Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, I'm going to
talk you through a whole house speed reset.
So it's time to put in your earbuds or put your headphones
on, maybe put on some shoes if you like to clean and shoes.
And I'm going to talk you through the process of quickly
resetting your home. You also might want to get your
house smelling fresh. Maybe you want to light a candle
or put some fresh wax in the wax warmer, or take out your kitchen
trash and reline it. Whatever you need to do to get
ready to quickly speed through your house and get it clean,
now's the time to do that. Just so you know what's ahead of
this episode, we're going to be starting some laundry.
We're going to quickly clean your kitchen, we're going to
straighten up and spot clean your outer areas, and we're also
going to touch up both of your bathrooms and have you quickly
make your bed and clean your room at the end of the episode.
And then I'll remind you to do a laundry switch or at least set a
timer to do the laundry switch once the cycle is over.
OK, But for now, I want you to be doing whatever you need to do
to gear up for your cleaning session.
Maybe you need to do something to feel presentable.
Wash your face, put on some moisturizer, run a brush through
your hair. Or if you're like me, you also
want to put on a little mascara and some kind of lip balm.
OK, I'm not talking about getting overly fixed up, but I'm
talking about doing those minimums that make you feel good
about yourself because when you look good, you feel good.
And that can definitely energize you.
When I was working a full time job from home a while back, I
made a point to get dressed for the day in kind of a dressy
outfit. It was something comfortable yet
dressy. I wanted to make sure that I I
looked good before starting my job, even on the days when I
didn't have a meeting. And then I'd also do my hair and
moisturize and put my mascara on.
I'd wear like some comfortable palazzo pants and a matching
top. And it it made me feel
professional. While in the same way, when
you're getting ready to clean, you want to feel like you look
nice. Even if you're going to be using
bleach products and you want to wear a pair of sweats and AT
shirt, you can still do your hair.
You can still wash your face, you can still put on a little
makeup if you wear it, and if you hate the feeling of walking
on a gritty or sticky floor barefoot, you might also want to
put on some shoes. I mean, some days when I'm
really lacking motivation, I'll even go as far as to drive to a
gas station and get a bottled coffee or something.
Although I think I've finally nailed down the perfect iced
coffee recipe from home, I need to measure the amounts next time
so that I can post it for you guys, for those of you who are
iced coffee fans, because you know how sometimes when you make
it at home, it's not the same. Well, I think I finally nailed
the recipe, but I'll have to post that on social media soon.
Be sure you're following me on social media.
I'm on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
All right, so the first thing I want you to do now that you're
presentable is strip your bed and start some laundry.
OK, unless you've just recently washed your bedding, let's strip
that and get those sheets and pillowcases washing or that
blanket washing or the comforter washing, whichever item you want
to start with. But fresh bedding is so inviting
to crawl into at night and it makes your bedroom smell good
and it's it's super important. So strip your bed and get that
laundry going. Maybe you need to switch some
laundry from the washer into the dryer so that you can start
washing your bedding. Lately I'm doing a laundry day.
I always say like I don't do one load a day.
I do one load every couple days and I think what was stopping me
from having a laundry day was the fact that I'm not usually
home all day. But lately I've begun to realize
that a lot of the errands I run and things that I do only take a
short time and then I'm back home again.
So the key to getting your laundry done all in one day is
just kind of doing a laundry switch before you leave the
house and then when you get back, doing another laundry
switch and folding a load as soon as it comes out of the
dryer. Believe it or not, it only takes
two or three minutes. And if you're doing that
throughout the day, you can get a lot of laundry done.
And I'm also big on hanging up those heavy blankets and
comforters to dry instead of putting them in the dryer,
because if you're having to restart the dryer multiple
times, one, you're using a lot of electricity, but two, you're
using a lot of time, and then you're not going to get all of
your laundry done in one day. OK, For example, you can hang a
damp comforter over an open interior door of your home.
You could drape it over your dining room chairs, or you could
hang a blanket over a room divider.
