The Lazy Genius Podcast - #408 - Three Surprising Steps to a Clean House

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

If you think like a Lazy Genius, there are three surprising steps to a clean house. They’re a short little row of dominoes that impact how you see your home and what you do to keep it clean. And maybe your definition of clean will shift a little, too.  Helpful Companion Links Order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy. Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, you're listening to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi, and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 408, three surprising steps to a clean house. So the phrase clean house probably brings up a lot of different things for different people. You might experience like sudden feelings of comparison or judgment, maybe even shame, because you're like, like, well, this episode in for me, maybe you work full time, you have multiple children, you have a super busy schedule. So cleaning the house is like the last thing you want to do on a Saturday. Maybe cleaning falls on your shoulders alone. Or maybe you live in a fixer upper and so everything's always covered in dust, you know, so you kind of always feel behind. Maybe you live with a habitually messy person who has a different take on a clean house than you do.

Maybe you're home with tiny children who make a mess like it's their actual job. basically anyone talking about a clean house is not always welcome and if that is true of you right now maybe this episode will actually be a breath of fresh air because guess what i'm not really going to talk about the cleanliness of your house if you think like a lazy genius there are three surprising steps to a clean house they are this short little row of dominoes that impact how you see your home and what you might personally do. do to keep it clean. And I think your definition of clean will shift a little as well. Okay. But before we get into these steps, these three steps, I want to debunk something real quick. Messiness is not a sign

of being more real. Messiness is not the only sign of a well-lived life. It's a real slippery slope that we have gone down in recent years. And I think we need to slow our role. I was chatting with a couple of folks recently, and the guy I was talking to, he mentioned this song that he loves about these two houses. And one house has like a tidy yard or something with nothing out of place.

And then the other house has like toys and, you know, bicycles and all kinds of things in the yard. And the song says something like, you know, the messy house is the one with life. And this guy was talking about how like he, doesn't tidy up his yard because he loves the message of that song. He loves that mess communicates that there is life there. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. And you may feel the same. But there is a slippery slope here that we need to pay attention to. Because if you are a person

who enjoys a tidy yard or a tidy home or whatever, you might believe that somehow you're being fake to keep one. Or if you're a person who leaves the toys and buy them, you're a person who leaves the toys and out, you might unknowingly judge the person who's putting them away. I talked about this pretty extensively in my first book, The Lazy Genius Way. And I'm actually just going to read a quick part of that book now, because without this foundation, everything that I say after this, it will not land the same way. So I'm just going to read you this excerpt from chapter one, how to think like a lazy genius of my book, The Lazy Genius way. This section that I'm reading is titled the struggle isn't the only thing that's real. Our culture is obsessed with being real,

but we've been using the wrong measuring stick. As I type these words, my middle son is home with a stomach bug and he and my daughter are watching television because I'm tired of talking to them. I haven't showered in a couple of days and I'm in a fight with my husband. If I shared that on Instagram, you might think I love her for being so real. But what if I shared a day when my kids and I were playing soccer outside. Dinner was prepped by 4 o'clock and I was wearing makeup. Would I still be real? Yes, I would. And so would you. I'm all for letting go of perfection. But we have somehow conflated order with being fake. I do it too. I've seen the cute mom pushing a cart of docile children and full-priced Joanna Gaines items through Target and thought, sure, her stomach is flat and her kids

they're eating cucumbers instead of goldfish and she's buying buying everything I want, but she probably has an eating disorder and credit card debt, so I'm doing okay. I want to stop judging women who have it together, assuming they have something to hide. I want to stop applauding chaos as the only indicator of vulnerability. Your struggles and insecurities are not lined up next to mine. pageant style, we need to stop trying to outreal each other. That life is why you and I are tired and we can let it go. So the next time you find yourself looking for flaws and seemingly perfect people hoping it'll make you feel better, don't. Telling yourself you're better than someone is just

as harmful as telling yourself you're worse. We don't get to measure a person's authenticity based on how real her struggle is. That scale is broken. You can be real when life is an order and when it's falling apart. Life is beautifully both. So this, that excerpt, this idea is an essential part of today's episode. If you view cleanliness or messiness as some sort of moral value, you're in trouble. If you view it through the lens of vulnerability and authenticity, you're in trouble.

We push each other away when we start to measure ourselves by cleanliness, and that's in both directions. A messy house is no more real than a clean one. We all get to decide. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sit. Play. Post.

