Vanessa:
Are you ready to amaze your friends as you speak English comfortably, confidently, and you can talk
about the world around you? Let's talk about it. Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
And today, you are going to master talking about the world around you in your home, talking about
simple items in your home that you might not know the word for in English or what we commonly use
in daily conversation. We'll be talking about the house, the kitchen, the bathroom, and also some
common cleaning or household chore expressions that are commonly used. To help you with this big
lesson, I've created a free PDF worksheet with all of these expressions. It took a lot of time
to create this for you, so I hope that you enjoy it. I hope it's useful to you. You can download
this free PDF worksheet with the link in the Description so that you can review these words.
Don't forget them and also use them in your conversations, grow your confidence and have the
right words to use. So, without further ado, let's go on and you'll be able to take a little tour
of my old apartment, where I used to live. And then after that, we'll take a look at my kitchen
where I live now, then we'll go to the bathroom and we'll talk about some bathroom vocabulary. And
finally, we'll talk about some household chores, some common actions for cleaning that we use in
the house. Are you ready to get started? Take a deep breath. You're about to expand your mind.
Congratulations. You're awesome. Let's do it. Welcome to my kitchen. I'm going to just go
around the room. And in fact, I'm going to go around the kitchen, the living room, the office,
the bathroom, and the bedroom. And we're going to go step by step through the different things
that I see, I'm going to name them. If they need any explanation, I'll try to explain them. And I
hope that it will be helpful to you as you expand your vocabulary. All right, let's start with
the fridge. Here's the fridge, or you can say "refrigerator," if you want to be extra intense,
but we often just say "fridge." Pretty simple. On the top, you have the freezer. My freezer is on
top. Sometimes, freezers are on the bottom, or sometimes, it's split down the middle and there's
a freezer on one side and a refrigerator or fridge on the other side. Mine's just on the bottom.
You can see I have a lot of magnets and pictures on my fridge. That's pretty typical. I have some
magnets that some YouTube subscribers sent me, some pictures, some magnets that
we've picked up as we've traveled, but this is pretty typical that you'll see.
Some kind of personal mementos on the fridge. Here we have our dining room table. In the
U.S., typically, people will have a dining room, or maybe their kitchen will be a little bit
bigger than mine because we live in an apartment. It's from the 1920s. Actually, my apartment and
my house is quite different than what you would typically see if you visited someone's house in
the U.S., but a lot of the items are the same. So, if there're any differences from typical houses in
the U.S., I'll try to explain that to you as well. Here we have the table. Pretty simple. I bet
you learned that in your maybe first class in English class. We have chairs. We
usually call these kitchen chairs. Or if you have a separate dining room, you can
call them dining room chairs. Because we have a one-year-old, you're going to see a lot of
different items around our house that are for our one-year-old. Here we have his high chair. His
high chair attaches to the kitchen chair, so it's a little bit different than a stand-alone high
chair, that would be just a separate chair, but we don't have much room in our kitchen so we have
a portable high chair that attaches to a chair. Next, let's move on to this table, which is
where we cut things and prepare our food. Here you can see a fruit tray. You might call
it different things, depending on what region of the U.S. you're from. At the moment, we only
have two tangerines on the fruit tray. Typically, we have more. We also have a coaster. This
is where you put your cups or your mugs, usually hot or cold things to keep the table safe.
We also have a coffee grinder for grinding beans, and a sippy cup for our baby.
Let's move along over here. On this side, we have our cheese grater. This is with the "T,"
even though it sounds like a "D," "grader." It's a cheese grater. Our knives, we have some measuring
cups in the U.S. We use cups and tablespoons and teaspoons to measure things. A lot of people have
these in plastic, but ours are cute little cats. And here we have some condiments that we often
use when we're cooking, so we have them close by and handy. We just have honey, some balsamic,
some chopsticks, some salt, some olive oil. And, of course, you can see my plants, which are
not doing too well. I don't have a green thumb, as they say. Our plants often die, so they
don't have a good future looking ahead of them. This is our oven where we cook and bake things.
Typically, we call the top the "stove top" or the "stove," and there's four burners on this
stove top. And we have some nobs for turning on the stove. Inside is the oven. Often, I'll
just say the "oven" to mean the full stove or this full device, but you can kind of
use them interchangeably. Some people are sticklers about that kind of thing. Sticklers
means picky. Picky about those kind of terms, but we often say "oven," "stove" for this general
device. But technically, the top is the stove and inside is the oven. I have some pots and
pans here. There's more under the counter. Here I have my glass lid because inside I'm making
some butternut squash for lunch a little bit later. And my cutting board, I have a couple of
other cutting boards, but this one is my favorite so it stays close by and handy. On this side of
the kitchen are the oven mitts and our spice rack. Typically, people will say "spice rack," or "spice
cabinet" if they're inside a cabinet. We have, technically, it's a shelf, but we call it the
"spice rack" because all of the spices are there. I also have some tea and some cookbooks and
some miscellaneous things on that shelf as well. This is something that's pretty
different from typical houses in the U.S. We have a sink. Most places have a sink with
a faucet. We have the strainer or colander, usually a strainer, for straining pasta
or other things that we're washing. But, we didn't have a dishwasher until about
one month ago, and it's because this is an old apartment. As I mentioned, it's from the 1920s.
There's not air conditioning, not regular heating, no dishwasher, no washer or dryer for clothes,
but we decided to buy a, you can see here, table top dishwasher. This is not typical in
houses in the U.S., but it's the same idea. Typically, they're under the counter and it's
kind of part of the furniture, but you can open the dishwasher and see the dish rack. Here we
have some clean dishes and, apparently, toys that needed to be cleaned too. We have the dish
rack and you put your dishes in the dish rack. And up here, I have a small dish rack just for
more fragile things, like these mugs or these glasses, but you can hand dry things and put them
in the rack as well. That's just depending on what you have in your house if you have a dishwasher,
or if you need to hand wash things and then put them in the drying rack or in the rack. Above the
dishwasher, we have a cabinet where we keep our dry goods. You can see we have some
spices, some popcorn, things for baking. There's some pasta, some kind of leftover dry
goods that we put in there to keep. A lot of people will have what you call a "pantry." A
pantry is kind of like a closet where you keep dry goods, but our apartment's pretty small, it's old.
We don't have a pantry, so we just have a cabinet. Beside the dishwasher, we have a toaster oven,
and a lot of people will also have a microwave. In fact, I'd say 99% of Americans have a microwave.
