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 picking up, dusting and vacuuming your outer
areas, your living room, family room if you have it, hallway,
entryway, etcetera. Just those common areas other
than your kitchen and bathrooms. Let's get right into the
episode. And maybe you don't feel like
cleaning right now. You might still be lying on the
bed or the couch, but I encourage you to get up and
freshen up a little bit if you're not already looking
presentable. Remember, when you look good,
you feel good. So maybe you need to just get
ready for the day. Put on one of your favorite
outfits. We're not going to be working
with bleach or anything so it's OK to dress nice for this.
Today I was tired and I had a lot to do.
Felt a little overwhelmed but putting on my favorite jeans and
one of my favorite black T-shirts made me feel ready for
everything and I put on a brand new pair of Nikes and felt like
1,000,000 bucks. So sometimes getting dressed for
the day can work wonders and I curled my hair and put on a
little makeup and I was good to go.
So maybe you need to freshen up. Another thing you might want to
do before we start this cleaning session is do a laundry switch.
Maybe you have some clothes you need to switch from the washer
into the dryer, or maybe you need to start a new load.
And since this is kind of an outer area focus, I'll mention
that you might want to throw some throw pillows in the
washing machine, whether they're the kind where you remove the
covers and wash those or just throw the pillows in.
Now might be the time to do that if you don't have other more
pressing laundry to do. Or maybe you need to get your
house smelling fresh. Put some fresh wax in the wax
warmer or start your essential oil diffuser or light a candle
or burn some potpourri on the stove.
I talked about that in my recent episode where you can just put
some orange peels and cinnamon sticks in a little pot and boil
that on the stove. But sometimes there's a source.
But sometimes there's a source of odor you need to deal with.
Maybe you need to take out your kitchen trash, or you need to
check for or check for mildewed towels in the laundry room or
something, or run your garbage disposal.
But usually taking out the trash is a big one.
And if you have carpeting, you might want to sprinkle something
on the carpet, whether it's baking soda or carpet fresh
sprinkles, to kind of let that sit while you're picking up and
dusting before you vacuum. And of course, there's that time
honored tradition of opening up your curtains or blinds and then
opening your windows and letting some fresh air circulate in your
home. The sunlight will do you good,
and also feeling like people might walk by and look in the
windows can kind of light a fire under you, especially with that
front window. If you've got a window on the
front of your house and you open your blinds or curtains and then
your windows, you'll start picking up and decluttering that
room in no time. By now, you've done whatever you
needed to do to gear up for your cleaning session, whether it was
getting presentable, getting your house smelling good, or
something else. Let's start picking up those
outer areas, and I want you to start at your front door,
straighten up the front entrance area, and then just continue
onward to picking up your living room, your family room.
And if you're like me, you've only got 1 living area.
My living room is also the same room where my entryway is and
then there's just a hallway back to my bedrooms.
So when I tell my kids to do an outer areas pick up, they are
picking up clutter off of the living room floor and picking up
anything that ended up in the hallway.
When you have kids or grandkids who are toddlers and or you've
got pets, there's no telling what might be lurking on your
floor. Some of you have more picking up
to do than others. I realize we're in different
seasons of life. Not everybody has small children
or pets. Sometimes straightening up a
living area could just mean relocating your shoes that you
kicked off while you were on the couch, or hanging up a sweater,
clearing a coffee mug and taking it to the kitchen, getting it
soaking in the sink. But I realized some of you are
picking up lots of toys and random items that are out of
place. I know the struggle.
By the way, if your kids are school aged or older, they
definitely can help with picking up after pets, younger siblings
themselves. That's a good task to delegate,
but I realize you might be home alone.
This might be your own personal cleaning session.
But just Full disclosure, earlier I took my teenage
daughter to the motor vehicles department.
She had to retake the eye test to get her learner's permit.
We got her new glasses and then she retook the vision portion of
the test today and got her learner's permit.
Well, while I was gone, my 13 year old son and 22 year old
daughter picked up the living room.
