Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Home Cleaning Tips & Motivation | Clutterbug Podcast # 18

Episode Date: May 1, 2017

Hi ClutterBugs! Todays podcast is all about where to get started whether you are drowning in lcutter or just looking for some motivation for your daily chores! I also share some quick and easy cleaning tips! You can orde rmy new book Real Life Organizing here: http://amzn.to/2oZpyOf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're going to actually talk about some of my favorite cleaning techniques for speed cleaning. So keeping your house pretty clean with the minimal amount of time required. And I talk about this all the time, but I'm just going to talk about it again. And hopefully maybe there's new things that can inspire you or motivate you. If nothing else, you know, when I listen to a podcast about cleaning and organizing, I always end. the podcast with a little bit more motivation to do that mundane thing that I've been regretting or haven't wanted to do. So hopefully you guys are feeling the same way, a little bit of motivation. I wanted to talk about first, I wanted to talk about something that I noticed with a lot of my

clients that I had. So I haven't organized actual people's homes in over a year, but I was working with clients for a few years. They're organizing their home. And I noticed the same thing. with almost every client. And that was they were all just generally pretty unhappy with their home. I even had clients that had beautiful, like, McMansions, as I called them, like, big, beautiful homes, brand new homes, and still they were really unhappy with them. And obviously, the common theme with all of these homes were that they were cluttered, which is why, obviously, they hired, or called me, a professional organizer to come in.

and one of the rooms that every single one of my clients was really unhappy with was always the kitchen and you know whether they had brand new cabinets or like original from the 40s 50s 60s covers they were still really you know unhappy with the kitchen no matter what it looked like or what the decor was and usually the reason was because the counters were really messy and really cluttered and I hear the same thing I hear I don't have enough storage I have no place to put this stuff. I don't have enough counter space to really cook. I like cooking, but I just never do because I don't have the space to prepare the meals that I have, so on and so forth. And unfortunately, the kitchen is, you know, it's work. It is, whether it's preparing meals or doing the dishes after

eat, the kitchen is the one room in the house that really does require the most work and effort to keep clean. Even if you just have soup and sandwiches and you have a family of five like I do, the kitchen can look destroyed. I mean, let's be honest, the kids can destroy it with three bowls of cereal in the morning. It doesn't take long for a kitchen to look really messy and to look really dirty with dishes or whatever else. And that can make you just not love it. It can make you feel like you don't want to be in there and that's your least favorite room in the house. So because of that reason, there's a few things that I really suggest doing in your kids. just to make you like it more because if you like it more you're going to have the motivation to keep it clean. So one of the number one things I really suggest doing is doing the clear

counter challenge and unfortunately this isn't just clearing off your counter and putting everything in cabinets underneath or in cupboards or wherever because almost everybody just doesn't have the cupboard space to do that. And the reason is our cabinets are already full and they're full with things that we're not using on a day-to-day basis. So here's what I'm going to suggest that you do first. Before you even start clearing off the counter, I want you to open up all your cabinet doors and look for those things that you use less than once a week. And you'll probably notice the things first that you use like hardly ever, like your giant soup pots, your roasting pans, perhaps your blender. If you have, you know, a

up blender and an emulsion blender and a mixer. I mean, really look at what one of those you're using all the time. And then I'm not recommending you get rid of them. Don't worry. Just relocate them. So relocate them to a hall closet, a spare bedroom, the basement, the garage, maybe get a, you know, a shelf in your laundry room. The point is the things that those kitchen appliances that are used very rarely should be not kept in your kitchen if you have a small or even a medium-sized kitchen. Even my kitchen, I mean, it's not big by any means, but it certainly isn't small. But I don't have the space for my soup pots and my roasting pans and my big platters. I store all of those downstairs.

So that's the first thing you do to really get a handle on it is take the things out that you are not using all the time. Just get them out and relocate them somewhere else in your home. Now you're going to have space for your toaster and whatever hell sort of thing. We do keep our coffee maker because we use that every day, but also because it's a pain to take a coffee maker out and put it on the counter and take it down. But a toaster is so easy. So pop that toaster inside of a plastic tote or container.

So it catches all the crumbs. So while you're moving it, you don't have to worry about crumbs everywhere and crubs inside your counter. so pop that inside and store your toaster under your counter find a spot too for if you if you have a kitchen where you stack a lot of papers or kids stuff i don't know to do notes those type of things think about emptying out the drawer or cabinet directly that's underneath that and have you know a spot to pile those like to do papers in your kitchen drawer or get a pretty basket like a sunday basket for your papers and keep that on your kitchen counter to really contain the clutter so it doesn't spread all through. Another thing that I see a lot, a lot on counters is food or food products like