We just don't have it because we don't have a lot of space. This is an old apartment like I
mentioned, so there's a couple key elements, there's one more key element that you will not see
in our house that I'll mention a little bit later, but we have a toaster oven. A lot of people will
have a regular toaster and it will just have slots. We call this "the toaster" because it's the
only one we have. But if you have a toaster with slots and a toaster oven, you probably need to be
a little more specific and just say, "Put it in the toaster oven" or "I put it in the toaster
oven," just so people know which one it's in. We have a paper towel rack. This is the paper
towel rack, the metal piece. And here are some paper towels for cleaning up things. We also
have a water kettle, a hot water kettle for heating up water. This is kind of like our little
drink station. I have tea things. Dan has some coffee things. We have some dish washing soap.
This is where all of those kinds of extra kitchen things happen. And finally, it's a little bit
awkward for me to show you with the camera because it's a little bit high up so I have to hold the
camera myself, but here we have our dishes. We have big plates, little plates. You might come
across some specific words for different sizes of plates, but in reality, we just say "big plates,"
"little plates." We have some wine glasses, some regular glasses, tall glasses, short glasses,
and bowls. A lot of people have different sizes of bowls or different functions for different
bowls, but we keep it simple. "Bowls." Up on top as well we have some mugs as you can
see. We have a lot of mugs because I feel like choosing the right mug for that moment is
an important part of drinking a hot drink. You have to have the right mug. Do I want the mug
with birds on it? Do I want the mug with a rainbow on it? It just depends, and it kind of lends the
experience, a richer feeling. I don't know if you feel the same way about the mug that you drink
your coffee or your tea out of, but I feel like the mug is important to me. All
right, let's go to the next room. When you first come into our house, we have a
shoe rack where we line up our shoes, and this is typical in some American houses. But, in a lot
of American houses, people keep their shoes on. For us, we lived in Korea for a couple of years so
we got used to taking off our shoes, and we have a sign on the door that says, "Please take off your
shoes. We will appreciate it." But, a lot of our friends have never actually looked at the sign and
we don't tell them, "Hey, take off your shoes." We're pretty relaxed when it comes to guests,
but for ourselves, we always take off our shoes. If we need to run into the house for something
quickly, then it's not a big deal, but we have a shoe rack so that we can easily take off our
shoes and put them away when we come in our house. Welcome to our living room. There is one thing
I want to mention about our living room, maybe a couple of things, but specifically one thing that
you're not going to see in our living room that's pretty typical, and that's just a TV. You could
say "television," but we often just say "TV." Why don't we have a TV? Well, it was a conscious
decision to not have a TV. First of all, because I'm not a big fan of different TV shows and
it's just not that enjoyable for me. But also, I feel like I don't want to just have
it on and always be watching. Anyway, we can talk about that another time.
I want to let you know that it's pretty typical to see a TV in American households in their living
room or you could say "family room." Some people say "main room." Some people say "den," kind
of like a "lion's den." This is like a cave, but people say "den." I don't know if that's
a Southern word, but some of my friends in the south say that. But, we call this just
the "living room" or the "main room." And that's where we spend a lot of our time. On
this side of the living room, we have a piano, some shelves for displaying different
things. You might hear this called "knick-knacks," and that means sometimes
sentimental things sometimes just junk. But for us, we try to keep only things that
matter to us. We have some sentimental items on our shelves. And on the piano, there's
some picture frames and another coaster. You might see as well that we have a lot of baby
gates everywhere in our living room. It blocks off the full living room. And that's because we
have a one-year-old. It keeps him safe. It keeps us sane. And maybe for you, if you have a baby,
you also have some baby gates. I highly doubt that you have a tent in your living room, but if you
have a baby, if you have a kid that likes to play, maybe you have a tent. We just have this tent
with all of our baby's toys inside. And he goes in there and plays and we play with him in
there. And it's just part of our living space. Now, let's go on to our bookshelf. Our bookshelf
is one of the main items, main pieces of furniture in our living room. We have the bookshelf, the
couch, and the piano. Those are kind of the centerpieces of this room. On our bookshelf, of
course, we have books. They are somewhat organized by topic, not so much right now because I
just tried to organize them there myself. On the bookshelf, we have some speakers. We
have some other miscellaneous things up here, like our pumpkins that are kind of rotting.
Do we need to get rid of them? On the bottom, we have some toys for our baby. The first two
shelves are baby things. And then, these shelves that he can't reach, those are for us. We can say,
"This is a bookshelf," and "These are shelves." This is where we lounge. This is the couch. We
call this a "coffee table," even though we don't typically have coffee on it, but it usually just
means that kind of small-ish table that's in the middle of your living room or close to the couch.
You might be surprised that sometimes Americans put their feet on this. I don't know if you do
this, but I know in some cultures, it's seen as extremely gross, but you just prop up your feet
up on the coffee table and kick back and relax. Behind the coffee table, you can see we have
a side table. I know this expression is really simple and it's kind of obvious, but if you want
to denote which table, you could just say the "side table" or the table beside the couch. And
on the side table, there is a lamp that we use to light our reading in the evening.
On this side of our living room, we have, we call this just our Ikea
chair because it came from Ikea. But, you might see people who have comfortable chairs
like this in their living room. You might see them calling them an "easy chair." Usually, an easy
chair is a little bit bigger than this, a little bit more comfortable. Or, you might hear them
call it a "lazy boy." They're not talking about how you're not studying and you're not working
hard. "I'm sitting on the lazy boy." No, it just means that when you sit on it, you feel lazy, you
feel comfortable. A lazy boy has a foot prop that comes up so you can completely relax and lay back.
But, for us, we just call this our Ikea chair. It kind of bounces a little bit. It's not a rocking
chair, it doesn't completely go back and forth, but it has a little bit of movement.
We have here our window sill. The window sill is the place where we can put seasonal things or
just some decorations if we want. And the window, here we have the inner window. It has some kind
of maybe more old fashioned, the 1920s style, panels here. We also have inside our window
another feature, so let's get a little closer and take a look. Most windows in the U.S. have a
screen, and that's on the other side of this main window, just to prevent mosquitoes and bugs coming
in in the summertime. But because it's winter, we also have another pane, a window pane that's
down. It's the storm window. So, here you're only seeing the regular window pane, but on the other
side, we have a second layer that's called a storm window. You could put it down in case of a storm,
but typically, it's used in the winter time, usually for older houses, because older houses
have two layers of window. They don't have maybe some modern technology for the windows'
structure. We have a screen, a storm window, and just this regular window inside.
Before we leave this room, I just want to quickly talk about the basics of a room. We
have, of course, the walls and the ceiling. But, here we have hardwood floors. We don't have
any carpet in our house and that's mainly because it's an older apartment so it has wood, but
also because we have two cats and a baby so it's a little bit difficult to clean carpet. But,
most American houses will have carpets, usually in the bedrooms, or if they have an upstairs area
in the upstairs, but some will have it as well in the main room or in the living room.
I think it's kind of becoming a more modern thing to have hardwood floors, kind of going
back to that classic style. You might see that, you might have that in your house if you live in
the U.S. Carpets and rugs. Rugs are just removable small carpets. Rugs and carpets are pretty
typical, but we just have hardwood floors. This is not laminate. In the kitchen, you saw laminate.
