Hi everyone. I'm Ronnie.
And I'm Jessica. And you're listening to Clean
with me. The podcast where we walk you
through cleaning your house. Hey everybody, we're gonna do a
house straightening today, a house reset if you will.
And we're gonna take the house back to factory reset mode if
you will. So what I call this is just
maintenance cleaning and but we're going to reset the house
so that we can focus on extra bonus chores later in the day or
in the following days to come. So let's reset the house.
First thing I want you guys to do is let's go ahead and get
ready for our clean. Put our hair up in a bun.
If you have hair, open a window, light a candle.
Umm. And then we are going to get
right into it. First thing, like always, I like
to do a load of laundry. So let's go ahead and do that
now and do a laundry switch. Move the clothes from the washer
to the dryer and from the dryer to a laundry basket.
I will try my best to remind you at the end of the episode, but I
need these episodes just as much as you guys do 'cause I get
really off track and sometimes I forget to remind you, but I'm
going to remember. And even when I'm not really
feeling doing laundry, and maybe I like, I was super behind on
laundry last week, I got caught up.
Now I'm back to where I want to be with laundry and maybe I'm
having a day where I really kind of don't want to do it.
I still try to do just a load of towels or something.
That way at least I'm doing something and doesn't get super
built up on me. So while you're in your laundry
room as part of your reset, if you need to clean out your dryer
lint sheet, do that. If you need to do a wipe down or
maybe you've got some socks or some clothes that fell behind
the washer and dryer, that kind of thing.
My laundry room gets neglected often.
So that's something I like to check every so often when I'm
doing my resets is just do a little spruce up of the laundry
area. Because if you're like me,
sometimes you'll put some clothes like a small load or
something on top of the dryer. And then you'll do more and more
laundry and you'll fold the laundry that you're currently
doing like you're adding to. But then you leave the load that
you put on top of the washer there for like 10 years.
So I like to just as a little reminder, clean up the laundry
room completely and making sure I'm getting any clothes that
have landed themselves on top of the dryer to live.
Next thing I want you guys to do, we're going to go to the
dishes. So let's get prepped for the
dishes. And by that I mean get any
dishes from all around the house.
If you have cups or different plates or anything in the dining
room or your bedrooms, let's go ahead and clear everything and
put them next to the sink. And then we're going to put all
the crazy stuff to soak. Anything that's going to be hard
to clean, let's fill it up with hot soapy water.
That way we have no excuses and it'll be nice soaked and ready
to clean by the time we're done with all the small stuff.
And then we're going to do an empty reload and run of the
dishwasher. And if you don't use your
dishwasher, that's fine. Then just empty your drying rack
and reset it. And then we're going to do a
kitchen clean and just get started on those dishes while
I'm talking. And we're going to tackle those
super quick Dishes are something that I do not get very excited
about. But you know what makes me even
less excited about the dishes and makes me really not want to
do it when I wait too long. Because the more dishes there
are, the more I'm like, this sucks.
I don't want to clean old food. That's gross.
So the more we really hold ourselves to rinsing things off
as soon as we cook, rinsing things off as soon as we eat,
training the family to do so too.
Because if everyone's not on the same same page, then that can be
discouraging for us. Because if we're being really
good about rinsing off our plates and stuff and maybe your
husband, kids, roommates, they're not doing the same.
We'll kind of be like, oh what? Well, whatever, nobody else is
doing it anyway. And then we're kind of back to
square one. And then we get behind on the
dishes and then we get discouraged.
So just as a quick reminder, if you see a kid going to put their
plate up and they're not rinsing it off, or maybe you have older
kids and they're helping cook and they're not rinsing out
stuff, just remind them, hey, we're going to try.
We're going to do this now. We're going to clean after we
cook, while we're cooking. I've talked many, many, many
times about chores that are connected to different tasks,
anchor chores, and how we should make doing the dishes and anchor
chore to cooking. That way, when you're all full
and tired and sluggish after eating a meal, you're not having
to do this huge mess of dishes that you made while you were
cooking and all you have to do is a couple of plates that the
kids and yourself and whoever ate off of, right?
Because I always say like, oh, I have trouble cleaning after I
cook and then spend all this time cooking and then eat and
then I'm full. But the truth is I only really
have trouble doing that when I did not clean as I go and
there's just food everywhere. And I did a chaotic cooking
thing where flowers every, you know, strewed across the
countertops. There's messy pots everywhere.