Taste. View. and enjoy via rail, love the way. Aw isn't something we need to travel for, it's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw,

a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcast. casts. So let's all agree that cleanliness is not a sign of excellence, nor of pretending, or of thinking that we're better than other people, right? Let's all agree that messiness is not a match of honor. It's just stuff and dirt. Everyone has different takes on it, and that's okay. It's good even. We all need to see this differently. So with that in mind, let's look at these three steps to a

clean house. It's these three things in this order. Season, expectations, and rhythm. Season, expectations, and rhythm. First, you have to name your season of life. Second, you have to adjust your expectations to match that season of life. And third, you begin a rhythm that supports both. Now, we usually do this backwards. Whenever we're overwhelmed by our home or suddenly get weird about our home being like a certain type of clean, we start with the rhythm, right, with routines even, with huge structure, chore charts and dry raceboards and new buckets of supplies and downloadable PDFs from cleaning experts on Instagram. We start at the end of what I'm teaching today, which is why we don't keep it up. We're starting in the wrong place. You have to take

these three steps in this order so that you can approach your home with a kind, helpful, manageable lens. Otherwise, you'll just keep starting over in a state of discontentment. And these three steps, they flow into each other pretty quickly here. Like we're not even going to go through a huge breakdown of each one. Your season of life will absolutely impact your expectations of what a clean house means. And if your expectations remain high, which you're allowed to do, they can stay high if that matters to you. Then your rhythms, that third part, your rhythms will have to step up their game in order to balance out your season of life. If your expectations are not on par with your season of life, then your rhythms will also not be on par. You'll have to work a little

harder. And some people will choose to and others won't. Both choices are equally valid. The crux here is to identify if you've been holding expectations that are higher than you'd like without realizing it. These three steps clarify a lot of the unease that we feel around a clean house. So which of these three is out of whack. Have you not really named your season? Are you trying to clean your house like you did in a different season of life? Are your expectations way too high for your energy or your margin right now? Is your rhythm just not working for the season of life that you have? All three of these need to be in alignment in order for a clean house based on whatever definition you're using for clean needs to be in order to be a manageable, realistic part of your life. Okay, let's look at a few

here to kind of flesh this out of it. If you are in a season of life where you're home with little kids, that season will absolutely inform your expectations of what clean means on a regular basis. Maybe you have lowered your expectations a bit, you know? You don't expect your floors and surfaces to be empty of tiny toys and forgotten sippy cups and various toddler detritus. You're expecting that that's just the way it is. And you expect that day in and day out in this season. When we expect something to be true, we are less bothered by it. Frustrations come from unmet expectations. So expecting that your toddlers will not leave a million things in their wake, it is going to frustrate you because they will. Now, if you expect that your toddlers will, you will,

kids will leave things on your floors and surfaces all the time, but you want those surfaces to still stay more empty and clear, then you will have to up your rhythm game big time to match that, which you can absolutely do. You will be in a fairly regular state of picking things up, and if the clear surfaces mean that much to you, then you can do that. But recognize that you need to match your expectations with the energy that you're willing and able to give. If you don't have the energy, you need to adjust your expectations, not hack your energy. Or hack your kid's behavior. If they're two years old and you're expecting them to behave like they're 12, I've done that

before. Expectations here are crucial. Let's say you're in a season of life where your job is demanding and you don't get off work until after dinner most nights. It's probably a lot to expect yourself to then do chores every evening after you've already come home and you've made a late dinner and cleaned that up. And really at this point, you just want to like relax and go to bed. So maybe because of your season of life, expecting yourself to do daily chores every evening because you think that's the rhythm you have to do or maybe that you once did in a different season of life when you had a

different job. Expecting that is making you overwhelmed and feeling bad about yourself because you're not meeting expectations. Your rhythm needs to match your season of life and the expectations you have of your clean home during that season of life. It's like it's like three-part harmony. You want the three things to sing together and if one note changes, chances are they all have to change a little bit or there's going to be some dissonance. Before I had kids, my season of life was like, it was rather unencumbered. I was married.

I had a house. I had a part-time job. I had a community. But I had a good amount of free time. My season of life really was nesting in a new house and like figuring out how to be a married adult. Like do adult things, paying bills and figuring out what's a, what's property tax? I didn't know that stuff.

Now on paper, there wasn't a lot hindering my ability to clean my house. And on paper, I could have high expectations of what clean meant if I wanted to. And I could have more detailed rhythms to accomplish that because of the time available to me. Now, this season of my life was also before I started therapy. It was before I had some friendships that loved me out of my, perfectionistic ways. It was before I started the lazy genius. So even though I did have the margin in my season of life to have higher expectations and more specific detailed rhythms, I still rode that horse way too hard. This story has come up a couple times in various contexts,

but the first time that my pal and author slash podcaster Emily P. Freeman came to my house in this season of life, she noticed that I had an annual cleaning. schedule on my fridge. It was a literal years worth of cleaning tasks that I would do every single day. Baseboards, blinds, dusting days, vacuuming days, bathroom days, the whole nine. For a whole year, every day had something. There were no rest days. It was chaos. I mean, it was ordered, but it was chaos. I created it after like assimilating cleaning articles in Real Simple Magazine and Martha Stewart's magazines. It was a whole thing. So even though I had a season of life that could handle higher expectations and more detailed rhythms. I still went too far. Now, why is that? Why did I go too far?

