The Lazy Genius Podcast - #60: The Lazy Genius Cleaning Routine

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

We've talked about how to clean bathrooms and kitchens, how to do laundry, how to spring clean, tidy, and clean our house without hating it. Is there really more to talk about? Actually, yes. In The Lazy Genius Cleaning Routine, we figure out how to create an actual routine, a rhythm for keeping your house relatively clean on a relatively regular basis. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. 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

The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered for all. Hi everybody. I'm Kendra and this is The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about things that don't. This month we are focusing on routine. Those things we do most every day that help us get stuff done, feel like a person and not lose our minds. You're listening to the third episode in that series, The Lazy Genius Cleaning Routine. This was supposed to air last week, but I've had a cold that will not die, which is why I still sound a little bit stuffed up because I am.

But we need to talk about cleaning. So thank you for your patience with my mildly sick voice. And we'll jump in. I've had a good bit to say about cleaning in the past. You can check out the show notes for all the links and all the words that we'll talk about cleaning at the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash clean routine. But we haven't talked specifically about how to craft and actually execute a cleaning routine.

So in this episode, we're going to do just that. our challenge is taking into account all of the variables that each of you has, but hopefully by the end of this episode, you'll have a better idea of how you can keep your house relatively clean on a relatively regular basis. Six steps. Why between you and your cleaning routine? So it'll be fun to get started. And just so you know, I'm going to talk a little bit later about an app I use that has kind of changed my cleaning routine like a lot. It'll make more sense a little bit later in the episode. I'm going to put it in the right step. But just so you know that if you live like I do, if a lot of the things I say

sound like the way that you process life and maybe even live, then you might have a little magic coming your way in the form of an app. So stay tuned. But let's jump into our six steps. Step one. Counter your hang up with a shakeup. If you, okay, if you genuinely like cleaning, chances are you skip this episode because it just doesn't apply to you. Like you don't need a routine. But I'm assuming if you're listening, cleaning is not your favorite. The question is why. What is your biggest hang up? Because we need to counteract that hang up with a shakeup. Everything starts from a sole level around here, even cleaning. So let's figure out how you can reframe your frustration and shake up how your brain sees cleaning your house. If your biggest

hang up is that you, you hate spending your time cleaning, that there are just so many other things we're doing, right? Like, how can we switch that hang up for a shakeup? Things don't feel, things that don't feel worth it, right? They, by definition, like, do not have worth to us. If you think about it, you're likely not giving your clean home any sense of worth on a soul level. Maybe you like the freedom of not being pristine all the time. Maybe you are frustrated because your house just keeps getting messy again. Maybe you're frustrated that any step that you take, you just can't seem to stay on top of it all. Like every step just seems to lead to more steps. I think one of the best ways of refraining cleaning is in the episode The Lazy Genius Cleans the

house. Usually we see cleaning our house as really utilitarian and necessary, but like a little bit annoying, right? But if we shift our thinking to keeping our home, not cleaning, not clean, our house, but keeping our home, perhaps the cleaning becomes a little bit less annoying. A few weeks ago, my genius friend Michael Lynn, also known as the Nestor, posted a photo of her kitchen on Instagram. Her kitchen was not, by definition, clean. There were dishes around and cabinets open and all the things. Here's what the caption said. Having a home that serves you and your family doesn't mean it always looks tidy and pristine. Our hardworking homes have a special beauty in the midst of the mess.

Kitchen counters are meant to be filled and doors are meant to be opened. When I'm done, I'll clean it up. Not because a cleared off counter is better, but because that means it's ready and waiting for the next beautiful mess. Isn't that a look? That's reframing.

That is what I mean. That is trading your hang-up for a shake-up. Your home is ready. Like cleaning it up means it's ready for the next mess. So that's really what cleaning a home means. It's just ready for the next mess, the next friend who stops over, it's ready for the next round of neighborhood kids who want popcorn after school, the next Netflix binge, the next craft project that takes up the whole table. Open spaces leave room for possibilities. It doesn't mean clean is better.

Each decision to clean is really just setting the stage for another mess. Messes are expected and welcome and the sign of a lived-in home. we have all seen beautiful Instagram photos of perfectly tidy, shiny rooms and think, that's not my life, right? But I do get why people post those. There's a sense of anticipation, like a contented sigh, that comes from setting a space and making it ready. When the crazy stuff is happening, it feels a little unhinged, for sure.