bread. People like set their bread and their buns and all their other products like that in a pile on the counter or they've got piles of fruits and vegetables and everything on the counter. First I'm going to suggest that you put your bread inside a cabinet or a cupboard or a bread box or something like that because it's going to stay a little bit fresher that way. And then if you have a lot of fruits and vegetables, invest in one of those tower, you know, those things that stack, those bowls that are stacked on top of each other, just because that way it's going to take advantage of the vertical space and give you more counter. So find a spot for the bread of the chips. Oh my gosh, so many clients of mine keep potato bags of potato chips

out on their counter, all those type of things. Keeping that there is taking away from, first of all, your counter space to prepare meals, but also just it's making your kitchen look messy. And if your kitchen looks messy and dirty, you're not going to like it very much. And if you don't like it, you're not going to want to spend as much time in there. And you're not going to have the motivation to keep it clean. So keeping literally the minimum, the bare, bare minimum, minimum. your counter is a secret to having a clean kitchen all the time. The other thing is when you've done

the clear counter challenge, it takes a fraction of a second to clean the kitchen. You know, once you've loaded the dishwasher or washed the dishes by hand, especially if you're in the UK, so many of you don't have a dishwasher over there. My listeners in the UK are always like, what the heck? I don't have a dishwasher. But once you've done that, to wipe the counters down takes seconds because there's nothing to move. There's nothing on the counters that are taking up that space. So clean up duty, if you have a place for all the stuff that normally sits all over the counter, if you find a spot for that under the counters or away, it's so much easier to keep the kitchen clean. And not only that is it going to, it's going to look so much better. And so when I have organized clients homes,

after we do just light rearranging, I mean, it's not a huge, I'm not recommending you take everything out and reorganize all your cabinets. You don't. You don't. You don't. have to if you take the time to clear off your counter and find homes for all of those things that are currently taking up space you're going to see a dramatic difference in the look of your home and so so I've had so many clients just like fall in like just their jaw drops they fall in love with their they're like oh my gosh you know I took all the pictures off their fridge oh my lord I have a pet peeve with pictures and notes and magazines and it's all over a fridge.

I would create a little bulletin board, maybe on the side of the fridge where you can't say. Inside the cabinet, I like putting cork with sticky on the back and putting those inside your cupboard, so you can use those as bulletin boards inside your cupboard doors, inside the doors of your cabinet. And, you know, the look on people's faces when they see their kitchen,

when it's really clean and clutter-free, it's always shock and all. And so I recommend that you give that, try today. So let's quickly talk about, okay, so your kitchen's clean and you've got that sort of out of way. It's like the kicking off point for cleaning your whole home and keeping it sort of really clean. Because the kitchen gets dirty the most, right? And that's the one that we have to do the most effort in on a day-to-day basis. Once you sort of have that down pat and you have that pretty clutter-free, it's going to cut your nightly cleaning routine if you have one into half. So if you don't have one,

do the kitchen first because your nightly cleaning routine is going to be really, really quick. So here's mine. Now, it doesn't include dishes because right after I eat dinner, Joe sort of gets the kids ready for bed, and I do the dishes and clean the kitchen. So we're talking about after the kids go to bed before I have my mommy Joe time or my mommy alone time, let's be honest. Sometimes that's the best. The first thing I do is just wipe the kitchen again because the kids have probably had a bedtime snack or whatever.

we, Joe likes to leave drinking glasses. He gets like a glass of water and uses like four different glasses all night long. So I just make sure the dishwasher is totally loaded. I wipe the counters and I start the dishwasher. Then I do a quick house clutter pickup and this is just on really the main living areas. I run around if there's random kid toys, which there usually is, dog toys, maybe random clothes here and there. I quickly, quickly, quickly do a quick tidy up. And because I do this every single night, it's never bad. Like, it's never an hour cleanup. It's like a five-minute cleanup. If I waited and only did this once a week, oh my goodness, it would be a disaster and I would have so much to pick up. But because I'm only doing it at night, once a day, it's not that bad at all. The next thing I do is a

quick bathroom wipe down. Now, I have one product, usually a glass cleaner. Right now I really like method glass cleaner or Bon Amu. which is like this foaming glass cleaner. Neither of those have vinegar in them, so I can basically use them on the countertops. I can use them on, you know, the sink, the toilets, and marble or granite and not worrying about damaging it, like vinegar may.

And so I use one product and I just wipe the counters really quick and I wipe the toilet and I wipe the floor around the toilet because I have a four-year-old boy. So you got to do that. And that's it. And that, again, is like a five-minute thing. Last but not least, I do a quick spot mop, especially in the kitchen, just with a quick mop, a spray mop is what I use just to quickly get any goo or any yucky stuff that could be on the floor.

And that's it. And that nighttime cleaning routine is so quick because the kitchen is already always very clutter-free. Okay, so other quick cleaning tips, I really want to recommend that you guys take a second sometime this week to clean your dishwasher. I don't know when the last time you've cleaned your dishwasher is, but it is going to make your dishes so much cleaner. I mean, how many times, I don't know, maybe this doesn't happen to you, but how many times do you go to unload the dishwasher and something's still dirty? And you're like, what the heck?

