Have you ever visited someone's house and thought to yourself
that they must not have very much stuff and that's why their
house looks clean? Well, that's only partly true,
and I'm going to tell you their secret.
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 us disappear.
Clean with Me podcast is here. Thanks for joining me in this
session. We're going to get your dishes
washed and your countertops cleared and wiped down, of
course, the stove top and the sink.
And then we're going to walk through your house and do an
assessment of your closets, cabinets, and drawers.
That way, you'll know what to focus on during your next
decluttering session. But first, it's time to gather
up any cups or dishes from around the house and set them
next to the sink so that you can quickly get your dishes done and
clear and wipe down those kitchen surfaces.
I'm not going to do a prolonged introduction in this episode
because I'm really excited about this hidden clutter assessment
that I'm going to talk you through.
But at the same time, I want you to get your dishes done first.
More often than not, we need to start by doing the dishes.
OK, I do make some cleaning and reverse episodes, but in this
episode, I want you to get those residual dishes clean.
I want you to get down to dish zero.
And then the easy part is just quickly clearing your
countertops and table tops and giving those surfaces A swipe.
It's not a deep clean by any means, it's just a daily kitchen
reset that we're going to get over with so that we can talk
about something that's going to make a long term impact in your
house. Because I'm also releasing a
bonus episode today where I walk you through decluttering, those
hidden areas, and give you all the dates on my latest
decluttering session. Yeah, I'm going to be giving you
the actual examples in that bonus episode.
But even if you don't subscribe to bonus content, I want to help
you assess your house so that you'll know what needs to be
done. Now that you've gathered up your
dishes from around the house and place them next to the sink, you
might need to quickly wash out the sink and get it ready.
You might need to empty your drying rack of clean dishes.
Or if you have a dishwasher, you might need to also empty your
dishwasher and then start pre rinsing or start, you know,
start pre rinsing and loading the dishwasher or start pre
rinsing and soaking things in that first sink load.
And a lot of times when I'm hand washing dishes, I will get that
first sink load pre rinsed and soaking and then I'll start
clearing off the surfaces of my kitchen to get it ready for the
wipe down as the water's cooling down a little bit Because I want
the water as hot as possible. But then I want it to cool down
a little bit before my put before I put my hands in it.
When I'm using a dishwasher and just be working on your dishes,
whatever that means for you. Maybe you have to put away clean
stuff or maybe you're already washing.
But when I'm using the dishwasher, I normally get any
difficult items pre rinsed and soaking, especially pots and
pans. I rinse them out under running
water and then I put some hot water and dish soap in them, set
those aside, and then put the easy items into the dishwasher.
By the time I'm done loading the dishwasher, those items on the
countertop have had a little time to soak and then I finish
washing those. But on any given day or just in
any given household, the routine is a little bit different.
So just be working on dishes, whatever that means for you.
But I want you to do it quickly, OK, We're going to work on
dishes for maybe another 5 or 6 minutes.
I know that doesn't sound like a lot of time, but you'd be
surprised how much you can get done during a speed dishwashing
session. And remember, when you put away
the clean stuff first, it makes it faster because you have
somewhere to put your clean dishes.
OK. And I do, for clarification, I
do a combination of hand washing and dishwasher washing.
So by emptying my drying rack and getting all the easy stuff
into the dishwasher, when I hand wash those remaining items, it
goes quickly because I don't slow down to think about where
I'm going to place the item. Like like on the top of some
mountain of clean dishes or something.
It just goes into the empty drying rack.
And you don't have to have a drying rack.
Maybe you have a drying pad or you've just laid out a towel.
OK. When I'm in a situation where I
have to wash a bunch of dishes by hand, For example, I was
helping out someone who had just had a baby and she did not have
a dishwasher. She had a small kitchen.
So what I did is I laid out a bath towel on her kitchen table.
That way, as I washed each dish, I just placed it on that towel.