But I don't think any of us want a life where there's never flour on the floor from making pancakes or never a handful of, like, stray marks. under the dresser from an afternoon of marble tower building madness that has been my life for the last few days like a big table that's never covered in a puzzle or a bunch of board games or art projects a shelf whose books are never a little crammed and helter-skelter because of all the anticipated reading that's to come you see it right mess is lovely and setting the stage for it by cleaning the house even if it's just going to get dirty again is actually a real good That is the gift, is you're giving yourself space to make it dirty again, to live in it, to make the mess that makes us human.

So you might need a very specific kind of reframing. Your hang up might have like really obvious, like a really obvious shakeup to counteract it. But I really do think for most of us that seeing the purpose of a clean house and kind of the purpose of the mess and how they kind of need each other is really a game changer. So the first step is to counter your hang up with the shakeup. Hopefully maybe your hang up is met by this reframing shakeup. But consider your own hang up and try to reframe it. Second step. Understand your time. How much time do you actually have to keep your home?

If you work outside the home, cleaning bathrooms on Monday and mopping all the floors on Tuesday, it sounds like a nightmare. You don't want to spread out your cleaning because you have so little free time each day as it is. That's real. So don't work against it just because it might feel like more responsible or more efficient or something. If you're home all day with little kids, cleaning the entire house at once is a non-starter. That's just impossible. You might like having the house clean all at once. Um, but at this stage of your life, maybe because you like don't ever see it that way. You know what I mean? It'd be so nice to have the clean the house clean like all at once. But when you have little kids around like that just never

happens. But you also have to be realistic about your time and what a clean house can reasonably mean for whatever life looks like now. So this step is fairly simple. Decide if your time favors cleaning the house all at once, like on a Saturday morning, in a decent chunk each day, you know, like an hour every morning while your kid is at preschool or in kind of like fits and starts when you have the energy. Okay? That one is kind of the truest scenario, I think, for stay-at-home moms, probably. Like some days, all the kids nap at the same time and you have two quiet hours. And then the other days, it's like they're on a relay team and they're passing the baton to the next awake person.

Like, no one is asleep at the same time. It's the worst. So you need to figure out the time constraint that works best for you and basically ignore the others. I'd rather you only have one option on the table than all three, honestly. and that's simply because of routine. But sure, if you have a random empty Saturday that you never have and you want to go crazy cleaning the house, go for it. But if that kind of free Saturday is rare

and you regularly need to operate under kind of the fits and starts construct, that epic day of house cleaning is kind of going to get you off track after that. I'm not saying don't do it. But if you know that you need to do three or four random cleaning tasks a day, to reasonably keep things rolling. A big cleaning day can get you out of that habit. It kind of gets things out of whack, which makes it even harder to get back into it

once all that epic cleaning turns epically dirty at the same time. You know what I mean? Like meandering among all of those timing options, it kind of lulls us into this false sense of security. So just for the sake of establishing routine, I think you should choose one time frame and make that your default, approach and kind of ignore the other ones.

Okay. So we switched our hang up for a shake-up. We understand our time. And now we're on to step three, define clean. The whole point of a cleaning routine is to keep the home relatively clean on a relatively regular schedule. We've already addressed the relatively regular schedule part since everyone operates under different time constraints.

But what about relatively clean? You get to define what clean means. I've talked about this in other episodes and even a blog post or two, which I'll link to in the show notes. I need to find all the places I've talked about it. But one of the reasons that cleaning is so frustrating is that we never feel like we're done. There's always something else that could get cleaned in whatever room we're standing in. So it's really helpful to define clean and not feel guilty about it, not feel guilty about walking away. Maybe it just means tidy and you hire a cleaner once a month to actually get up the dust and the dirt.

maybe it always means having clean floors. If the floors are clean, everything else feels clean, and you'll get to the other stuff when you have more time. In my living room, for example, it feels clean even if it isn't dusted. I still dust in there, but not as often as I do other things, like vacuum the rug or put all the stuff away

because it just doesn't need it to feel clean. Mirrors and bathrooms, I think, are a good example of this. I clean the toilet more often than, and I clean the mirror because a clean mirror is not necessary to my definition of clean, or not as necessary, I guess. So you get to decide what clean means, and that will give you a lot of freedom in creating your routine. You might not need to do as much as you think you do.