Nothing's been rinsed out. That's when I'm like, I don't
want to do this at all. So if I'm cleaning as I go, I'm
way more likely to just finish the job and do those extra
plates at the end of the day. So as we're doing our dishes
right now, whatever state you're at, if you're having a disaster,
if you're having a really bad dish day, just remember that's
fine. Don't beat yourself up at all.
We always do that. But evaluate and reflect on the
situation and how we can make our lives easier, easier.
And just making little small personal goals to be a little
bit better than we were the day before is how we are going to
get really, really organized and on track with our cleaning.
Because whenever I compare myself to other people and other
people's houses, I get really discouraged.
But you know what? We should never do that.
We should strive to be better. We should always strive to be
better. But comparing ourselves to other
people's dangerous because they have different priorities, they
have different lives, they have different struggles, and it's
really hard to better yourself when you're looking at other
people. And I'm definitely guilty of
this and have been guilty of this, but I'm a way better
cleaner when I am just making small personal goals that are
attainable for myself and just striving to be better and just
keep working on those dishes. So yeah, the main point always
being just try something different.
Try a little bit harder than we did the day before and make
yourself a better version of yourself when it comes to
cleaning. And that's how you're going to
improve the most. And as we're doing the dishes,
do not forget your refrigerator. Any leftover containers or
anything like that that could be cleaned inside of your
refrigerator, definitely do that as well while you're in kitchen
cleaning mode and dishes cleaning mode.
Just making sure we're getting everything 'cause it's kind of
annoying if you finish all your dishes and then when you're
done, either someone brings you some for another from another
room or you open your refrigerator and you notice a
bunch of dishes that you forgot. So let's go ahead and get those
tackled and taken care of. And if you have a disaster, if
you have a lot of dishes today, then you just keep working on
those dishes. If you only had a few and you
want to go ahead and move on, then you can start working on
other things in the kitchen like changing out your trash liner,
throwing away the trash, throwing away anything on the
countertops that needs to be thrown away and or kitchen
table, dining room or shelving. And also when you know, clearing
stuff, small appliances such as toasters, blenders, things that
you don't want to have a permanent home on your
countertop, you can put those away and then do a thorough wipe
down of your whole kitchen, including the surface of your
refrigerator backsplashes. I cleaned my cabinets the other
day, which I have to do probably more often than most, but
something that works great for getting like the little cracks
and scuff Marks and even marker marks paint from my children on
the dining room table is the pink stuff.
And no it's not. I wish I was sponsored by them.
I am not, but that stuff is amazing.
It's called the pink stuff. It's like a paste.
It gets most scuff Marks and hard to clean stuff off of the
walls and it doesn't really mess up the paint if you have cheap
paint in your house or apartment or something.
So I used that yesterday to help me clean the cabinets.
But sometimes we get into a rhythm when we're doing our
maintenance, cleaning our house, reset, where we don't always do
things like the cabinets and maybe we're only wiping down
certain spots that look visibly messy and like just the
countertops or something and not like every nook and cranny of
the stove and backsplashes and floorboards and stuff like that.
So just try to at least every few days do a little bit more of
a thorough wipe down and just wipe down anything and
everything, even if it doesn't necessarily look dirty,
disinfect it. And that way we don't have a lot
of build up of dust and stuff like that inside your cabinets.
Just anything in everywhere that needs to be wiped down behind
your sink sometimes can get build up.
I mean, you're washing food in there.
So definitely your faucet behind the sink.
And then when you guys are finished with picking up
everything, wiping everything down, don't forget to just do at
least a little spot sweep and we'll do our major floor clean
at the end of the episode. But that way we're not going to
track stuff throughout the house.
I always just, if there's visible crumbs on the floor
after I've wiped stuff down, then I just get those up.
That way I'm not just making a bigger mess.
Now moving on to the living room, if you're still working on
your kitchen, completely fine. Just keep working on your
dishes, wiping down or whatever your main focus is.
Like I said, we all have different personal goals.
This is just a guideline. It's just ideas more than
anything and to help kind of keep you on track and give you
an order of operations, but you do what needs to be done in your
house and what needs the most attention in your house.
And that's always going to be different for every person and
individual. We all have the same basic
things that need to be cleaned, but different things that need
to be focused on at as the days pass and different things come
up in our lives. So for the living room, I always
like to start with the focal point of the room, which is the
couch. So let's go ahead and reset the
couch. Do a little spot cleaning if you
need to with some carpet cleaner or fabric cleaner.