I've got one of those like trifold room dividers, and I
often use that to dry my comforters overnight by just
hanging them over the room divider.
And I can still use the room divider in the meantime because
I like to use that to kind of close off my bathroom area when
I'm in the bathtub. And there might as well be a
comforter or blanket hanging over it and drying.
By now you've had time to start that load.
I want you to head to the kitchen and get your dishes
started. Maybe you are planning to empty,
reload and run your dishwasher, but you have a couple of
difficult items that you need to get soaking first.
That's one way of doing it. Or if you're hand washing
everything, you might want to just pre rinse everything, fill
the sink up with hot water and liquid dish soap, and get those
pre rinsed items submerged in that super hot soapy water.
Either way, whether you're soaking an entire load or you're
getting some difficult items, soaking, emptying the
dishwasher, and then putting those easy items directly into
the dishwasher, it's time to get your dishes started.
But you don't need to wash everything just yet.
You need to get your dishwasher emptied, your drying rack
emptied, and either start that first sink load or load the
dishwasher and leave a couple items to soak.
But we're not going to leave them to soak the entire time.
We're going to go back to anything that's soaking at the
end of the cleaning session. I've just found that when I'm
washing everything by hand, I like to pre rinse all of it, get
it all submerged. And then while that water is a
little too hot to put my hands in, I work in the kitchen on
clearing and wiping down surfaces.
And then I come back and wash the dishes once the water is at
a comfortable level. And that way that hot soapy
water has done a lot of the work for me.
OK, just get those dishes started, whatever that means for
you. And then of course, you're going
to start clearing and wiping down surfaces in your kitchen.
And I want you to make sure that you wipe down those cabinet
doors, especially the high touch areas, the inside and outside of
the cabinets near the edges where you open them.
Those can get sticky. So that's something I want you
to pay attention to. I also want you to spray and
wipe down the fronts of your appliances, like the outside of
your, not necessarily just the front, the outside of your
dishwasher, the outside of your oven, your oven door, maybe your
dishwasher front if you have one, the outside of your
microwave using a glass and surface spray.
And I realized some of you might still be working on dishes.
That's fine. You can look at this as just me
telling you what's ahead. You don't need to be completely
In Sync with the episode. I'm just happy that you're
working in the kitchen right now.
OK, so again, you're going to get your dishes pre rinsed and
soaking or loaded into the dishwasher with a few difficult
items soaking and then you're going to clear and wipe down
surfaces. I talked about cabinet doors.
I talked about large appliances. But what about small appliances?
Maybe you need to take part your air fryer and clean it.
Kids are notorious for cooking something in the air fryer and
then just putting that drawer piece of it back in and then you
don't realize it's not been cleaned.
So definitely check on that. If you know, you know, maybe
it's your spouse doing it, but they don't always put that
washable part of the air fryer into the sink.
They just put it back in and you don't realize it's dirty until
you open it up. And of course, you need to shine
up the outside of your appliances, you know, scrub
those, whether it's a toaster, coffee maker, an air fryer.
And when you're cleaning your countertops, hopefully your mom
already taught you this, but you need to pick things up and move
them and wipe under them those items that perpetually belong on
your counter. Maybe it's a cookie jar or your
Keurig. You've got to pick up those
items and wipe under them. I've been talking about the
upper surfaces of your kitchen. We're not going to get to the
floors in this episode, but I'm going to refer you to the Messy
House Makeover series. I'm going to be making another
episode today, which is going to be the Part 2 of Messy House
Makeover, and that episode is going to cover floors.
It's going to cover decluttering some areas, including a
secondary bedroom. It's going to cover deep
cleaning bathrooms, and it's going to cover cleaning your
floors, as in sweeping and or vacuuming and then mopping.
And it might cover some other things too.
But that that's the gist of what the episode's going to be about.