And by the way, don't feel weird if your definition of clean is like majorly epically clean. Get it, man. Just give yourself reasonable expectations of how much time you'll need in order to get there. I'm not saying that you can't strive for like spit spot, spick and span, Mary Poppins would be proud. If that's your way, go for it. But just be reasonable about the time you have for that. Okay, next up. Step four.

Create the right toolkit. I am a firm believer in limiting cleaners and have really great tools. But it's good to go a step further when you're figuring out your cleaning routine. Your toolkit depends a lot on step two. Okay? if you're going to, which is the time one, if you're going to clean the whole house every Saturday morning, have all your cleaners and rags and brooms and all the things in one place, right? Maybe you could even get one of those like rolling carts or like a big plastic tub to cart it all around the house.

But if you decide that you are a like bathrooms on a Wednesday kind of person, you could have a tiny bin of just bathroom stuff so that you can just grab it and go on Wednesday. Now if you're going to clean in the tiny spaces the day gives you, it might be better to have multiple bathroom cleaners in each bathroom, assuming you have more than one. That way, if you just finish using your bathroom and your kid who 100% followed you in there while you feed, right, your kid is like suddenly entertained playing with clothes hangers and you don't want to waste time running to the closet to get a spray bottle and rag to clean. And if you do, even if you do leave, like sneak out quickly to go get that cleaner, the magic clotheshanger spell, it's going to break. And you

you will lose your tiny crack of cleaning time. You know that's happened. But if you can like casually open the sink cabinet and grab a cleaner in a rag and like, you know, super, super chill, your kid doesn't know the difference. And then you just give the sink like a good once over and you might even get to the inside of the toilet. Like that's a huge win. So set up your toolkit to match your timing so you can get cleaning right away whenever your right away is. Okay, step five. Step five is where we often start and then we fail because you realize this is step five. But we make this step one. It's find a system.

We always want to start with systems, right? Always. I love systems, but you can't start with the system. If you don't know your hangups, if you don't have an honest conversation with yourself about how much time you actually have, if you don't understand what clean even means, a system will not work. You're going to make the wrong system. But now that you do know those things, find a system.

Okay, so for folks who clean the entire house one day every week or two, like you feel good about that and that kind of works. That's your system. Congratulations. You can move on to the next step. You're solid. For everybody else, though, let's talk about some possibilities if you're still kind of trying to find a system. If you are that person who like cleans everything on that random Saturday and then, you know, a week later you feel overwhelmed by how dirty things are and you do it like here and there and then you try to do the bathrooms on Wednesday. Like you can't figure out what it is.

This part is for you. Awe 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 podcasts. A regular challenge that we don't often notice is how hard it is to decide what to actually do when we have time to clean. If you can create a system for deciding what to do, you'll be all set.

That's really all the system is meant for, telling you what to do. And now that you know your default approach to when you clean, deciding what to do is really all that's left. Okay. You know the win. You've gotten your mental stuff. fixed. Let's just figure out what you're going to do. Okay, so do you have a dependable time every day or even a few days a week to tend to your home? It might be helpful, if that's the case, to designate certain tasks or rooms to certain days. Vacuuming all at once, clean all the

bedrooms at once, including vacuuming, dusting, tidying, whatever. You could do like the first half of the week only deals with the downstairs and the second half only the upstairs if you have two floors or whatever. Your system can be weird. Like, it doesn't matter. Real simple might not offer offer it is like a creative cleaning solution in the next issue but who cares like you decide what works for you and you do it but let's say you don't have a dependable time every day and you need to decide in the moment right maybe you have what solution could be like one system could be that you have a list on your fridge you can take a photo of it on your phone um to kind of look at if you're like in that whole clothes hanger situation where you can't really leave but you need to like think of something to do um

that way you can see it anywhere. Your tasks are listed by how much time they take in an order based on urgency or emotional sanity and you only do the tasks in the order listed. So you have five minutes. Your five minute list might say in order like pick up the toys in the living room, unload the dishwasher, put away a load of laundry, wipe down the half bathroom. So with your five minutes, like you pick up the toys, and if there weren't that many and you still have a few minutes left, maybe you can start unloading the dishwasher if you have time left over. You can do that for 15 minutes, 15 minute tasks, maybe even 30 minute tasks if you want to. If you want to kind of base what you're doing based on how much time you have, if that would be helpful. And then you just

go in order. And if you move through those tasks in the order that are listed, then pretty much everything will eventually get done by the time you close another week, right? Because you're moving through that list. Okay, here's some other ideas for systems. You could, set daily reminders on your phone of tasks to do at certain times, have your phone tell you what to do. You can make like a family chore chart of all the things that have to happen every week and every month, like we talked about in the spring cleaning episode, so that everybody knows what to do next. Again, that's really the challenge. It's not really the time.