Because maybe not everyone would see it that way. Maybe everyone would not see that. Your early schedule is going too far. It wasn't too far if you care a lot about a predictable schedule and you don't want to think, you know, if you have the time and energy to follow through, I guess. And especially if you don't see it as a mark of being a better person. In many ways, that was my deal. I thought that being hyper-organized, was something I should do and because it gave me a sense of faux control over my own life. I was highly prepared, highly prepared in everything. But without the balance of noticing and adjusting based on my season of life like I teach in the plan. I was out of balance. I had wonky expectations and that meant I had a cleaning schedule on my fridge that I barely followed

because it was all or nothing. And once you miss one day of the year, you might as well miss them all. My mindset around this was not healthy. I absolutely saw cleanliness as a badge of honor. I was hiding something. That doesn't mean everyone is, though. So these three steps of naming your season,

adjusting your expectations, and then starting a rhythm that supports them, where there's balance and reason and compassion, that is how you move toward an actual clean house. But your season of life and your expectations will change what clean means to you. You don't need more ways to figure out how to clean everything. I think you need to name what clean is in different rooms even. When you keep these three things in harmony with each other,

You're able to see your home and what cleanliness means to you more clearly. For example, I love, love to vacuum my kitchen floor. I mean, I don't love the vacuuming, but I love for it to be vacuumed. I do it most nights after the kitchen is clean. And Cause is usually one who cleans the kitchen, but I go back behind him and I vacuum because it doesn't matter as much to him as it does to me. And that's great. but I will I will vacuum most nights and it's because a clean kitchen floor makes so much more

than the kitchen floor feel clean to me. The purpose of that cleanliness, it's not about being impressive. It's not about, you know, being able to eat off the floor or some like arbitrary old school measurement. When my kitchen counters are wiped off and my floor does not have visible crumbs on it, My kitchen to me, it feels warm and cozy. It feels like I tucked it in for the night. It did good work today.

And now it's going to go to sleep and it's cozy as PJs and it's going to sleep well until tomorrow. Cleaning is soulful if you let it be. It speaks far beyond germs and order. But you only get to experience that definition and feeling of clean when you remember that cleanliness and messiness, both are not wrapped up in morality or in identity. So in closing up, this is very simple, really. You might be like, oh, man, I wanted like chores or hacks or orders of things. You could go find those.

But what you need now is a mindset. So as you start thinking about your own home, even in this season of like spring cleaning, whether you choose to participate in it or not, but a lot of us are like get in the itch maybe to clean some things out. A lot of influencers are showing you orders to do it. You can follow those orders. But remember that your season of life matters and it will automatically impact your expectations of your home. And only then do you consider what rhythms might lead you to a personal level and definition of clean throughout your home. that honor both your season and your expectations.

Season, expectations, rhythm. Don't get those out of order. Or you'll get big black trash bag energy again. I want to burn your house down. We don't want that. And those are the three surprising steps to a clean house. Okay, a quick request if you're up for it. We do not rely on algorithms or going viral around here.

here without it sounding like we're pressuring you. We actually rely on you guys to share the show and even books, you know, books of mine that you read or anything at all that has resonated with you, sharing it with your friends and family. That is how we have always grown. And that's how I would like things to remain. Word of mouth is wildly impactful. And it lasts way longer than anything else. So thank you for doing that already. So many of you do and it means the world. One tangible way that you can share this podcast in particular is by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That's the only real podcast app that supports reviews. So even if you use another app to listen, which I do the same, it would mean so much for you to leave a quick

review about how this podcast has helped you. That shows that social proof, you know, that the show does help people. We all know how much reviews can matter. but a wave of reviews, it makes us more visible to new listeners who are looking for a show to help them in real ways. We're not a flashy title show where I promise to change your life with these five steps. I don't think life works like that, to be honest. There's only slow, steady, compassionate movement in a direction that matters to you, and that's less flashy than big promises. So any nudge that we can get to be more visible to folks who are looking for a good self-help show, it is quite welcome. So if you have 90 seconds to quickly open up your Apple podcast app, you search

the lazy genius podcast, and then click write a review, that would be so lovely and so appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Mary B. Mary writes, I have a hard time remembering to replace and wash hand towels in my bathrooms, and they used to go weeks before I would replace them with a clean one. Eek. Now I have two for each bathroom. And each week when I fold my towel laundry, I just replace the dirty one with the clean one and I put the dirty one in the laundry room. It seems simple, but now my hand towels are getting replaced weekly. Listen, this is what I'm talking about in this whole episode, okay? This is the kind of thing that is so important for us all to hear.

we are believing a lie if we think that we're supposed to just automatically have rhythms for every single thing and everything is going to be like peak clean at all times. We're also believing a lie if we think we're the only person who struggles with things that feel simple, especially in regards to our home. I didn't read Mary's whole message to you, but the beginning is apologetic in that direction. She's like, this seems so simple for something that doesn't seem that hard to do. Y'all, we all have those things. probably so many. So anytime that you feel like that little high five for yourself and figuring out a

small doable approach for something that matters to you, it is absolutely worthwhile. High five yourself. Also, notice the practical point of Mary's idea. It's kind of like she's habit stacking. She already folds her laundry load of towels. So by adding one tiny towel-related task to one that already exists, it's easier to remember, and it's much more doable. So well done. Thank you for sharing Mary. And congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey. The lazy genius podcast is enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. Thanks y'all for listening. And until next time, be a genius about

the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you are living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch.

I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.