Laminate is just kind of like a plastic flooring. It's typically in kitchens because it's easy to
clean, but here we have real wood hardwood floors. Welcome to our office, drum room, spare bedroom, a
little bit of everything, and another dying plant. And oh, we have Dan. Dan's working on editing a
vocabulary video for The Fearless Fluency Club. If you'd like to learn with us, you can learn
with us every month. In this room, we have the office desk. We have the desktop computer. We have
laptops and whatnot as well, but the desktop is great for editing videos and having a big screen.
He is sitting in an office chair, and he is using some of the office equipment. How's it going?
Dan: It's going well.
Vanessa: Are you getting some inspiration from the fish?
Dan: Obviously. There are huge ball of algae over here. Vanessa:
Yep. Yep. Welcome to our bathroom. We have
only one bathroom in our apartment. A lot of American houses have at least two, but
our apartment's a good size for one bathroom. Typically, in the U.S., we say "bathroom."
In the UK, you're going to hear people say "toilet," but in the U.S., we do not say "toilet,"
unless we're talking about the physical object, the "toilet." In the U.S., when you say "toilet,"
you feel a little bit dirty maybe because you're imagining the throne, that chair that you sit
on. So, it's a little bit weird in the U.S. if you say, "I'm going to go to the toilet." We can
imagine that piece of furniture. It's a little bit better to say, "I'm going to the bathroom."
We use the term "restroom" to talk about a public place. Some people might even say "bathroom" for
a public place. Maybe in a restaurant or maybe in a gas station, or if you're driving on a road
trip, there might be a rest stop and you go to the restroom inside the rest stop. Those are the most
typical expressions that you're going to hear in the U.S. Bathroom and restroom. But, I would not
say, "This is the restroom." If I said "restroom" at a friend's house, "I'm going to go to the
restroom," it's quite formal, and it seems a little bit weird like I'm trying to be too formal
when really I'm just going to the bathroom and it's my friend's house. So, I recommend using
"restroom" only for maybe workplace situations, or for public places like restaurants or gas
stations where you're going to the bathroom. It's going to be a little bit tricky to film in
here because the bathroom's long and narrow, but we're going to make it work. Here we have the
shower, and we know it's a shower because we have a shower curtain, but in the U.S., you'll
typically find two shower curtains. On the outside, there's one that has usually a nice,
pretty color on it. And then on the inside, you'll see a shower curtain liner. And this
is, I'll try to show you here, this is on the inside of the bath tub, and that's to prevent
water from spilling out. I know I visited some other countries that don't have shower curtains
at all and I found it quite difficult to take a shower without getting the whole bathroom wet.
In the U.S., it's convenient, we've got a shower curtain, and we have a shower curtain rod up
here you can see to hold the shower curtain. Inside the shower, we have a bathtub. You can take
a bath in here, but most people don't take a bath. Usually, just kids take a bath. It's
kind of small, it's not so comfortable, and it's not really part of American culture
for adults to take a bath. You might see in some movies maybe a woman in a bathtub with a glass
of wine and there're some candles. This is not typical at all. That hardly ever happens. We just
don't really soak in the bath. Some people find it dirty to sit in the bath water, because
maybe we don't clean the bathtubs as often as countries who take baths. Here have also a shower
rack. You can see it's hanging on the shower head. The shower head is where the water comes
out. We have the shower head, the shower rack, and up here, we have our shampoo and conditioner
and soap and whatnot, but we have the shower rack. Moving on in the bathroom, we have a
little table here with some toiletries on the table. There're some lotions or contacts
or toothpaste. These are things that you use to get ready in the morning or to get ready
for bed. They're toiletries. We have a soap dispenser and we have the sink and a faucet. And
it's pretty typical that you'll see an outlet as well in the bathroom. I know some countries don't
have outlets in the bathroom. It can be kind of dangerous to have an outlet in the bathroom, so
of course just don't put your hairdryer in the sink. Little word of wisdom. And it wouldn't be
a bathroom without a toilet. We have the toilet, we have toilet paper, and we have the handle
for flushing the toilet, as well as usually two separate lids on the toilet. I know
some countries don't have two separate lids, it's kind of a all in one combo. But
in U.S., we have two separate lids, and usually a brush, a toilet brush for cleaning
the toilet, and a plunger in case you need it. And don't forget some more dying plants just
to round out your full experience of our house. Oh, I don't want to forget as well. We have
these hand towels. This hand towel is for drying your hands after you wash your hands. And a
wash cloth. This is for washing your face. Oftentimes, a hand towel will have a little
ring and it will be inside that ring, but we don't have that so we just
hang it over the shower curtain rod. Welcome to my bedroom. The lighting is a little
bit different in here because we have some extreme blackouts shades and blackout curtains so that
we can sleep and so that our baby can sleep, especially when he takes a nap during the day.
You can see here on the window, we have some black shades and also some black curtains that
is essential and it has helped our life so much. All right, let me show you around. Of course,
the main feature of a bedroom is the bed. Here's our bed. We have a quilt on our bed. This is
something that Dan's great-grandmother made, but you'll often see simply sheets in
the summertime or maybe a thin blanket. But in the winter, you'll see a comforter. This
is a thick, fuller type of blanket. In Europe, a lot of people use a duvet, but in the U.S., I had
actually never heard of a duvet until I went to Europe. It's not so common in the U.S. Maybe I'm
just like in the little isolated bubble of people who don't have duvet. If you're in the U.S., let
me know if you have a duvet. But typically, you'll see a quilt or a comforter or just some sheets.
You'll see over here is my baby's crib. A lot of people in the U.S. who have a child, they
have a separate room for their child, but our apartment is small so we make do with what we
have. He sleeps here in this crib. On this side, there is a night stand. I have a
night stand as well over on this side. The night stand is the table that goes beside
your bed. And typically, there's a lamp on the night stand. Maybe there's a drawer or a shelf,
and you can put some books or something in that night stand that you use when you're sleeping.
This is our set of drawers. You might hear people say "dresser drawers." This feel like it's
a little bit older English, like maybe my parents or my grandparents might say "dresser drawers."
But for me, I just say "a set of drawers" or "It's in the drawer." This is a difficult word to
pronounce, so I hope that you can say it clearly. Drawers. Drawers. Inside our closet, you'll
see some clothes that are hanging up. We hang up the clothes in the closet, or you can say
"They're hanging in the closet." And they're hanging on what? They're hanging on hangers.