It's what to do in the time that we have. We just need someone to tell us what to do. Okay. Now, here's what I'm going to tell you about this. app. So after the spring cleaning episode, a listener sent me a message on Instagram. I wish I remembered who it was and whoever you are. Thank you so much. And send me a message on Instagram about the app, T-O-D-Y. I think it's a cross between the words tidy and today and to-do, like, to-do list. And frankly, I don't really know how to pronounce it, but we're going with TOTI.

But it is a fantastic app. I will link to it. in the show notes so you can kind of see their pitch but it basically tells you what to do like it just tells you what to do it's like a boss it's a cleaning boss in your in your phone it's so great you set up tasks by room you designate how frequently you want those tasks done or even just let the app like give you a default time based on what clean means i mean you guys you guys it lets you decide what clean means like it even in the beginning when you open up the app it's like to you like it has three levels of cleanliness and it tells you like you like it tells you like how often it suggests how often you clean certain things based on that level of cleanliness.

It's the greatest. And then you open the app every day or whenever you have time or whatever. And Tody tells you what to do. Like it's it's the best. It's got a checklist. And it's like, all right, this is due today. This is due in three days. This has not been done in six and you need to get going or whatever it is. It's definitely better if you use it every day. So maybe for the first few days that you use it, like set a reminder on your phone to open the app. Like that's part of it. You just need to remember to open the app because it doesn't necessarily like open itself for you. You know what I mean? You have to open it. So like set an alarm for a time you usually have a few minutes maybe and label the alarm in your phone. Like open toady and then do whatever they app says. And when you mark off tasks, you see like progress bars for how clean the room is.

It's basically like a grown up video game. It's the best. It's so great. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure you can sync it with other phones. but I'm the only one who uses it in my house, so I can't vouch for that feature yet. Okay, it does cost money. It is $6.99, which is like a million dollars in my mind when it comes to an app. Like, I don't, I don't pay for apps, like hardly ever. And if it's more than three bucks, I'm like, I am super out. But, you know, the person who messaged me on Instagram loved it. And then I read, like, all the reviews.

and every reviewer said it was worth the money. Like they said, like, this is worth the money. And I have now done the, I bought it, and I have now done the research myself. And I'm here to tell you it is worth the money. It very much is worth the money. There is a little bit of overwhelm in the beginning with inputting, like, all of the tasks, especially, like if you have an enormous house. But they've got tasks like default tasks.

Like when you add a bathroom and you can retitle different rooms. So like, if you've got more than one bathroom, then you can like kids bathroom, master bathroom. guest bathroom, whatever it is. And it has like default tasks that you can choose from. You know, clean toilet, clean sink, clean mirrors, clean floors, whatever it is. And you can add your own. You can add custom tasks as well. But like, so it's a little bit overwhelming in the beginning, like having to input all the tasks. But bonus, if you have already made a list after the spring cleaning episode and maybe you just need a little bit more umph in your system of telling you what to do, you can just plug that list into the app. You know, like you've kind of already done a lot of that work.

once you get everything in there and it starts working like you've used it for a couple of days you will wonder how you lived without it and as I say what it is out loud to you I'm thinking that I should be a grown-up enough to like not need a $7 app to tell me what to clean and while that might be true that might be true I'm not going to spend any more time creating a cleaning list and finding the best place to hang it in my house or creating a pretty spread for it in my bullet journal I'm not going to do that because this app just really works for me well. So feel the freedom to use whatever system you need to make your cleaning happen the way you hope for, even if it's a $7 app. It's okay. Again, the system is there just to tell us what to do. So if it's an app,

a phone alarm, a fridge list, or anything else you come up with, do it. We are in this together. We are on everybody's, each other's team, no matter what you choose. But I do love that app. Okay, so the first five steps are the real process of this. Like, okay, switch your hang up for a shakeup, understand your time, define clean, create the right toolkit, and find your system. You can get your house clean with these steps and the teeniest bit of motivation. But the sixth step is, I think, what helps keep things fun. And that step is, keep it fun. Use music and smells and rewards at the end of the cleaning.