But in this episode, we're tidying and we're cleaning those
upper surfaces. You can always do the floors
after this episode, either while listening to a bonus episode
like I mentioned, or maybe just listening to some music, OK, Or
a podcast about another topic. I definitely like to be
listening to something when I'm cleaning floors and I like to
play it out loud on a speaker. Whereas when I'm doing my
kitchen, cleaning my dishes, I'm more likely to have earbuds in
and listen to a podcast. So maybe you're like me, I like
to boom some music when I'm scrubbing floors.
All right, so we've been talking about the upper surfaces of the
kitchen. We've got the dishes started
with at least some items soaking.
Before you finish those dishes that you have soaking, I want to
you to head to the front entrance of your home and just
start tidying up your outer areas, picking up any stray
items and putting them away. OK, whether it's in your
entryway or your living room or maybe that's, you know, one in
the same. But I want you to start at your
front door and just work your way in to those living areas.
You know, once you've cleaned your entryway or your foyer.
And by clean, I'm talking mainly about tidying right now.
But I also want you to spot clean each room.
For example, you're in your living room, you've straightened
the couch cushions and you notice a couple little spots on
the couch. Get a damp rag and some kind of
cleaning spray, spray it and scrub it.
It only takes a second, but you've been looking at those
spots for a while. Now's the time to take care of
that spot cleaning. Other spot cleaning could be
cleaning the TV screen in your living room or family room.
OK, you just need a micro fiber cloth slightly dampened.
I made a short reel about this. Well, it was a clip from a
podcast episode that I posted on social media.
I think it's on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.
I made a short real about how when you're cleaning a window or
a mirror, the key to getting that street free shine is to
keep wiping it. After you think it's already
dry, you continue wiping it. Same thing applies to your TV
screen. Obviously you're going to need
to scrub any problem areas, but once you've dealt with any
obvious smudges, you want to just wipe it with the damp micro
fiber cloth. But you want to wipe it a little
longer than you think you should to make sure that you remove the
streaks even after you think the liquid is gone, if that makes
sense. Another area to spot clean and a
living room or family room could be a window sill.
Let's dust that, OK, with maybe a disinfecting wipe or a
microfiber cloth or just whatever.
Whatever you use to dust, let's deal with that.
I mentioned the TV and window sill.
Some of you, all you have are couches in your living room.
I remember when a few of our kids were little, my husband and
I kind of had this tradition of moving the coffee table out to
the garage once the baby would start to pull him or herself up
so that they wouldn't bump their head on the edge of the coffee
table or the corner of the coffee table.
We would just put that out in the garage for a few months
until that child was walking steadily and not constantly
toppling over. So you might not have a coffee
table or end table, or maybe you're just kind of minimalist
and you've just got couches. But if you do have a coffee
table or end table, you might want to dust those surfaces.
But the reason I mentioned the TV screen and the window sill is
because I think it's kind of obvious about wiping down your
coffee table and your side tables.
But often we put off or overlook things like the window sills and
TV screens. So I wanted you to do something
that maybe you haven't done in a while.
Hallways. There might not be a lot to do
in the hallways unless there's some clutter.
I mean, sometimes our house, the kids leave a vacuum cleaner
sitting in the hallway and that needs to be put away.
Maybe you have some artwork in the hallway that needs to be
dusted or some family pictures. I'm going to give you just a
couple more minutes to clean those outer areas.
Again, in any living room or family room, you're going to
straighten the couch cushions, you're going to spot clean the
upholstery. You're going to dust any
surfaces. I'm talking upper surfaces like
TV, screen, tables, windowsills. You might even want to dust your
blinds. If you're just looking for
something to do right now, it's always a good idea to just go
into a room, look around and determine what needs to be done.
Try to look at your house through someone else's eyes.
Think like you're a maid being paid to clean that house and
you're like, what else do I need to do?
Oh, I never dusted the ceiling fan.
Let me do that. See what I mean?
You want to be as observant as someone who was doing a job for
someone else, and someone's going to come behind that person
and inspect their work. It's a different level, isn't
it? But I want you to be observant
in your own home. And sometimes that can be
difficult to do. We get into a rut of just kind
of putting out fires, Like, we've got to get this floor
picked up and run a vacuum. And, you know, we forget about
things like dusting the blinds or dusting the ceiling fan.