A lot of words that have to do with "hang" that have to do with the closet. The clothes are
hanging up in the closet. Some people also fold their clothes up here, maybe some winter clothes
or some pants that you don't want to hang up. One quick thing that I'd like to mention that we
don't have but often typical American houses will, especially standalone houses, apartment
sometimes have this, sometimes don't, but a lot of houses have a master bath or you can say
"master bathroom." And that's a bathroom that's connected to the biggest bedroom. Typically, if
you have a household of parents and two children, the parents' bedroom is the biggest bedroom,
and attached to the parents' bedroom is the master bath. In the house that I grew up
in, my parents had this, Dan's parents had this as well. But in our apartment, we only have the
one bathroom that I showed you. We don't have a master bath. It's just the bathroom of the house.
You might see this. And if you are in someone's house or if you're describing a house or maybe
you're buying a house or renting one in the U.S., you might hear that term mentioned. "There's a
master bath," or "There's a master bathroom." Both of those terms are the same thing.
It's just a shortened version of "bathroom." Let's start by talking about some common kitchen
appliances. One of the most common appliances is the fridge, or you can say "refrigerator," but
this is a pretty big words so we often cut it down and just say "fridge." Good news for you. In the
U.S., we have giant fridges. I've never been in any other country that had fridges as big as in
the U.S. Maybe that's kind of typical. We like to make things super big. On the top in my fridge,
we have the fridge part, and on the bottom is the freezer. We'll take a look at that in just a
second. It's pretty typical that in the fridge, you have different shelves. It's a little
bit bright on my camera. I'm sorry. And then at the bottom, we call these
vegetable crispers. "A crisper." We don't use that that often, but it's the crisper
bin. And it's somewhere that you'll put your fresh vegetables, fresh fruit to keep them crisp
and that is fresh exactly the way you want them. On the bottom of my fridge is the freezer.
Sometimes, the freezer will be kind of split in half and it will be on one side or the other,
but mine is a top and bottom type of deal. On the bottom is the freezer, which is where we
keep some leftover soup, some frozen vegetables, frozen fruit, ice, ice cream. Anything that you
want to keep super cold, you put in the freezer. The second most common kitchen appliance is a
stove and an oven. In the U.S., we call the top of this the "stove" or you might say the "stove
top," and that's where you cook things with pots and pans. And inside the oven is where you bake
things. Usually, there's a door on the oven, and inside here, there are some racks. That's
what we call these things. It's a little bit hot in there so I'm not going to grab them, but
they are racks. You might see a recipe that says, "Put this on the bottom rack" or "Put this on
the top rack when you're baking it." And that's referring to those kinds of metal shelves inside
your oven. You might hear some Americans calling all of this, this whole device, the oven, or
call the whole thing the stove, instead of separating the top is the stove, inside is the
oven. Sometimes we just kind of use one of those words to talk about the whole device. You might
hear that in movies and TV shows. It's technically the stove and the oven, but you might kind of
interchange those sometimes. Some technical words about the stove top are we have the knobs.
These are knobs to turn on the stove. And when you are baking something in here, you
need to set the temperature. In the U.S., we use Fahrenheit. When I turn on the oven and I
click bake, the first temperature is 350 degrees and that is in Fahrenheit. If you're cooking in
the U.S., make sure that, you know if your recipe is American, if your recipe is not from the U.S.,
if your stove is using Fahrenheit. I've never seen a stove in the U.S. That didn't use Fahrenheit.
But I know when I've baked things in other countries, I had to convert everything and it was
a little complicated. Don't mess up your food. Just check on the temperature, check
on what you're using for the recipe. That's all really essential. One thing also,
above the stove is the microwave. This is a really typical placement for a microwave in an American
kitchen. Maybe in your kitchen too. The reason why they put a microwave above the stove is it's
a convenient location, but also, listen to this. What do you think that whirring sound is? It's
a fan. So underneath here, there's a fan. I have a light on as well. You can see that light. And
that fan is going to help to suck up all of the smells and steam and anything that you're
cooking here. It's going to help that not spread out throughout the rest of the house. In my old
apartment, we didn't have a microwave and there was no fan above our stove. So whenever we cooked
something, our entire house got so hot and it smelled so strongly like whatever we were cooking.
Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. But it's really nice to have a fan so that all
the smells and all of the steam can get sucked up and the rest of your house isn't completely
humid from your cooking. The last common item in an American kitchen is a dishwasher. I love
the dishwasher so much. In our old apartment, we didn't have a dishwasher and we bought
this tabletop dishwasher. It was so amazing. If you live in a place where you are always
hand-washing dishes, I respect you a lot, because that is tough work, especially when you're cooking
a lot. We cook a lot at home. When you have kids, it's not easy to spend time doing the dishes
by hand. You could do the dishes by hand, or you could use a dishwasher. Yes, thank you
dishwasher for existing. Inside the dishwasher, there are racks. You might recognize that word
from the oven. Inside the oven, there are oven racks, and there are racks in here as well.
Something you might notice is on some dishes on the bottom, this one doesn't say it, it might
just say dishwasher safe. But on some dishes, they might say top rack safe only. For example,
we have these cool little bamboo bowls that we use for Theo, our two-year-old, and we use them
too. There are some plates to go along with it. These are our dirty dishes. But when I
bought these, it said top rack safe only, and that's because there's also a bottom rack.
And this rack usually gets a little bit hotter and it's going to have a little more pressure.
It's just going to be a little bit more intense for whatever you're washing. Some things might
say top rack safe only. And if I'm not sure, sometimes I just put it on the top rack just
to be careful with it. Next, I'd like to just simply go around the kitchen and talk about what's
out on the counter, the things that are visible, and then we're going to go into the cupboards
and into the drawers and discuss what's in there. It could be appliances. It could be things you
eat with. It could be food. Let's start on the counter. This is the counter. Simple word, or you
might call it the countertop. This is where we prepare food. It's where we set out food. This
countertop is kind of unusual. Usually you'll see laminate counters, which we'll take a look at over
here. You might be able to see a little bit right here, kind of like a plastic type surface, or
you might see granite countertops that's stone. It's really nice, but this is a wood block.
The family who lived in this house before us, the woman was a professional baker, so
she had this wooden block to replace the old countertop. And now we get
to use it, which is pretty cool. It's kind of unusual to see a big wooden
block like that, but usually you'll have a big counter where you can prepare
food. And this one is especially big, which is wonderful because in our old apartment,
we had a small counter space for preparing food. And now we can prepare everything, which is great.
The next thing that you'll see on this counter is a fruit stand. We have some fruit hanging out
here and some fruit bowls, and then Dan's precious coffee maker. If you've been watching my channel
for a while, you know that I don't drink coffee, but Dan loves it. We'll get to what I have over
here. You have the coffee maker. Your coffee maker might look a little more traditional than
this, but this is Dan's special thing. And then we have the paper towel stand. Sometimes
this paper towel stand might be underneath the counter and it kind of attaches to the bottom of
the counter and you can roll it out underneath a shelf, something like that. But ours just is a
standalone paper towel rack. And at the sink, we've got a couple of other things. Let's go take
a look. This is our sink where we wash things, where we fill up water, all of those great
things happen. And most sinks you'll see dish soap. It's quite clear.
