK, Of course, if you don't have a lot of clutter and you get
your room picked up quickly, by all means vacuum it during this
segment. And then you might want to
consider cleaning your baseboards.
You know, some people use first a dust mop and then a spin mop
to clean their baseboards without bending.
Or if you're like me, you might have already given your
baseboards a lot of attention right before having holiday
guests, and you're not really due for that yet.
Maybe you need to just get your bedroom picked up and vacuum
ready. And if you're ahead of the game,
just start vacuuming. But I know a lot of you are
dealing with clutter. Once you have finished removing
clutter from the perimeter of your room, the middle of your
room, you know, even if you have a lot of clean laundry still on
the bed that needs to be dealt with, I want you to turn your
attention to your closet. OK?
This is not necessarily a deep clean of your closet.
I do have episodes that are more about the closet.
But at the same time, no bedroom cleaning session is really
complete without clearing your closet floor because you're
going to need a place to put things.
And when you're folding those clean clothes, some of them need
to need to be hung up in your closet.
So let's deal with any glaring problems in the closet floor.
You know, maybe you have gift wrapping materials.
Maybe you have empty boxes that need to go out to the garage or
out to your outdoor trash bin. Maybe you just need to kind of
move things around, move things to the edges.
Especially if it's a walk in closet, you want to be able to
walk into it. You're going to be a lot more
likely to hang up your clothes as you move about your day if
you're able to get to the the bar where you hang your clothes
without stumbling over clutter on the floor.
Maybe you have a shoe rack in your closet, but you've been
just tossing shoes in the closet.
Put those into the rack. Remove any clutter from the
closet floor. Again, this is not a just a
complete overhaul, but I know in my closet, sometimes things get
tossed in there that should be off to the side or inside of a
box. So, you know, I mentioned that
we folded up that pack and play. The way we're going to be able
to put that away is by clearing that closet floor of clutter and
kind of reorganizing things around the edges.
OK, I like to keep a few boxes in the back of the closet.
One of them is what I call a donation station.
Another one is for items that are going to my daughter's house
in Texas next time we visit her. The key is having those under
where I hang my clothes so that I can walk right up and hang up
my clothes without stumbling over these boxes and containers.
And don't get me wrong, my husband has a tendency to want
to keep everything in the garage, but I'm really big on
keeping certain things in the house.
I don't want certain things to get messed up or to get overly
dusty. Certain things need to be stored
indoors in in the closet. But I want to be able to walk
into my walk in closet. And maybe your closet is not a
walk in closet, but you still need to organize the floor of it
so that you're able to shut the doors properly.
Let's not put too much thought into it, but let's get your
closet floor picked up and, you know, remove anything that
doesn't belong. Get it organized.
And Speaking of things that don't belong, once you've
straightened up your closet floor, it might be time to turn
your attention to that pile of items that don't belong in your
room at all. Time to make a trip where you're
redistributing those items around the house.
Maybe some kids toys need to go to the toy box.
Maybe some tools need to go out to the garage.
Maybe you need to put those wrapping supplies away.
I usually put the tape and the scissors into the junk drawer in
my kitchen, but any remaining rolls of wrapping paper I put up
on the shelf of the closet to use next year.
And I realize you might need to put away your Christmas decor at
this point. For those of you who celebrate
Christmas, the way I do that is right after New Year's.
I'll put away all the small decorations.
I will admit, I'm recording this on January 5th.
The tree is still up, but I've put away all the other
decorations. So someone just needs to take
down the tree. It's a fake tree.
Disassemble it, put it in the box with the ornaments.
Done. But I've put away the small
stuff already. I have a shelf for seasonal
decor in my linen closet. But since this is a bedroom
episode, I'm going to assume that you did not heavily
decorate your bedroom for Christmas.
If you did, let's put those items away.
Once you've distributed things around the house that don't
belong, it's time to turn your attention to the laundry.
OK, for those of you who had a lot of clutter to deal with,
obviously after this episode, you can put on some music and
vacuum the room. And I definitely encourage you
to complete that finishing touch because just knowing that you're
going to vacuum causes you to be more thorough.
And also a room that's dusted and vacuum just looks nice.
OK, so after this episode, take a minute to dust your night
stand, dresser, desk, whatever, and vacuum the room.