There was plenty of space. I didn't have to think about how
I was going to position the item to keep it from falling or
anything like that. And I got it done in record time
for that amount of dishes. And just because you don't like
a task doesn't mean you have to do it slowly.
I think sometimes that happens when we don't like something, we
slow down because we feel like it's such drudgery.
Forget that, move quickly. I'm here with you.
And if you are facing a disaster today, you don't have to do it
all, but I want you to move quickly throughout this segment
and get as many dishes done as possible.
And I have a feeling you can make it.
I have a feeling you're going to get down to dish 0 during these
next few minutes. But even if you don't, you can
get back to those dishes and finish up after we've done your
whole house assessment. I'm excited about it and it's
going to be based on my own experience from this major
overhaul my house got on Saturday, and I'll go into that
more in the bonus episode. But I'm definitely going to
touch on on it in this one and I'm going to tell you which
areas I focused on and why. Someone mentioned that I should
include product recommendations. So a quick talk about little
scrubby sponges. I really like the Scrub Mommy
that has, and this isn't sponsored or anything, just
general talk about cleaning products that you can get in,
you know, in the grocery store or your local Walmart or
wherever. But as far as a sponge that has
a rough side and a soft side, I really like the Scrub Mommy.
I will say that it doesn't do very well going through my
washing machine though. So that's the con with that one.
Even though that's kind of the Rolls Royce of scrubby sponges,
it does not do well going through my washer and dryer.
It kind of is just ready for the trash at some point.
If you want a scrubby sponge that you don't have to replace
as often, the tried and true Scotch brite sponges are great
for that. You know, they're smaller,
flatter. The shape isn't as wonderful as
with the scrub mommy, but those seem to do well when they go
through the washer and dryer. And that's not the only way I
clean them. I also will wring those out.
I'll, I'll, I'll dip them in some fresh, hot, soapy
dishwater, wring them out and then microwave them for a couple
minutes to sanitize them. That's one way of doing it.
But sometimes I will put it in a load of laundry with just towels
and kitchen rags and things, and they look kind of ugly coming
out of the washing machine. But well, more if they go
through the dryer because, you know, you forget to pull them
out and they end up in the dryer.
They look kind of ugly afterward.
But they're still super useful. So those are probably the most
durable option. Although the newest dish
scrubbing sponge I've tried is the Dawn one.
That's a circle. It's very similar to the Scrub
Mommy. I don't like it as much as the
scrub scrub Mommy and I haven't tried to wash it yet because I
just got it, but it's another option.
I guess the pro with that is that it's cheaper than the scrub
Mommy, but in addition to a sponge with an abrasive side, I
definitely recommend having just a scrub brush.
Just a scrub brush on a handle and then you might also need a
bottle spray, a bottle brush for either cleaning out baby bottles
or just skinny glasses. But if your glasses are kind of
wide, the scrub brush kind of works for that.
But it's still not the ideal shape for cleaning the inside of
a glass. So you might want to check out
the baby section even if you don't have a baby to get that
rounded bottle brush because I'm using that for my own drinking
glasses even when the grandkids aren't here with their little
sippy cups and whatnot. So at any given time when I'm
doing dishes, I have the sponge with an abrasive side.
I have a scrub brush with a handle, you know, mainly just
for pre rinsing the crud off the dishes.
I have a bottle brush for cleaning inside of the glasses,
and then of course I have a rag or dishcloth, whatever you want
to call it, and then a dish towel for drying my hands.
Of course, off and on I'll get that dish scrubber that has a
place to put dish soap in the handle, but I'm not currently
using that. OK, by now I've given you enough
time hopefully to do your dishes, but no judgement here.
If I caught you at a time where you're facing a dishaster.
Sometimes it takes more than one dish load, More than one sink
load, I get it. But even if you still have a few
things that you need to leave soaking for the time being, I
want you to quickly clear and wipe down your countertop and
kitchen table if you have one. High chair if you have one.