Liquid dish soap. Easy to understand. This is what you're going to use when
you're hand washing dishes. You do not, do not want to put dish soap into your dishwasher.
If you put dish soap, and it usually says something about, yes, dish soap for hand-washing
dishes that uses biodegradable bio-based formula, blah, blah, blah. It says
hand-washing. That's your key. If I put this in my dishwasher, our
house would be covered in bubbles. So please don't do this, unless you
want to have some fun experiment. There is specific soap that you put in
the dishwasher. It might be a little pod like this. Usually we buy just like powder
that you put in the dishwasher. It's a little box that has dish washing soap. Make sure that you
use dishwasher soap, it's for washing your dishes in the dishwasher, in the right place. And you
use this in the right place. Little friendly word of warning. Usually at the counter when you're
washing dishes, you'll find some kind of towel. We don't use sponges, but you might find a sponge.
This is like a reusable cool little microfiber towel. We have a bunch of these,
and that's what we use to hand wash dishes. You might also find... This is called
steel wool. It's just a little piece of metal meshed up together, and you can use it to
kind of scrape some hard spots on pans or pots. You'll also see a faucet. This is the faucet
and hot water, cold water. We're so lucky we are living in the 21st century. We can just have
hot and cold water whenever we want. It's amazing. Our sink also has this cool little thing.
I wonder if this exist in your country. I'm going to turn on the way, and then I'm going
to turn this. Wow! Isn't that cool? I'm amazed. This is just like a little sprayer, so you can
spray the sink out, or you can spray a dish. I once played a terrible prank on my dad
for April Fool's Day. This has like a little button on the side, and I put a rubber
band around it so it was always pressed. And when you turn on the water,
usually it comes out here. But if this button is pressed, it will
come out of the sprayer automatically. I had a rubber band around it. And in the morning,
he went to the sink and he turned on the water. You can imagine what happened. It didn't
come out here. It came out here and went and sprayed him. It was a good prank, and
it was April Fool's Day, so it's all right, but I thought that was a pretty clever moment when
I was in high school. Watch out for rubber bands around your sprayer. There's also hand soap.
This is for your hands. That's quite obvious. Usually we use liquid hand soap. You might see
people use a bar of soap, but that's pretty unusual. I'm curious in your country if you use
bar soap or liquid soap like that. Let's continue on to the side and see some other things that
are on the counter. You might be wondering what this giant metal tub is. Well, this is not common
in most American households, but I'm a water snob and I love clean, pure water. In the U.S.,
it's totally fine to drink tap water. That's water that comes from the
faucet. It's not a problem. I'd say 98% of places in the U.S. you can drink the tap
water, and here you can drink the tap water. It's completely fine, but I think it tastes very
strongly like chlorine and just kind of chemicals. We have this water filter and we use this glass
jar, take the tap water, and pour it in here. And it has some huge filters. This is called
like a gravitational long filter device. I forget the technical term for it, but
it doesn't filter it automatically. It takes maybe two hours to filter, so
we're always pouring water in there. It stores the water down here, and it tastes amazing.
If you ever come to my house, drink some water. All right. The other part of this counter
is... This is kind of a fancy schmancy device, but I got it for Dan one year for Christmas
because he likes to drink sparkling water. I felt like it was a little bit wasteful to
buy cans of sparkling water, so I bought this soda stream device. It's pretty nifty. There's
a bottle, a specific bottle that goes with this machine, and you fill the bottle with water.
You put it in here, and it just carbonates the water. It makes it sparkly. You can do it as
much as you want. You can use your own water, and it's kind of an endless thing. And then
when you're carbonation device is empty, you can just return it and they recycle it.
It's a really cool system. Anyway, if you drink a lot of sparkling water, check
it out. Well, the next thing is a toaster. You might have this in your house or maybe you
don't. In my other video, 150 Household Items, we had a toaster oven and that's with the door and
you have to lay everything flat. You can also use it like an oven. It's kind of like a mini oven.
But in this house, we decided to get a toaster, just a regular toaster that has slots at
the top. Then we have Dan's coffee grinder. More coffee devices.
And here is my section. This is the tea section. I have a lovely teapot, some tea
strainers, a couple things of tea right here. I have another drawer that's got lots
of fun tea. If you drink tea in your country, I would love to try tea from your country.
That's always the thing that I love to try. I love to try lots of stuff when I travel.
But whenever I travel, I love to try the kind of traditional food and also the kinds
of tea that people drink around the world. I'm always curious what kind of things that other
people drink. My PO box is in the description if you want to send to me any. All right, we are back
at the stove top. But on the stove top, there was something I didn't mention and that's a tea kettle
for heating water. Pretty clear. It's for my tea or for something else if you want to just heat
up some water. It's got a cool little thermometer on the top so that you can see how hot it is,
because you don't want to overheat your green tea. It must be the perfect temperature. Maybe some
people don't care, but I do. And finally, before we go into the cupboards and the drawers, I'd like
to end at this piece of the counter, which has some important elements for cooking. We have some
cutting boards. These are wooden cutting boards that we have here and this kind of laminate wood
cutting board here. And some oven mitts. This is a flat oven mitt, and this is an actual mitt, like
a mitten, that you can use to protect your hands. And on this little tray, not everybody has this,
this is just something that we do for convenience, we have some common items that we use when
we're cooking Like olive oil or honey, or salt and pepper, or my prenatal vitamin for
our baby, some chopsticks, some knives, and some kitchen scissors. I'm curious if you use scissors
in the kitchen. We use scissors a lot. But I feel like growing up, my parents didn't
use scissors that much in the kitchen, so maybe it's kind of a more modern thing.
I'm not sure. Do you use scissors in the kitchen? Next, let's take a look at some of the dry
goods, some things in cupboards, some different appliances and things that are put away.
These shelves are quite high, as you can see, but up here we have some dry goods. Dry goods
are any kind of food that doesn't need to be refrigerated. So for us, that's pasta or couscous
or quinoa. The types of things that don't need to be refrigerated. We have some alcohol.
I was actually using that to make some apple cider spiked with rum. Not for me unfortunately
because I'm pregnant, but for our friends for our pumpkin party we had. And here is a little bit
messy, but it's all right. We have some cookbooks. A lot of kitchens have cookbooks. You probably
do too. If you have any favorite cookbooks, please recommend them. I always love browsing
through cookbooks. And at the end of every year for Christmas, I usually buy a new cookbook.