Whatever you need to do. I once deep cleaned my kitchen with Pride and Prejudice playing in the background, and it was still delight. It was like the best kitchen cleaning ever. Reframing how we see cleaning and equipping ourselves with the best tools and the systems for our time, it does help with the enjoyment of it for sure. But actively adding elements of enjoyment is even better. So have a cleaning playlist. Save your favorite podcast or an audiobook when it's time to clean. Put a familiar and like beloved movie on in the background. if you're going to be kind of in one room. So you can listen to your favorite lines and glance up and you see those characters.

It's like they're your friends. Or I have once like, I have been known to put on an episode of the office or Parks and Rec that I really love. And then like I race to get my tasks done by the time the episode is over. And I'm laughing at the lines and the things. But like I've got 23 minutes. What can I do in 23 minutes? You know, there's so many dumb things you can do that up the enjoyment. So do them.

totally do them. I do think that one of the hardest parts of making cleaning fun is when you have other people involved who happen to complain about cleaning. You're trying real hard to have a good attitude and everyone else is like bringing it down. I have talked before about family pickup times, two, three, five minute pickups that you can do as a family. And another way to use that idea kind of with an added injection of fun is to have a family cleaning song. Everyone cleans until the song is over. And then you can be done. You know, like you get that's, you get to be done. Our song, and our house is Can't Stop the Feeling. Um, not, yeah, can't stop the feeling? Yeah. The Justin Timber, like, one from trolls. I mean, everybody just loves that song. We just turn it on and we, we, we clean until,

and dance as we're cleaning until the song's over and then we're done. And we're usually like, done. Like, the house looks great by the end. And a couple of other family favorites are, of course, happy, you know, for minions, because, of course. Um, Hey Mama by Matt Carney, I'm K-E-A-R-N-E-Y. Hey Mama is a really fun song. And then Baby by Justin Bieber. Like those are our four favorite family cleaning songs. I am indeed raising my children.

Right. Oh my gosh. Okay. So there are your six steps in developing a cleaning routine. We really do overcomplicate this process a lot. We think we need like some magic system or like a fancy vacuum or like maybe a brain transplant because we cannot possibly see cleaning as an enjoyable thing. I encourage you to honestly think through these steps and see what comes out on the other side. If we frame things the right way

for our personal situations, and especially if we add that jolt of fun or pretty or whatever else makes it feel less like a chore, we'll have a cleaning routine that we actually stick to sooner than we think. So good luck on your cleaning routine journey. Okay. So before, we go. Let's do our lazy genius tip of the week. And this is, this one is more like motivational. We've been talking about small steps. This month and in January as well. We were talking, was that January? We were talking about goals. And while this particular episode didn't say much about small steps, I'm going to say it here in the tips. This is your lazy genius tip of the week. Don't feel like you have to have a full blown system right away. Small steps count here too.

So if you're trying to develop a routine around laundry, don't put pressure on yourself. put away the entire endeavor, like all seven loads all at once, if you've never done that before. Like, don't set yourself up that way. Your small step is to put away your first load. That's it. Like, that's your small step. The day that you do laundry, just put away your first load. Or maybe it needs to be even smaller than that. Maybe it's that you're definitely going to start the first load by 8 o'clock in the morning. Or that you'll pull it out, you'll pull out the first load and you won't turn on like the fluff setting. Okay. Like committing to just one step in that process, it will give you something to build on. That's the point. You're building consistency and then you're

building on that consistency. So even when we're talking about cleaning, maybe especially when we're talking about cleaning, don't be afraid of small steps. Don't think they're useless. They're not. In fact, they are more powerful than big steps because they last longer and you stick to them. So go forth and step small, my friends. Okay, that's going to do it for today. Thank you as always for listening and sharing. I just want you to know I see your stories and posts on Instagram where you're sharing. I get lots of like, so-and-so mentioned you in a story. And I just want you to know that like I'm, I'm not always able to respond to that. That's something that, yeah, I just have to like be, I've told you all on Instagram. I have to be careful with DMs because they can take up a lot of time

of which I do not have very much. That was not appropriate grammar. It's fine. But I do want you to know that I see them. And it really means the world. that you trust the lazy genius enough to share it with your people. Like, it really does matter. And I'm so grateful. I will be back next Monday, unless this cold just decides to take me out. I'll be back next Monday to finish up our series on routine, and we will talk about exercise.

And until then, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Bye, guys. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that, more dangerous than a B-mind. 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.