Keep moving for 20 minutes and just stay on your feet and then
sit down for 10 minutes and take a break.
I'm Ronnie and you're listening to Clean With Me, the podcast
where I walk you through cleaning your house step by
step. When you clean along with this
show, you'll get more done in less time, so you can spend the
rest of your day doing what matters most to you.
Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, I'm going to
talk you through 20 minutes of housework.
This is not a speed clean by any means.
This would be a good episode to listen to if you're having
trouble getting started. Maybe you're feeling tired and
you're trying to get started with a little bit of housework.
The first thing I want you to do, if you haven't already done
so, is get dressed for the day all the way to the shoes, OK?
Because if you're feeling overwhelmed, chances are your
kitchen floor is less than pristine and you're going to
feel better with shoes on. And sometimes putting shoes on
can just energize you. If you want to clean barefoot,
that's fine too. But I'm recommending that you
put on some shoes for this episode because I'm going to be
operating under the assumption that you lack energy,
motivation, or both today. And I'm going to talk about
something called the 2010 method of doing housework, which means
you keep moving for 20 minutes and just stay on your feet and
then sit down for 10 minutes and take a break and then repeat, do
another 20 minutes. I'm going to talk you through
the 1st 20 minutes because getting started is always the
hardest part when you don't feel like doing housework.
And I'm also going to base this episode on what I did this
morning. Once you get dressed to the
shoes, you might want to open up some curtains and let some light
in, open up your blinds and then do whatever it takes to get your
house smelling good. I put a couple fresh wax melts
in the wax warmer, but you could also open a few windows and let
some fresh air circulate through.
If it's a nice day today and my trash had already been recently
emptied, probably yesterday afternoon there was hardly
anything in the kitchen trash. But a lot of times when I'm
kicking off a cleaning session, I take out the trash and reline
it so that I'll have somewhere to throw stuff away and to take
care of any smells that might be lurking.
Usually our trash is not a problem as far as smell because
we take it out every single day. Another possible problem that
could keep your house from smelling fresh is some dirty
towels in the laundry room that were left in there damp or
something. You could always start a load of
towels and add a little bit of white vinegar to the load along
with your laundry detergent. Or maybe you just need to run
your garbage disposal. The time honored tradition for
freshening your garbage disposals.
Putting some lemon wedges and ice cubes in there, running that
through. But all I had to do was get
dressed to the shoes and put some fresh wax in the wax
warmer. I did crack the living room
blinds and I was ready to clean, so hopefully you've had time to
do whatever you needed to do to gear up for your cleaning
session. I'm hoping you're off the couch,
you're off the bed, and you're up and moving.
Now I want you to spend about the next 5 minutes tidying up,
starting with the floors. A cluttered or dirty floor can
make everything else in the room appear messier.
We're not going to sweep and mop or vacuum just yet, but what we
are going to do is remove the clutter.
But starting by picking up any clutter from your floors can
make a huge impact. It can immediately change the
look of your home. I mean, it's not that
embarrassing if someone walks in and you haven't vacuumed in a
while, but what is embarrassing is when there's stuff all over
your living room floor or your front entrance is cluttered.
I feel so much better when I make sure that my living room
floor is picked up and my throw pillows are straightened.
Makes a huge difference. And also picking up my bedroom
floor makes a huge difference. If I've left any dirty laundry
on the floor, I get that into the hamper.
If I have clean laundry draped over a chair or the ironing
board, I hang that stuff up. OK, this could all be part of
this 5 minute pickup you're doing right now.
Now while you're picking up, I want you to be observant and
notice one or two things that you need to take care of that
are bothering you. I'm talking about something
other than just stuff that needs to be picked up.
I'm not talking about the fact that you need to pick up some
shoes or some toys and put those items away or throw away some
trash. That's what you're working on.
But what I want you to think about is maybe something that
would only take you 5 minutes to deal with, but you've been
putting it off. I have kind of a cut out in the
wall where my living room meets my dining room, the dining area
of my kitchen. It's just an opening, but it's
not the kind of opening where you're supposed to put dishes or
anything on that ledge. It's just an architectural
feature that allows you to see into the next room and make the
house feel more open. If you were supposed to put like
plates and cups there, there would be a countertop.
So it's a ledge where you could put a decoration or something.
I have a little runner in there. Sometimes I put a fake plant
there but it's not a surface that's designed for wet or dirty
items. But recently someone put some
dirty dishes there and it got moisture on the wall and it
looked really bad, like I felt like the wall was ruined.