We have just a couple here, but it's always nice to start the year with new recipes and
new ideas. So if you have any recommendations, let me know. I have some cookbooks. This is
my personal cookbook. Not really my recipes, but these are just recipes that I have written
down in a little notebook. We also have some other... These are mainly knickknacks just
kind of for display. It's not really for the kitchen. But here we have other dry goods and
these dry goods are kind of our snack goods. We try to have healthy snacks, especially with a
two year old who always wants snacks. I don't want to give him something unhealthy all the time.
We always try to have a lot of nuts available in these different jars. These are usually
called Mason jars. It's the brand of jar, but we use it as just the name of it. It's a
Mason jar, or you could say it's a glass last jar. It has this type of lid that's kind of
two piece. It's got two pieces to it. We usually store different peanuts, cashews,
almonds, pistachios, Brazil nuts, popcorn seeds, or sunflower seeds, or raisins. Anything that's
kind of a healthy snack, we try to put on the shelf. All right, let's go back to the kitchen,
which is just right here, and we're going to take a look inside some of the cupboards to look at
some other appliances and things that might be hiding. Pretty much every kitchen has something
that you eat on, right? We have some small plates. There's not really a fancy term for these. You
might have really small plates that are called saucers. We don't have these, but you can use
it to put like a teacup on, and it usually has a little rim on the inside, some place where
you can safely set your tea cup. This is not a saucer. This is just a small plate for small
portions of food. And then we also have some big plates, some larger plates.
We do have bowls, but as you saw, they are dirty. All of our bowls are dirty.
We usually go through bowls really quickly because especially now it's a little bit colder
outside, so we eat a lot of soup in our house. And we finish all of our bowls pretty quickly.
We do have bowls. I'm sure you know what bowls are though, so no problem. On the shelf
as well we have some mugs. Some more mugs in here, I love mugs, and some glasses
or just some cups. You can call this... It is glass. It is made of glass, but you can also
call it just a cup. There are some smaller cups. There are some beer glasses. This
is the right size for drinking beer, according to Dan. I don't know. I'm not a
big fan of beer. But we also have up here a strainer. Sorry, I'm a little bit low
here because the shelves are really high. This is a strainer. We put this in the sink
to wash our fruit and vegetables. Super handy. You probably have something like that in your
kitchen. And we just have some other coffee things like a hand grinder. Dan loves grinding
coffee by hand or a pour over for coffee. This is kind of the miscellaneous coffee
supplies. There's a French press up there. Other little devices. All right, let's
go to this shelf over here. I'm just going to sit up on the counter because it's
a little bit awkward to film a high spot and I'm down here and I'm showing this.
I'm sitting on the counter. No judging. All right, up here we have our wine
glasses. Your wine glasses might have a stem. A stem is that part on the bottom. A
stem is the word that you use with a flower. There's a flower, and then under the flower is
a stem and it looks like that. But these wine glasses do not have a stem. We have some little
fancy glasses too. And on the shelf is generally just knickknacks. This is a point of contention in
our relationship. Whenever Dan has a really cool beer glass, he wants to keep it because it looks
cool. But I feel like when you display too many beer glasses, it kind of looks bad, kind
of looks like you drink too much alcohol. And Dan doesn't drink that much
alcohol. But when you display all of it, it's not that great, I think. Anyway, so
I'm always secretly recycling them. Don't tell him. Actually, he knows. He knows. Sometimes
he'll look up and say, "Hey, where'd that go? Oh, Okay. I guess there were too many." These are some
glasses that Dan thinks are super cool. All right, now we're going to go around the kitchen drawer
by drawer. I'm going to pull some things out. You're going to see inside the drawers of our
kitchen. Not so clean, but maybe yours is not so clean either. All right. Inside this drawer,
there are all of our lids for our pots and pans. We actually haven't looked at our pots and pans
yet. We'll take a look at those in a moment. They're kind of hanging up in an awkward spot
to film, but we have a lid rack so that you can hold all of the lids. It's so convenient. I really
like having that. Down here we have a lot of our baking things.
There's cookie sheets or baking sheets. You can use
these for baking cookies, for baking french fries, whenever you want to cook, baking
vegetables. This is technically called a cooling rack. You can bake cookies and then
set them here. And because there is some space, it will cool the cookies and they won't get
too moist. It'll cool evenly. But I also use this for baking. It fits on this sheet perfectly.
I use it when maybe we're baking something that has a lot of grease, like chicken wings. Something
that has a lot of grease, and I don't want my food cooking in the grease. I'll put that up here,
and then the grease will fall down underneath onto the pan. It's a little bit healthier and also
tastes good for something to cook it like that. Some other baking items that are
under here are different pans for baking different items. This is a bread pan,
but we also have different casserole dishes. This is a casserole dish. It's pretty common
in the U.S. to eat casseroles. I don't know if I've ever actually made one myself. Maybe
that's more of my parents' generation, making a casserole. I don't know, maybe in
colder places in the U.S. they make casseroles. It's basically just throwing everything
in. Maybe some potatoes, maybe some pasta, some cheese, some broccoli, maybe some
meat, and you just kind of bake it together. It's kind of like a strange lasagna,
if you can imagine this kind of idea. It's kind of an easy thing to make. This is a
casserole dish, but I use it for other things, maybe for brownies or for baking vegetables. I use
it for a lot of different things. This one is a glass baking dish. Some people might actually call
it by the brand name. The brand name is Pyrex. That's a really common brand name for baking
items. And sometimes we use that to describe it. So instead of saying the glass dish, we might say
the Pyrex dish. Not everyone's going to use that. They might just say the glass dish,
but you might occasionally hear that, and that's just the brand name being used for
the item. Even if it's not that brand name, but it's that same idea. It's a glass dish. You
might hear that used. Something else that I dug out from the back of this shelf are two silicon
muffin tins. It's more likely to have metal muffin tins, but I like to make muffins.
It's really annoying to get them out of the metal muffin tin. This you can use less oil on it.
It just comes out so easily. It's really great and it lasts for a long time. It's very easy to
clean. I have these silicon muffin tins. You might use that or just something to make muffins
with. And also in this drawer is a strainer. This is not a stranger. This is a steamer, a
steamer. We already saw the strainer, which was up in the cupboard, and we use that to wash
the vegetables. This steamer is going to fold up. It's supposed to fold up. You
can put that in a pan or a pot of steaming water and you can steam broccoli.