And maybe there's a bonus task like cleaning a baseboard, a
window sill. But this this episode is more
about the clutter, OK? Because some of you have been
letting your bedroom just fall by the wayside because you've
been so busy and or sick this time of year.
Even without those bonus tasks of wiping down surfaces, just
getting a pick vac done, getting your room picked up and vacuumed
with the bed made and you know the closet floor visible is
going to be great. And having your laundry folded
and putting put away is going to be great.
So hopefully your floor is clear, your closet floor is
clear. You've dealt with items that
belong to elsewhere in the house at this point.
And of course, you dealt with trash.
You know, at this point, I want you to start folding and putting
away clean clothes. And I want you to be honest with
yourself when you come across items that are damaged or that
don't fit you anymore because maybe you tried something on and
rejected it, that might need to go into that donation station in
the back of your closet, that donation bag or that donation
box, OK? Especially if you got new
clothes. Some of you might have received
gift cards or clothing as gifts or you know, you, you return
things and bought things. Some of you have new clothes.
OK, sometimes it's got to be out with the old and with the new.
Remember the one in one out rule.
If you've got a new sweatshirt, you might want to get rid of
that sweatshirt that doesn't really fit right or has a stain
on it. And I'm not talking about
donating stained items. Obviously some of the stuff
needs to go in the trash, but as you're putting away clothes,
decide if anything needs to be trashed or donated.
Sometimes the best time to declutter your wardrobe is when
it's all out. Because you're behind on putting
away a laundry, so you're handling all these items anyway.
It might be time to make a decision about some of them.
Inevitably, you might find that you don't have enough hangers.
If you've had this mount fold more for a while, or mount hang
more or whatever. You might not even have enough
hangers in your house. So maybe you need to add
something to the notepad of your phone, or however you keep track
of what you need to buy and get some hangers.
Or maybe you can rob some hangers from another closet.
OK, sometimes I check my office closet or the hall closet when
I'm low on hangers, but sometimes I just need to buy
more or better yet, get rid of some of my clothes.
Something to be said for eliminating decision fatigue by
having fewer articles of clothing.
That's not going to resonate with all of you, but some of you
might like the idea. I'm going to give you about four
more minutes to get the clean clothes put away.
If you did a laundry switch at the beginning of this episode,
you might want to take a look at your washing machine and see how
many minutes are left, and then set a timer on your phone so
that you'll be reminded to go back and follow through with
that. By the way, you might be saying,
yeah, this is great and everything, but my kitchen's a
disaster. I've got you.
After this, I'm going to be recording a bonus episode for
deep cleaning your kitchen. It's going to be geared toward a
messy kitchen, so no worries. That's coming next.
But if we always start with the kitchen, sometimes our bedroom
gets neglected. So that's one of the reasons I
wanted to talk about this. The other reason is that one of
my financial supporters made a comment on Spotify and she asked
me to do another episode involving the bedroom, the
laundry, the clutter on the floor, and the closet.
So that's what I've done in this episode.
If you're a financial supporter, feel free to request any topic
you want. Obviously some things are a
little bit beyond the scope of the show, or I don't feel
comfortable talking about it, or I've covered the topic in the
past and it wasn't very popular, so I'm just going to refer you
to an older episode. But in general, I try to make an
episode when I get a request from a financial supporter.
If you don't know what it means to be a financial supporter,
visit cleanwithmepodcast.com. It explains how you can unlock
paid bonus episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Patreon, and
there is even a fourth option that you could message me
directly about for those who want to make large lump sum
donations. I realize not everyone is able
to support the show financially. Even just listening to these
free episodes helps me. But if you're going the extra
mile and supporting the show financially, just know that it
is deeply appreciated to get that bed cleared off and get
those clothes put away. It's going to feel so good to
have things hanging in your closet so that you can get
dressed and get out the door quickly.
And then maybe you have some follow up chores to do after
this. Maybe you need to switch some
laundry into the dryer, put put those clean sheets on your bed
or vacuum. Don't beat yourself up if you
still have a laundry basket full of socks to sort.
Maybe you can do that another day, but I'm glad I was able to
help you get your bedroom decluttered and get you back on
track with the laundry again. There's going to be a bonus
episode coming out later today about cleaning a messy kitchen,
so don't miss that. Even if you don't support the
show financially, you can help me out without spending a dime
by clicking on that fifth star and giving me a positive review
on whichever app you listen on. I appreciate each and everyone
of you. And as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.