I don't know what happened, I wasn't home at the time, but
something spilled out of these dirty dishes that shouldn't have
been there to begin with. Apparently somebody was sitting
on the couch and then just set those things behind them and
just be picking up while I talk. You'll have a chance to do a
special task like this in a few more minutes.
You're still doing kind of your whole house pickup, starting
with the floor and then moving to the upper surfaces like
couches and tables and just putting away things that don't
belong. But at least get the floor
picked up even if you don't get every anything decluttered so to
speak. But I grabbed some Lysol
all-purpose cleaner. This is not sponsored or
anything. It's just what I used and
sprayed that ledge and then the wall where something had dripped
down and let it let the chemical sit for a little while and then
wiped it down and it didn't get completely clean at first.
So I sprayed it again, let the chemical sit again.
Then I went over it with a scrub brush.
I didn't get too crazy or anything.
I didn't want to scrub the paint off.
But there, there were like rings where the dishes had been, you
know, discoloration. Some of it came right up on the
first pass when I wiped it, but these little rings and stuff
didn't. So I repeated that process a
couple times. I'd spray it, I'd do something
else in my kitchen, come back, scrub it with a brush with a
paper towel, and eventually it got completely clean.
And I say eventually, but it only took like 5 minutes total
to take care of this glaring problem that was bothering me.
Don't let some kind of a mess in your house steal your piece
because you're procrastinating. It's going to help you feel much
better. It's going to motivate you when
you do something that makes a lasting impact or you take care
of something that's been there for a few days.
OK, by now you've had time to quickly tidy up your house,
starting with the floor, and no doubt it's looking a lot better.
Now it's time to pick at least one thing that's been bothering
you. I gave you one example.
It was something that had been there for a couple days.
I mean, the dishes were cleared and somebody had tried to wipe
it off, but it it hadn't been completely cleaned.
But it was surprisingly easy. It was just a matter of letting
the cleaning product do its work and going over it a few times.
Another thing that I took care of this morning was a little bit
of rearranging. We have a large printer right
now. It was in kind of an awkward
spot. So I moved some stuff around and
then told my husband I need help putting this printer.
It's it's like a large industrial type of printer.
He was like, what? All you want me to do is just
move this. I'm like, Yep, that's all I want
you to do. And so he moved that into the
new spot. And so that was another thing
that was making my house look cluttered.
So you could have a dirty spot on a wall somewhere or a stain
on your carpet or just some clutter that needs to be
removed. And what I didn't say, when I
was kind of decluttering for the printer, I had to put some toys
out in the garage toy box. I do kind of a rotation system.
I keep a few toys in the house for my grandkids, but some of
them go out to the garage in a toy box out there.
I do kind of a rotation so that we don't have too many toys in
circulation. Highly recommend taking toys out
of circulation. You know, maybe you could have
like a Rubbermaid tub up on the shelf in your kids closet.
That's what I did when my kids were younger and I would take
some things out of circulation and put them up there.
And then when you put away the toys they've been using and
bring out something else, it's like new and exciting to them.
So it could be kind of an organizational challenge where
you want to do a little bit of rearranging or take something
out of circulation, or it could be a mess on a wall, a piece of
furniture, the floor. Now that you've gotten your
house picked up, I want you to tackle that one procrastination
project. So I'm gonna give you just a
little bit longer to do that. I know I mentioned 2 projects,
scrubbing that wall and removing some toys so that we could move
the printer, but I want you to do at least one procrastination
project. And by the way, another
procrastination project to do soon is just getting your paper
clutter in order. I'm really big on having an in
basket for mail that needs to be dealt with.
I mean, it's usually bills, but sometimes there's some other
type of mail that needs to be dealt with.
I have just an inbox basket on my desk, just like if I worked
in an office and had an in basket and that's where those
items go. Then when I go to pay bills and
I'm like, where's the electric bill?
Where's the water bill? And I'm starting to look through
the items in that basket. I will toss anything that I
don't need because when I first plot things in the basket, I
don't always sort through them first.
I read in a book a long time ago that you don't want to bring
junk mail into the house. And I do try to abide that by
that to an extent. So let's say my husband and I
are out running errands. We stopped by the mailbox.
I tried to throw away the obvious junk mail before even
walking into the house. And then the rest of the items
go into that in basket. But if somebody brings else
brings in the mail and everything ends up in the
basket, that's OK too. Because when I go to pay my
bills, which I typically do once a month now, I toss anything
that I didn't need. OK, I want you to head to the
kitchen and do your dishes. If you have a dishwasher, you
may need to just do an empty reload and run.