OK, this isn't a deep clean where we're scrubbing the
cabinets and wiping down the the appliance fronts.
We usually do that because I feel like in the kitchen deep
cleans should be pretty much constant.
But this is just a quick reset. So I want you to spend the next
couple of minutes clearing and wiping down the countertop, the
stove top, the table top and the high chair if you have a baby or
toddler, OK. And I'm going to assume that
this is not a session where you're going to be sweeping and
mopping. However, there's definitely
something to be said for doing a little spot sweep in the problem
areas. OK?
You don't want to have this all or nothing mentality where
you're like, I don't feel like sweeping this large of, you
know, expansive floor. I don't have time right now.
And then you don't do it at all. You know, are there crumbs right
under the high chair? If you have a baby, are there
crumbs around the table? If you have little kids or if
you have a household where everyone's a little bit older,
the crumbs might just be around the food prep areas, the stove,
the kitchen island, or that strip of countertop where you're
preparing your food. OK, so you might have time after
giving those countertops and stovetop A swipe and wiping out
your sink if if it's not still full of dishes and wiping down
the table to do a little spot sweep.
It doesn't have to be with a broom.
You might be like me and use a kitchen shark.
There are not ever large chunks of food in my kitchen floor,
though my dogs are quick to clean up after me.
With two dogs, that's that's one of the benefits.
But what they do not do is pick up the sand and sediment that
gets tracked in the sliding glass door.
Clear off any stuff that needed to be put away.
Maybe there were some seasonings left out.
A cereal box, a jar of peanut butter from making school
lunches. I don't know what you're dealing
with, but get all that stuff put away.
Spray and wipe down your surfaces.
OK, again, this is not a deep clean because I'm excited about
moving on to this decluttering assessment.
Have you ever visited someone's house and thought to yourself
that they must not have very much stuff and that's why their
house looks clean? Well, that's only partly true
and I'm going to tell you their secret.
Whether they have a lot of stuff or not, they have an amount of
belongings that they are personally able to handle and
that's different for everybody. Also, they are storing virtually
everything out of sight. OK, it seems like they don't
have that much stuff because you're not used to seeing
everything put away. And the key to duplicating this
in your own home is decluttering your storage areas, which
include closets, cabinets, drawers, because if you had more
space in those areas, you too would be able to store
everything out of sight. And you may be thinking that you
need to buy more containers to put things in and you might OK.
However, I want to caution you that buying too many storage
containers that are going to be out in the open can make your
house look cluttered and defeat the purpose of getting
organized. I mean, sure, having like items
together in containers will make it easier for you to find stuff,
and I'm all for that. But what if you could put those
containers into your closets and drawers and under the bed so
that your house would have that clean, streamlined look that you
see in other people's houses? And once you've thinned down
your belongings, then you can decide whether you need to
purchase additional storage containers because sometimes
you'll find storage containers buried in the clutter.
And then you'll be able to utilize those items that you
already have, especially if you're like me and you're doing
kind of a no spin November. So what I want you to do first
is walk through your home and determine which of your storage
areas are two full, OK? I'm talking about looking in
closets, drawers, and cabinets. We're also going to look at
things that are being stored out in the open that you would be
able to put away after thinning down your storage areas.
So I want you to start by looking into your coat closet
and linen closet, if you have both, OK?
Most of us have that hallway where there's a linen closet,
which is the one with shelves, and then there's the coat closet
that probably just has a shelf on the top and then has a bar
for hanging up the coats. And I know that in most episodes
we focus on visible clutter. But since we have over three
weeks till Thanksgiving, this is a great time to identify that
invisible clutter that's keeping you from putting more of the
visible stuff away. And this episode's going to go
hand in hand with the subscriber only episode I'll be releasing
later today that's going to be about decluttering.
But right now we're just doing an assessment.
Are your linen closet and coat closet overstuffed?