You can steam green beans. You can steam vegetables in this really easily. Steam shrimp. I
use that for all of these things. You can use this steamer basket. I think these steamer baskets,
maybe they're pretty common around the world, but this folding metal type, I've had a
couple of them and they always fall apart. The little leaves on them always fall off, even if
it's like a pretty good brand name steamer basket. I'm curious in your country if you use this type
of thing and if you have better quality ones. It's cool that it can fold up, but sometimes
the little leaves get stuck. Okay, that worked pretty well. But maybe it's just because I have a
two year old. He likes to pull them off and then you find them around the house. Not very handy
when you have a two year old. Next, let's move on from this cabinet and go to these drawers. A
cabinet is going to open like this, like a door, and a drawer, which is a tricky word to say, is
going to open like this. Let's start at the top. At the top, we have silverware. Some people call
this flatware. It's kind of a restaurant word. When we're talking about forks, spoons,
butter knives, chopsticks, steak knives, children stuff, when we're talking about these
items that you put on the table when you eat, the most common word is silverware. It doesn't
need to be actually made of silver. Usually they're not, because that takes a lot of work
to keep up, but we usually call that silverware. At a restaurant, you might hear the restaurant
staff say flatware, or maybe if you work in a really fancy restaurant. I don't think I've
ever heard a family call it flatware at home. I just remember in my home ec class, home
ec is home economics where you learn about baking and sewing and all those
kinds of things in high school, in my home ec class, I remember our home ec
teacher said, "In this class, you will not call it silverware. You will call it flatware."
And everyone kind of laughed a little bit like, who says that? That's so fancy. But in
her class we had to call it flatware, but I've never used that term since. So if you're
from the U.S. or you have American friends, I'm curious if you've ever heard flatware in that
kind of casual situation. In the next drawer, we have some other helpful items for baking
and cooking. This is kind of our random drawer. Everyone has stuff like that. Here we have
teaspoons and tablespoons. So as I mentioned, ovens use, maybe I didn't mention this, but ovens
use Fahrenheit in the US and instead of using milliliters and liters and these kinds of easy
measurements, we decided to do things the hard way in the US and use tablespoons
which is this measurement, or this one here, this big circle,
or teaspoons which are these. And there's various increments, half a teaspoon,
a fourth of a teaspoon, and eighth of a teaspoon. Yeah. If you're using in spices, or salt, or
you're baking, that's really essential if you're cooking something, like you're making a soup, I
just throw stuff in. I don't usually measure it, but that's a personal preference. We also
have some tongs great for picking out hot things when you're cooking them, like corn,
when you're boiling corn, great to have this. We also have a thermometer, this is a meat
thermometer. I guess you could use it for water too or for soup, other things but we usually
use this for meat. On the back of the thermometer, it says C/F and that's Celsius or Fahrenheit.
So if you buy a meat thermometer in the US make sure that you have the right button clicked.
And if you're thinking about the temperature, what temperature should pork be in Celsius? Make
sure that you're showing the Celsius number. I've thought about that a lot, because sometimes
the wrong one is clicked. And in my head I'm thinking the Fahrenheit number, but it's showing
the Celsius number and it's just mixed up. So make sure that you don't get that wrong, especially
with meat. And we also have a meat pounder for pounding chicken, or steak, or whatever you
want to get to be more tender. You might see this also called a tenderizer. It has some knobs on
the top, a tenderizer, but it's for pounding meat. All right, let's go to the next door. And
this door, we have other random things. This is a box of drink accessories. So if you
want to make yourself a shot of some alcohol, if you want to open some wine, we
have a wine opener. There's also a corkscrew, that's this little device is a
corkscrew. So you need to put that into the cork, turn it, and then you can use the wine opener
for this. Or you could, this is a really old one, but you could use a bottle opener to open beer, or cider, or whatever you're drinking
out of a bottle. So this is a bottle opener, and this is a wine opener. We also have some
wine stoppers because we don't drink that much wine. And if we have a bottle of wine, we don't
finish it in one day. So it's nice to kind of pump the air out, our two year old likes to
play with this a lot, likes to pump the air out, and you put the stopper in and it keeps your
wine fresh for longer, pretty handy little thing. We also have a knife sharpener. This is for our
nice sharp knives, not the steak knives. The steak knives, they are serrated. Serrated means they
have a little, like U marks, little cuts in them. Serrated knives are great for cutting
tomatoes or steak. Things like this, but you cannot sharpen, at least as far as I know,
you can't sharpen serrated knives. So this is for, like our chopping knife or some other
knives that have a smooth blade. And I bought this fun little device recently,
do you know what this is? Can you guess? You put a hard boiled egg inside
this, and when you push it down, these little strings will cut the egg.
And I bought this because I saw a toddler using this to cut hard-boiled eggs. And I
thought, oh, my two year old is going to love this. So I made a bunch of hard boiled
eggs and I peeled them and he helped me cut them with this. It was a hit. It worked well.
All right, in this final drawer, we have not, not many options that you can actually
see, but these are Tupperware. We have some glass Tupperware, again, these, you could
say Pyrex dishes. Technically you could bake, not with the lid. But you could bake something
in this because it's glass and it's meant for baking. Usually we have a full drawer of
these Tupperware dishes, but we don't have a full drawer of them right now because
we've recently been making a lot of soup. And as you saw in our freezer, we have a lot of
leftover soup containers. So when we make soup, maybe chili, we make a lot and then put some in
the freezer and we use those Tupperware containers to store it. And then the next week, when we
want soup, we don't have to make it. You just pull it out of the freezer and bam, you've got
dinner. All right, let's move on to the next door. These two cabinets are under our sink. So you can
see kind of the sink basins are here. And usually under the sink is where you keep extra soap,
maybe some cleaning supplies. We have trash bags, extra trash bags, extra little cleaning rags.
It's kind of like a cleaning section. I'm curious, what are some things that you put underneath
your kitchen sink? This is usually where in the US you'll find cleaning supplies. We also have a
couple appliances. This is the blender, and we can blend soups, we can blend smoothies, you can blend
apple sauce, whatever you're making in there. And also a rice cooker. Rice cookers are
not common kitchen appliances in the US but I don't know why not because they're so handy.
It's so convenient. We use ours for cooking rice. We use it for steaming some like
potatoes, things that take a long time, and it also doubles as a slow cooker. So this is a
special rice cooker that has a slow cooker button. And you can just put whatever you want to slow
cook. I'm not sure if this is a type of cuisine, that's common in other places, but in the US it's
really common to cook things in a slow cooker. So a lot of Americans will not have a rice
cooker, but they will have a slow cooker. And it looks pretty similar. Usually it has a glass
lid that you can take off, but it's this kind of heavy duty pot and it's electric. And
you can put usually soup ingredients, you can put vegetables and broth and you just push
the button. And after eight hours, usually you go to work and you come home and it's all finished
and you didn't have to do anything. It's so great. So you can use it as a slow cooker. If
you've never heard of a slow cooker, I recommend looking up some recipes with it. It's
really interesting because slow cookers have been around for a long time, but the idea of having a
good meal cooked without much time in the kitchen has always been popular. So a lot
of people use slow cookers, overall generations. It's a pretty cool device to have.