So that's definitely a task that I often delegate because I'm
usually working in the kitchen myself and of course I'm
responsible for cleaning my own bedroom and the master bathroom.
I do sometimes clean the kids bathroom, but that usually falls
to them because it's on their chore list.
Just be picking up your outer areas, whatever that means for
you, whether you're working alongside of small children and
helping them or encouraging them to put their toys in the toy box
or you're working alone right now, just get everything picked
up. And of course, if you don't have
a lot to pick up, that means you're going to have time to do
more deep cleaning. As far as dusting, now when I
talk about dusting my living room, I'm mainly talking about
wiping down the coffee table, the one end table that I have,
dusting the TV screen, and then wiping down the TV stand that's
under it. And then clearing clutter off of
the top of my piano, which tends to gather there, and wiping down
the piano itself. But you might also have other
pieces of furniture other than a piano.
You could have instead of a piano, you could have a
bookcase, or you could have a piano plus a bookcase or some
other little decorative shelf. I'm usually talking about
dusting those pieces of furniture, but a deeper cleaning
task, you know, a bonus task, should you choose to accept it,
could be dusting the pictures on the walls.
OK, whether they are wooden signs or framed prints,
paintings, family portraits. Another bonus task that I like
to do fairly often is dusting my window sills and dusting my
blinds. Now I actually have 4 windows in
the living room, so when I wipe window sills, I'll wipe all of
them. All four of them.
But when I dust blinds, I've got 3 windows with blinds on them.
And then the skinny window by my front door has a curtain.
The curtain I take down and wash once in a blue moon.
But the blinds I have to dust pretty regularly.
But I don't usually dust them all at once unless I'm doing
like a deep clean when I'm expecting company or something.
But for just a regular cleaning session, I might dust either the
blinds on the two smaller windows or the blinds on the big
front window. That picture window on the front
of the house that allows passers by to see in, especially if it's
a day that you have a lot to pick up in your living room.
Another bonus task if you're looking for more to do, because
I know some of you are overwhelmed with clutter and
some of you are not. It just kind of depends on the
season of life or even just the particular day, what you've got
going on at your house at this moment.
But if you have time, you could also remove your couch cushions
and clear out whatever debris and random items you find in the
cushions and then vacuum them out.
And this next part is especially true if you have hard floors and
your couches are not flush with the floor.
A lot of times you've got to clean under your couches,
whether that means moving the couch or reaching under the
couch with a broom. Back when I had hard floors,
things were always just getting sucked under the couch.
It's not as bad when you have carpeting.
Things aren't sliding under there as often.
But of course, we do still need to move our couches and find
whatever ended up under them and then vacuum.
And then yet another deep cleaning task you might want to
tackle is just to look up at the corners and knockout any cobwebs
or dust the ceiling fan. OK, I have a dusting tool that I
use for that. And usually I check for cobwebs
at the same time when I'm dusting the ceiling fan.
So I've given you a lot of ideas about what to do in your living
room because sometimes we, we don't really see our house
through a guest eye, a guest's eyes when we're not having
company and we forget to do certain tasks.
Like I need to dust the floor under the piano with a dusting
tool. And sometimes I don't think
about it unless I'm having company.
But it's, it's a random chore that needs to be done because
when I'm sitting on the couch, I can see dust under the piano and
it bugs me. And of course, once you get all
the clutter cleared and all the dusting that you're going to do
today done, and maybe even cleaning out your couch
cushions, you're going to put everything back together,
straighten your couch cushions and fluff your throw pillows if
they're not in the washing machine.
And then you're going to vacuum or sweep and mop, depending on
what kind of floor you have and what kind of tools you like to
use to clean your floors. But while you're working in
those living areas, I just wanted to give you a few
thoughts on how to keep your living areas tidier in general.
In your home, you only want to own as much stuff as you have
storage space for. So some of you need to downsize,
but there are lots of shows about decluttering and
minimalism. So I only have episodes like
that once in a while because I think everybody kind of already
knows that they might need to downsize a little bit.
But getting rid of stuff isn't the be all end all.