OK. Other bonus tasks in a living
area could be wiping out wiping down switch plates or doors or
door frames or door handles or walls for that matter.
I don't know what you've got going on in your house.
The other day there were some mysterious spots on our wall and
my husband had to break out the touch up paint and just paint
them because when I tried to scrub them, they didn't come
off. I don't know if it was paint,
hair dye, I don't know what it was, but it needed to be
painted. Let's move on, OK?
The next thing I want you to do is head to your bathrooms.
But you might want to get some supplies together.
Maybe some disinfecting wipes, glass cleaning spray, microfiber
cloth and another rag or maybe just some paper towels, whatever
you have on hand for touching up the bathrooms.
If you have something to put into the toilet bowl and give it
a swish, you can do that like a toilet bowl cleaner.
Squirt that in, grab the toilet bowl brush and just give give
the inside of that bowl of swish and then you can sanitize the
exterior parts of the toilet. Now, this isn't a super deep
clean where you're going to be down on your hands and knees.
That's going to be covered in the messy House Makeover series.
Or of course, you can Scroll down to a recent episode that's
free where I had to clean the bathrooms.
If if you're not able to subscribe.
But I do appreciate when someone goes the extra mile and
subscribes to the bonus content. And you're not going to be on my
full my full program unless you subscribe.
But there are other ways to support the show if you don't
want a recurring charge. I'll talk more about that in a
minute, but. Maybe you're going to touch up
the toilet seat and the flusher handle and the rim with a
disinfecting wipe. Or maybe you're going to use a
cleaning spray and paper towels, but you're going to touch up
that toilet as if you were having short notice guests
coming by who probably won't use the bathroom, but they might.
OK, just a light touch up and of course, using different wipes or
different, different paper towels.
I want you to clean the sink and vanity area and the bathroom
mirror. I mean, that can go a long way
touching up the mirror, counter, sink, toilet.
And then of course, you want to make sure that there's toilet
paper and a fresh hand towel. Pick up any stray items from the
floor or any items from the vanity that need to be put away.
Obviously you'll need to put those away before you wipe down
that bathroom countertop, but we're going to just do a quick
touch up and then we're going to head to the other bathroom.
Assuming you have two bathrooms and do the same thing.
Some of you might have just one bathroom, some of you might have
three. But since 2 is kind of the the
medium number of bathrooms to have the average, I assume that
you have two. And maybe one of your bathrooms
has more clothes and towels on the floor because it's that
neglected bathroom. Either it's the one the kids are
using or it's when you and your husband are using.
But often 1 bathroom can be a little messier than the other.
Let's get both of those bathrooms tidied up and touched
up, so to speak. Don't forget to give that other
toilet bowl a swish to keep that bowl white.
By the way, if you're having trouble keeping your bowl white,
you could have hard water and you might need to use a pumice
stone during your deep cleaning sessions.
But again, this is just a touch up, OK?
And again, after this episode, if you're on a roll, you can
listen to Messy House Makeover Part 2 to deep clean your
bathrooms. They'll be a little bit of a
delay in this coming out, but by the time most of you hear this,
Messy House Makeover Part 2 will already exist as a bonus
episode. And maybe you want to listen to
Messy House Makeover Part 1, but Part 2 kind of goes nicely with
this episode that I'm recording right now.
It kind of supplements it as far as the things that we don't get
to in this episode. By the way, special thanks to
those who are already supporting the show by paying a monthly fee
to unlock bonus episodes. You can do that through Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, or Patreon. But another way you can support
the show just with a one time purchase is by purchasing
products through me. OK, I'll put my link in bio.
I'm an Amazon affiliate and I'm also a Mary Kay beauty
consultant. I'm really pleased with their
skin care. I've been religiously doing a
skin care regimen morning and night and I use the Mary Kay.