So you're just like rewashing the same dish 50 gizzling times or you have to take it out and hand wash the glasses because they have spots on them. And a lot of the time, the problem is, well, you're not rinsing the dishes properly. That's some of the problem. but even when I've rinsed the dishes really well, I'm still having sort of that splatter on. So what's happening is sometimes your dishwasher isn't draining 100%, or it's not draining fast enough. So when the rinse cycle comes after it's drained out, like first it washes them like the dirty stuff off and then it washes them again and then it rinses them, right? So first it washes the dirty stuff off.

Then the second one, if the dirty water with the food particles hasn't completely drained, before the next cycle comes on, you're going to still have food particles in that cycle as well. And then again, if it's not draining completely, because it's not draining fast enough before the next one comes in, you're going to have food particles in the final rinse too. So that's why there'll be spots or food or whatever still left on. And so a way to really help that is just to help your dishwasher drain faster. It gets clogged. It gets clogged with food particles and all the other stuff. So you don't want to use a drain-o or something like that because you eat off of those dishes.

You put them in your mouth. You don't want to use any toxins. So instead I want you to get a box of baking soda and really coat down in where the drain is. So where it drains down, I really want you to coat that whole area with baking soda. Then you're going to want to go ahead and add vinegar over top. So if it's going to bubble and fizz and bubble and fizz, you get the idea of bubble and fizz. and then while it's doing that, I want you to shut the dishwasher, and I want you to hit the cancel or drain button.

And that's going to open up the drain and suck that baking soda and vinegar down into the pipe. I just run that drain for like a few seconds just to draw that down. Then I open it back up again, and I'm going to add more vinegar, and then really, really, really, really hot water, and then do the same thing. shut it and push the drain. Again, to pull that baking soda and vinegar down, and then I'm going to stop it and I'm just going to let it sit. So I'm going to stop the drain after it's pulled it down for a few seconds, and I'm going to let it sit, probably 10 or 15 minutes, open it up, put more vinegar in it again, and then let it sit a few minutes, and then just do a rinse cycle. If your dishwasher doesn't

have a rinse cycle, no big deal. Just do like a regular no-soap cycle of your dishwasher. but if you have a quick rinse cycle, you're just going to rinse that baking soda and that vinegar away. And that really works to not only like freshen your dishwasher, clean it out, but it really helps to unclog the pipes. And so, unclog all those food particles so that it's draining faster, so you're not having that food splatter problem. So definitely, you guys, give that a try. And, oh, here's another thing. I get asked all the time, how do you clean water? walls without leaving smears. So if you have little kids like I do, for some reason, they like to put their hands on the walls. I'm always like when they're going down the stairs, I'm like,

use the railing. Why are you dragging your hands along the walls while you walk down the hall or walk down the stairs? It drives me nuts. And the reason it's so annoying is when I go to wash the walls, when the light hits them right, when you wash a wall, you can see the like smear marks. you can see where you've washed the wall. So a quick way of getting around this is to actually use a glass cleaner. Again, not one with vinegar, but like an all-natural glass cleaner that doesn't have vinegar or even Windex really lightly. Not on the walls.

You guys don't spray the wall. You spray the cloth, like a microfiber cloth. And then you want an extra microfiber cloth right nearby to buff to dry. So you want a dry microfiber cloths. So you want one that you want to dampen with, you have two microfiber cloths, one that you dampen with a glass cleaner or a multi-purpose cleaner,

but I really like using a glass cleaner because it's guaranteed that it's not going to leave some sort of film or residue. Sometimes a multi-purpose cleaner will leave a light residue whereas the glass cleaner will not. And you're going to dampen your microfiber rag, and then you're going to clean the area, buff it in circles if you have to,

and immediately dry it with the dry one. and buffing and buffing and buffing, leave no water behind. It's that water left behind that really leaves that sort of streaky look on your wall when you've hand washed it. And then just to fade it out, I always buff dry up and around the edges to the whole area, just in case there is some sort of like, sometimes you can like sort of wash off the sheen a little bit, but that fades it in so it's not really obvious when you buff the edges of where you've just cleaned.

So that is my scuff on the wall or dirty fingerprints on the wall, especially if you have eggshell, a paint finish, it really shows. I mean, if you have, you know, a sort of a sheen paint finish or you're using like the doors and trim paint finish that's really shiny, you're not going to see anything when you wash it. But if you have a flat or eggshell, even some satin paints, you can really see where you've washed it and it looks terrible, terrible, terrible, especially when the light hits it right way. So that is a cool way to make sure your wall, that your paint stays intact and still looks gorgeous and freshly painted while still cleaning the walls.

So, my friends, those are some quick teeny cleaning tips that I wanted to share with you today. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I just have to say, of course, that this podcast is brought to you by Mua. brought to you by me and if you want to show me some support I have a brand new book out called real life organizing it's available at almost every bookstore on the shelves or online on Amazon or any other online bookstore so again it's real life organizing thank you guys so much and I'll see you next time