Of course you need to have an item to scrub the dishes with
when you're doing that pre rinse.
Unless you have just a state-of-the-art dishwasher and
you don't have hard water and there's a built in garbage
disposal in your dishwasher. I get it, some people are able
to just stick things right in. But most of us need to do a pre
rinse of those dishes as they're going into the dishwasher.
So once you empty it, you need to have either a scrub brush on
a handle or some type of abrasive sponge like a scrub
daddy, scrub mommy, Scotch brite, just whatever you have.
A lot of times I'm just using the scrub brush on a stick when
I'm just pre rinsing things, scraping the food off under
running water to put them in the dishwasher.
I'm more likely to use the scrub mommy sponge when I'm washing
dishes by hand, which typically I wash a few pots and pans by
hand and that way I use that sponge that has the abrasive
side and then the soft side. But when you're preparing things
for the dishwasher, you don't really need that soft side to
remove any greasiness. You need to just get the chunks
off and then let the dishwasher do the rest of the work.
So that's why a lot of times I just use the scrub brush on a
handle. So super easy.
If you just need to do an empty reload and run of your
dishwasher, that's going to make you feel so good.
You're likely going to be able to fit everything or almost
everything into your dishwasher. Or if you're facing a dish
shaster, you'll at least put a dent in those dirty dishes.
And you can get the rest of the stuff soaking if you, you know
before you take your break because remember, we're talking
about 20 minutes on, 10 minutes off.
It's similar to the Pomodoro method, but different lengths of
time. But of course if you're hand
washing, get any difficult items, soaking the pots and pans
and then pre rinse and soak that first sink load and just start
washing your cups, your bowls. Wash all the easy stuff first.
Those items that are submerged in your soapy water that are
going to take a little time to get clean that need more
scrubbing, save those for last. I always just grab the easy
items 1st and get those washed and then the other things are
soaking in the meantime. Makes sense.
I know sometimes I state the obvious on this show, but I'm
talking you through your housework and you might need
these reminders to help you keep focused and on task.
But while you're finishing up the dishes, I'll talk a little
bit more about paper clutter. Just, you know, not right now,
but at some point you want to have a really good system for
managing your finances. If you're the one taking care of
the bills, you've got to get organized.
It's a good idea to create a spreadsheet with all of your
expenses on it. It's also a good idea to use an
app. I use the every dollar app.
This is not sponsored but it's a it's a budgeting app that I use
and also. So you need to either assign
each bill to a certain payday or just stay completely ahead of
things and pay all of your bills once a month.
OK but some people don't have the self-discipline.
I'm older now, but some people don't have the self-discipline
to leave the money in the bank and pay their bills once a
month. So if that's you or your spouse,
you might want to assign each bill to a certain paycheck.
That way you know how much you have left of that paycheck, you
know if you're living paycheck to paycheck.
But you need a system and at some point you need to sit down
and get organized with your bills and your finances.
Another thing you need to do is have a calendar, whether it's an
electronic calendar or a wall calendar.
Now I do save things in my phone on an electronic calendar and
when I was working just a 40 hour remote job from home, that
calendar was everything 'cause I needed little reminders for
meetings and what not. But I found that for me and my
husband, just keeping track of things, appointments and social
engagements and trips and graduation, graduations and all
the things that it helps us to also write things down on a
physical calendar that's on the wall that we can both reference.
That way, when one of us is making an appointment, the other
can look at that calendar. And you can also use your
calendar to keep track of bills. I have a different one for that.
I have a planner and a binder, and I used to write down on each
payday which bills I needed to pay.
But now I have just this new system where I'm just paying all
of my bills the same day of the month, which is the 15th.
I mean, I give myself a little grace.
It can be either the 14th or the 15th and sometimes it can spread
across those two days, but I pay all the bills at that time and I
keep track of that in the notepad app of my phone combined
with the budgeting app. You've got to have a system
though can and having all your bills in one place can make a
difference. And I know you've probably gone
paperless with a lot of your bills, but with some of them
that you need to pull out that physical bill, you need an in
basket for that. Hopefully you got your house
picked up, your dishes done, or at least started and you took
care of 1 glaring problem in your house that's been bothering
you. Now it's time to take a 10
minute break and hopefully start another 20 minute cleaning
session. And we have, I've got a whole
catalog of episodes you can listen to, and I doubt you've
heard all of them. So by the way, if you like
longer episodes, be sure to subscribe to the bonus episodes.
Special thanks to those who have already started supporting the
show to unlock those episodes. But even just listening to these
free episodes helps me. Happy cleaning and I'll talk to
you soon.