Open them and just look at them and look at what's what's in
there. If the shelves are jam packed
and the floor is completely covered, in your next
decluttering session you'll need to pull everything out and see
what you can get rid of and maybe what you can relocate
because it's probably a combination of things.
There are things in there that you need to get rid of, but
there are also things that probably belong somewhere else.
But someone just shoved them in that closet in a hurry, OK?
Because when you first moved into your house, you didn't jam
packed the closets like this. And when you do go through all
of the contents of a closet, you kind of pull everything out.
You're going to do this one closet at a time so that you
don't get overwhelmed and you don't have to pull out the items
from every shelf of your linen closet at once.
You might do one shelf at a time and then the floor, OK, in the
linen closet, that's in the linen closet, in the coat
closet. You might pull everything off
the top shelf and go through it and then pull everything out
from the floor and go through that.
You can, you can do it in steps, OK, But you're going to have a
pile of debris in your hallway while you're working on it.
Again, we're not doing that in this episode because we're going
through your whole house and just assessing your clutter.
But I want you to think about what's in there and get excited
about thinning it down. OK, now that you've looked in
those closets, I want you to head to your bookcase or shelf
unit. Some houses have built in
shelves, some have bookcases. That stuff is visible, but I
guess I included it in this episode because I keep a
bookcase in a closet in the backroom.
OK, but do you have books that are no longer relevant that you
could donate or sell? You know, we had a homeschooling
phase and we don't need all that stuff anymore.
I do keep all of the classics that my kids are studying in
their classical Christian School.
I mean, they pass them down to each other.
So there are some that my youngest hasn't studied yet that
he'll need for next year or the year after.
But also those are just good books to have.
They're classics and something I want to have in my collection.
And there are other books that are not classics that I like,
but there are some books that I no longer need.
And the way I organize a bookcase, I like to put the the
toddler books on the bottom shelf so that they're easy,
easily accessible for little ones.
So maybe just look at your bookcase or your shelves.
Another thing I want you to look at is your bedroom closet.
OK, Can you see the floor? If it's just a small closet,
it's normal that your shoes might be covering the bottom of
the closet or luggage or something like that.
But if it's a walk in closet, you should be able to walk
around in there. OK, I have a little shoe rack
off to one side in my walk in closet.
I also have a little plastic dresser.
OK it's a storage unit but it's out of sight since it's inside
the closet. I do store things along the back
wall of my closet that I'm planning to donate.
I call that my donation station, but it's something I dealt with
during my recent purge. OK, to kind of reset that area
and make room for more, but from time to time I need to just pick
up kind of the middle of the floor because things get shoved
in the closet sometimes or they fall off the hangers, whatever.
So maybe consider getting a shoe rack if you don't already have
one, But look at what you might be able to get rid of or locate
or relocate to free up storage space inside your bedroom
closet. And you could do the same with a
kid bedroom closet as well. But we're not going that deep.
I'm mainly talking about things that I did recently.
Next, I want you to identify your two main junk drawers in
the house. I've joked about this a lot, but
I don't I really don't approve of people having more than one
junk drawer in the kitchen. However, I have two junk drawers
in my house. OK, one of the drawers in my
kitchen island is a junk drawer, meaning it's miscellaneous
stuff. Obviously, in a perfect world,
you don't save anything that's junk, but it's called the junk
drawer. That's what my parents called
it. But if you open up that kitchen
junk junk drawer and it looks so looks overstuffed, you might
want to take some time in your next decluttering session to
remove some items, relocate, or get rid of them.
The other junk drawer probably shouldn't be called a junk
drawer, but a lot of you have a drawer in your bedroom dresser
for miscellaneous stuff. For me, it's the top drawer.
When I was growing up, my mom always had us put our socks and
underwear in the top drawer. But as an adult, my top drawer
has always been a place where I put things that are kind of
important that I want 'cause I have a tall chest of drawers.