So I figure I might as well make a small Commission by telling
you about it. And so all those links will be
in the description. And then a way to support the
show without spending a penny is to follow Clean With Me podcast
on whichever social media app you use.
Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or just click on the
5th star on whichever podcast app you're listening on and give
this show a 5 star rating. It would be greatly appreciated.
OK, hopefully by now you've touched up the bathrooms.
If you need a little more time, pause the episode again.
It was just a quick touch up and not a deep clean.
I recently made a bathroom cleaning episode and I'm going
to talk about it again in Messy House Makeover Part 2, which is
bonus episode for paying subscribers.
Now what I want you to do is head back to the kitchen and
wash any dishes that you have soaking.
It could be a full sink load or it could be just a couple
difficult items. If you're using a dishwasher,
grab your dishwand or your sponge with a rough side and a
soft side and start going to town washing those dishes.
If you don't have a drying rack, just lay out a towel.
I'm not asking you to dry things and put them away.
You can do that later. I'm, I'm pretty big on emptying
the drying rack and dishwasher before dinner.
You know, ideally in the morning, but at least before we
start to prep dinner. It's my teenage daughter's job,
but I want it done before anybody goes in to prep dinner.
That way it's easy to clean as we go when we're cooking and
washing the items that we use to prepare the meal.
So just a thought there for now, you can just have things air
drying on a towel and that's just fine.
Let's quickly wash those dishes over the next couple of minutes.
And then the last thing we're going to do when you're done
with those dishes is make your bed.
You know you might be washing bedding, but if you have an
alternate sheet and pillowcases and comforter to put on it, you
can quickly remake the bed. If not, no worries, you can put
it to put it back together later.
Just maybe set a timer. Maybe you need to actually dry
your comforter if you don't have another one you can use in the
meantime. But if you have more than one
blanket comforter for your bed, I I highly recommend just
hanging up those items and letting them air dry.
That way you can keep doing those laundry switches
throughout the day instead of having to redry that same
comforter that just won't get dry.
I guess an exception would be if you live in an extremely humid
area. Definitely.
Our blankets and things dry super quickly here because it's
the air is dry most of the time. We live in a desert and again,
if this is an all day, you know be be washing those dishes.
But if this is an all day laundry day for you, be sure to
time your errands around it. Meaning do a laundry switch just
before you leave and then again as soon as you get back.
Like if you're picking up kids from school or something.
You don't have to stay home all day to get caught up on laundry.
You just need to keep doing those laundry switches and
folding and putting away each load as it comes out.
It literally takes two or three minutes to fold a load of
laundry. It might take a little longer to
actually hang up the items and put them in the drawers, but
just to fold them and lay them out on your coffee table or your
freshly made bed. However you do things really
doesn't take long at all and I hope you're getting your house
under control during this episode.
But if you have the time and energy to do more, listen to
another episode or just listen to some music while you clean
the floors. Hopefully you knocked out those
dishes. Isn't it amazing how fast you
can get your dishes done when you do a good effective pre
rinse and soak? If you're not done though, no
judgement here. Maybe you were facing a dish
master today and you need to pause the episode, but a lot of
you just knocked out that sink full of dishes.
OK, so again, lastly, you're going to make your bed if you
have some bedding you can use, unless you're just waiting for
the stuff that you have washing and then just quickly pick up
your bedroom floor. OK, you've tidied up your living
areas, you've cleaned the kitchen, your your entryways
picked up. Now let's pick up your bedroom.
And then I want you to clean a couple of problem surfaces.
Maybe a dusty TV stand or a fingerprinted mirror in your
bedroom. It doesn't take long at all to
take care of those small things, but the little things like that
are what can make your room look really clean.
You know, maybe you don't even notice it on a conscious level,
but clean mirrors and furniture that's been dusted makes your
room shine. OK.
And of course, get the floor picked up, but I feel like when
you make a bed, it automatically causes you to pick up your
bedroom floor. It's just funny how that works.
I hope you got a lot done during this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate each and every one
of you. And as always, happy cleaning.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.