You also need to, of course, you know, you can't just keep
bringing things into the house and having nothing ever go out.
That's kind of the definition of hoarding.
But even with the things that you love and use, you need to
make sure that everything has a place.
You need to decide where things go and put them away.
And this is a this is huge. You need to put things away
after using them. I had an incident a while back
where my daughter's dog chewed up one of my shoes that I had
left out in the living room. And that has definitely forced
me to do something that I should already be doing.
And that's if I kick off my shoes while I'm on the couch and
just leave them beside the couch while I'm on the couch, that's
fine. But when I go to bed for the
night or leave the room, I need to take the shoes with me and
put them in the closet. But that's just one example of
putting things away after using them.
Basically, when you get up, don't leave a room empty handed
if there are things that need to be put away.
If you're sitting in the living room and you've finished your
coffee and your mug is empty, that's fine that you're relaxing
on the couch. But once you get up, take that
mug to the kitchen. You see what I'm saying?
Because sometimes when we think about putting things away after
using them, it seems overwhelming because you might
think, well, yeah, but I'm tired and I work all day and I like to
just relax. Yeah, I'm not saying not to have
this down time where you're in a recliner or you're on the couch
or you're on your bed. But what I'm saying is when you
do get up, don't forget to relocate the items that are out
of place. If you have an ice cream bowl by
your bed in the evening and you're going to the kitchen to
get water, take that bowl to the kitchen and quickly wash it or
rinse it and put it in the dishwasher, whatever your system
is. And I know you're working in the
living room right now, but I'm just talking about habits for
keeping your house clean. And the living room is sometimes
easier to clean than your bedrooms.
So sometimes keeping a clean house starts with your front
entrance and your living areas. You know, you want to put your
best foot forward in those showcase areas, and then you
want to eventually raise the standard in the rest of your
home to where you're not cluttering up your bedroom
regularly. Other than just doing dishes.
Step one is keeping your living areas tidy because when you do
the dishes, you kind of automatically start wiping the
surfaces in your kitchen. I mean, it kind of comes
naturally. I feel like there's a tendency
sometimes to procrastinate on doing dishes, but it builds
momentum. And then you start clearing off
your countertops and wiping all your surfaces and then, you
know, you sweep and mop the floor and it's, it's kind of
automatic. But with living areas, sometimes
we leave things lying around and it seems like no big deal at the
time to leave 1 cup or one pair of shoes out.
But before you know it, the rest of the family is kind of
following suit. You've definitely got to show
them by example that you don't leave anything out.
By the way, if you don't have a real chaotic lifestyle with kids
and dogs, you should still aim to vacuum and dust at least
weekly. Some of us need to vacuum daily.
We need to pick up and vacuum daily.
But if you want your house to look good, you want to vacuum
and dust at least weekly. Even if you know you and your
spouse don't have kids or you're retired or you're single with no
kids, aim for vacuuming and dusting weekly.
But in between those sessions, make sure that you're putting
things away as you use them and that you have a system that to
make sure that your kitchen is, you know, clean and tidy before
you go to bed and that you're keeping up on dishes and laundry
and so on. But definitely vacuum and dust
weekly. Or if you're in kind of a
chaotic situation where dogs are dragging trash out, or they're
tracking dirt in, or kids are leaving things out, you want to
pick up and vacuum every single day.
Possibly picking up multiple times per day is just the
reality of your situation. You might need to pick up
multiple times per day to have clean living areas.
Anyway, I hope you got your living rooms picked up, dusted,
and vacuumed, and hopefully you even tackled some bonus chores
at the same time. And hopefully I gave you some
ideas for keeping your house clean in the future.
But putting things away after using them is a game changer,
and it's OK to wait till you get back up to do it.
But don't leave the room without taking something with you.
If you've got dishes to do or you need to clean your whole
house, consider subscribing to bonus content.
You know you can unlock longer episodes by subscribing.
By the way. Special thanks to everyone who's
already supporting the show financially, but even just
listening to this show helps me. So I appreciate each and
everyone of you. And as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you soon.