So, you know, I always kind of looked at that top drawer as a
safe place that's out of the reach of little ones and kind of
a temporary spot to put important stuff.
Like I'm often putting papers in there that should really go in
my expandable file folder. But sometimes it's just anything
small that I don't know what to do with.
So it's kind of like half important stuff and half junk.
So if you have a drawer like that, you might need to file
away any important documents, toss things that you no longer
need. It's just another potential junk
drawer in your house. And it might not be your top
drawer. It could be a desk drawer or
something. But I feel like you probably
have another junk drawer besides the one in the kitchen.
The next area I want you to just look at is the bathroom.
OK, And you might need to check more than one bathroom, but I
want you to look inside of any bathroom drawers if you have
them. I only have drawers in one of my
bathrooms. The other one doesn't.
It has just those fake drawers. Both bathrooms have cabinets
open. Those are the cabinets and
drawers in your bathrooms full of stuff that nobody uses.
OK or what about visible baskets that were meant to organize the
bathroom but they're now jam packed with random items?
I'm going to talk about a situation like that at my house
that I fixed recently in the bonus episode where I go into
deeper detail. If you have a kind of a large
vanity area, it could be that you're starting to store stuff
on top of that that could be put away in drawers or cabinets.
I also want you to look at where you're storing clean and dirty
laundry. Now, this one's not going to
apply to everybody. Maybe you wash a load from start
to finish it, you know, it goes straight into the washing
machine and then you dry it and fold it and put it away
immediately. But some of us have hampers and
then also baskets of clean laundry, and you might even have
baskets or bins full of clean laundry that would not fit into
your closets and drawers if you were to put it all away on the
same day. If that's the case, it's an
issue. It might be time for a clothing
purge, but more than likely you do have the space in your
closets and dresser drawers and you just need to get stuff put
away. So that's something to make a
mental note of. But maybe if you get your closet
floors clear and it's a large walk in closet or even in a
small closet, you might be able to do this.
You might have room for a clean laundry basket that guests won't
see, plus a dirty clothes hamper.
And I realize not everybody has room for that, but it's just an
idea, something to think about. And circling back to the
kitchen, you might want to look into your kitchen cabinets and
pantry to see if there's anything that doesn't belong, or
perhaps too many duplicate items that you could donate.
The benefit of thinning down your cupboards and pantry is
that you can start storing your small appliances out of sight
instead of on the counter. Now that you've looked at your
storage areas that probably need to be thinned down, I want you
to walk through every room of your house and look at anything
that you're storing in plain sight.
That's what your guests are going to see.
That visible clutter is what differentiates your house from
the more minimalist looking home that we talked about at the
beginning of the episode. OK, I'm talking about boxes
along bedroom walls of stuff you're putting off going
through. OK, I'm also talking about
cluttered surfaces like desktops, countertops, bathroom
vanities. By the way, I forgot to mention
this, but you might need to thin down your desk drawers.
Someone wrote in about a desk, so I'm going to be covering that
in the bonus episode as well. You might even have visible
clutter on your dining room table or your kitchen table.
I'm talking about any clutter that would be better put away.
Like for example, like in a bedroom.
Picture a hotel room. Does it have boxes in the
corners? No, it does not.
That's what your closet's for. Or even your garage.
So walk around looking at the clutter and visualize how nice
your house is going to look once you put those items away.
But now that you know which storage areas are overstuffed
and which items you'd like to put away after freeing up
storage space, you're going to need a podcast episode to listen
to while you do it. And for a small fee, you can
unlock that and many other bonus episodes.
If not, I guess listen to one of the other podcasts in your
library or some music. But most of all, be sure to
follow this show so that you don't miss any future episodes.
For more information on how to support the show, visit
cleanwithmepodcast.com. There's also a link in the show
notes, and one way you can help me out without spending a penny
is to click on that fifth star and give me a five star rating
and review. But most of all, just keep
listening. I appreciate each and everyone
of you. And as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.