If I'm not doing a major, throw all the covers in the washer,
deep clean. Then I just do a little spot
clean, fix my little blankets and pillows and such.
Vacuum underneath the cushions, clean underneath the couch.
If you're physically able to move the couch you can do that.
If you are not, then you can get a broom and just kind of sweep
everything out from under if you have hardwood floors.
And then once we're done with the couch, let's tackle that
floor. Pick up everything from the
floor, starting with trash and then putting things in the other
rooms that go away. Don't be afraid to throw stuff
away. If you see like 50 McDonald's
toys or something, for example, like every little cheap toy that
the kids drag out that they don't really play with
sometimes, especially if they're at school, you can toss it if
they're not going to notice it or donate.
And I always say that decorating, even on, I'm
definitely on a budget when it comes to decorating, but
decorating is a big motivator for me.
So I like getting little cheap decorations based on the
seasons, especially Christmas. And I kind of use that as a
reward system for myself to clean.
So I'm like, if I get all of my chores done and I reset my house
back to the way it's supposed to look and everything looks good,
then I will reward myself with some ornaments or some stockings
or something like that. And that's just something for
me, like I talked about in previous episodes, you can give
yourself a little reward just like we would our kids.
Give ourselves a little reward system.
Like I'm gonna reward myself by watching my favorite show once I
get all such and such done that I've been putting off or I'm
gonna take some me time, do some self-care.
Definitely reward yourself. Positive reinforcement, it
definitely, it seems like it wouldn't work, but it does if I
just tell my brain, you cannot do this until you do this.
But think of about it in a more positive way as more of a reward
than a you're going to get punished by not being able to
watch your favorite show. Because I know in my head that
if I don't do the certain chore that I'm just going to be
stressing about it, thinking about it, thinking about why I
didn't do it. So that definitely works for me.
And once you're done with the floor, then hit your surfaces,
clean your surfaces, throw stuff away, wipe down, put things away
that you're, you know, your coffee tables, you're in tables.
I finally got rid of the big ugly safe in my living room that
I complained about in every episode.
My husband sold it because there was barely anything in it anyway
and it was an eyesore, so thank goodness for that.
Now it's bothering someone else's wife in someone else's
living room and even though I complained about it, I got used
to it. Once it was gone I was like wow,
this makes my living room look so much bigger.
Anyway, once you're done picking up, umm, look from the eye of a
guest or or another person and make sure we're getting clutter.
If you have a problem with other people putting Knickknet or just
random stuff on surfaces that you want to be clear, sometimes
I'll add like a little picture frame or something just to kind
of signal people like this is a place where I don't want things
just sat down and accumulated, but things do It happens.
So let's go ahead and clear those spots.
Wipe down anything like mirrors, windows, anything like that.
And then lastly, I want to talk about a bathroom spruce up
reset. So with your bathroom, just put
away anything you use to get ready with today and make up
hair supplies, hot tools, styling tools, roll them up, put
them away where they go. And any laundry or anything,
move it to the laundry room. And then towels, same thing.
And then let's just do a quick wipe down.
Windex, the mirrors, wipe down the countertops, the knee,
toothpaste, water, anything the kids left, wipe that down.
And once everything is put away, wiped down, you've done a whole
house reset. The things that I do at the end
of a good pick up and wipe down of those areas, I like to a if
you are not done with your laundry cycle yet, set a timer
so you don't forget about it. And hey, good for me, I
remembered this time. And so set a little timer so you
don't forget because I'm very forgetful.
I always forget. Set a timer for sure and then do
a whole house floor clean, starting with the kitchen.
Do a really thorough sweep and mop of your kitchen, dining
room, living area or vacuum. And if you're vacuuming, don't
don't be scared to do a little bit of spot cleaning with some
carpet cleaner. If you do have carpeting.
It makes a big difference because a lot of times we don't
notice things. Like I said about the other day
when I did the deep clean, wiping down random baseboards
and stuff with the pink stuff paste.
It's not stuff you necessarily notice like all the scuffs, but
once you start cleaning, you start noticing all these little
spots. And then once you clean all of
them and all the little scuff marks, it makes a huge
difference. And I noticed a huge difference
when before I was just so used to seeing them I didn't even
really even care or notice. But that those kind of small
things do make a big difference. So I hope you guys get a lot
done today. Don't forget to check out
Cleaning with Jessica, my crime cleaning collaboration podcast.
And as always, happy cleaning guys.