In the next cabinet, it's pretty nifty. See how it works. This opens and whoa, this spins. When
we first saw this house, I thought, oh, this is so cool, I can't wait to use this. And the bottom
spins too. And this is just where we keep our dry goods. So you saw some of the dry goods up on the
shelf. Those are just kind of some pretty ones for display. We do eat those, but it just kind of
looks cool. And in here is where we keep beans, and vinegar, and tomato paste, and rice, and
all of those things that we use for cooking, but we don't need to keep them on the counter. A
lot of people in the US will have a pantry. And this is like a closet in your kitchen where
you can keep all of these types of things. In this house, we don't have a pantry. So we
have this Lazy Susan, is the term. It's a rolling cabinet. It could just be a circle that you put
a pot on. And that circle spins, that's called a Lazy Susan. You might see this at restaurants,
you might have it on your kitchen table, but this is also called a Lazy Susan. I
don't know why, poor Susan, I'm sorry, if your name is Susan, you're not lazy. It's just
the term for this type of cool spinning shelf. And it's really helpful for being able to access a
lot of stuff and make the most of your space. We're almost finished, horah. These
are the last drawers in my kitchen. In these drawers, we have our most used kitchen
utensils. So I'd like to go through these because they might be similar to what you have in your
house. First, we have a simple spoon. This is for stirring things that we're
cooking. This is a garlic press, put your garlic in here. And when you press it
down, the garlic comes out those holes, and it's nice and fine and juicy, it's really great. I hate
cleaning this, but it's a really handy device. Then we have a whisk, this is a plastic
whisk. If you can see it, say plastic whisk, but a lot of whisks are metal. They might have
a metal part here to it. This is a soup ladle, you can ladle, we can use it as a verb too. I'm
ladling the soup with the soup ladle. This is a soup ladle. You might call this too a soup
spoon, but most likely here it called a ladle. Next, this is just a little scraper for our rice
cooker. This came with it. And I like to scoop up the rice with it. This isn't so common in other
American households, but if you have a rice cooker, you probably have something like this.
We also have a can opener. This is a manual can opener. So you have to do this by hand. When I was
growing up, my parents had an electric can opener, and it was a little device that stuck on one
of our cupboards and they attached a can to it with a magnet and just pushed a button. And
it automatically opened the can pretty cool, actually, our cat, the cat that we don't have
any more. He's 18 years old. He passed away a couple years ago, but the cat that I grew up with,
he loved that electric can opener because my dad would often open cans of tuna with the can opener.
So every time my cat heard the can opener, he would run downstairs and wait,
"Please, please, I want tuna, please." And usually my dad would give him some of
the juice or a little piece or something, but that sounds of the electric can opener
was linked in the cat's mind with yummy food. All right, next, we have some more tongs. These
are shorter tongs and a vegetable peeler. I like this kind of vegetable peeler that has this
U shape. And the peeler is across the top, but in a lot of houses in the US you're going to
see a flat vegetable peeler. And then the blade kind of comes out like a knife. I like this
kind better. I think it's easier to use, but maybe you have something different in your house.
We have a spatula. Actually, we have two spatulas. This is a silicone spatula, and this is a metal
spatula. We have some more kitchen scissors, and this is another spatula, but you could use it
as for stirring or scraping. So you might call it a scraper, you might call it a spatula. I think
most people would probably call it a spatula. Even though technically this, this device
that's flat, it's a flatter, you can flip eggs, you can flip things with this spatula.
And this one is more for mixing, if you're mixing some bread dough, or if you're mixing
something you might be more likely to use this, but we'd still call this a spatula, if I think
of another name for this, I'll write it here, but I'm pretty sure we just call this as spatula.
We also have a lighter, horah, great for lighting candles and whatnot. All right, let's
go to the next door. Here are all of our spices. So if you watched our other video with, from
our old apartment, 150 household items that I've mentioned a couple of times. In our old apartment,
we used to have all of our spices on a shelf. Personally, I prefer that because you can see the
name of all the spices and you don't have to... All of these, all I see is the black lid.
So I have to often pick up each one and see, what is this? What is this? What is
this? So I feel like in the future, we'll probably have a more useful way to store
our spices. Maybe we'll put them on a shelf, but for now they are in the store with some tea
and some other tea filters, other types of drink things. But this is where we store our spices.
And then in the bottom drawer, this is kind of a weird angle to show you. But in the bottom
drawer are, all of our other things that we need in the kitchen. So there are small plastic
bags. Sometimes we use the brand name for this, this type of bag, and we'll call this a Ziploc
bag. This is not a brand name, Ziploc bag, but some people still call it that even though
it's, you might not actually use that brand. Ziploc is the brand, but you might just use a
generic or a store brand name type thing. So we have some plastic bags, I have some reusable cloth
bags, some reusable sealable plastic bags. I like to use these for cheese because it's just nice to
have something that you can use again and again. There's also some extra garbage bags in here.
I'm curious, what do you think this is called in english? There are plenty of names, but
in the US we just call this a plastic wrap. Some people might say cling wrap. I'm sure there
are other names for this, but putting the plastic wrap on something, I've tried a lot of
different natural methods for using, instead of plastic wrap, but really plastic wrap
is so handy. It's so handy to use. We also have in here, aluminum foil. Aluminum foil,
and we use that whole name, aluminum foil. You might put this on a dish when you're baking
it, you might put it over the dish to keep it warm. It's a lot of different uses for that.
And I also have some wax paper or parchment paper. So technically
this is not wax paper. You'll see in the store, a different item for wax paper, but some people
call it wax paper. It's technically parchment paper, but this is what you can put down on your
cookie sheet or on your baking sheet so that you don't have to clean it up that much. So usually
I like to put this paper on my baking sheet to just lessen the mess afterwards. And last but
not least, are the pots and pans, essential for cooking. Mine are hung up really high right
now, I'm standing on a chair, these are up here. But it's really nice to be able to have them hung
up in our kitchen. We don't have a specific place where we want to put these. As you
can see, all of our drawers are full of other things. So it's really handy
to have these little hooks up here. If somebody tall comes to our house, they
just have to watch out and not hit their head. So we hang up our pots, little pots.
These are stainless steel pots, stainless steel pans, and we also have a non-stick
pan. That's the coating that's on here is going to help it to not stick. On this side, this
type of, I'll take it off so you can see, this is called a wok. You're maybe familiar
with this type of item. This is an old wok, it's supposed to be non-stick, but it is quite
old. So it's not exactly non-stick anymore. But all of these are pots and pans. You might also
hear something like this, get called a sauce pan because it's small. Some people call that a
sauce pan. I just call it a pot, a small pot or a pan. So there's simple words, there's more
complex words, I'm sure there's regional words for these types of things, but I hope that it will
help give you kind of a base for your vocabulary. Before we get started. I want to explain some
words that I use, to talk about this room. Look at these three words, bathroom, restroom, washroom.
I'm from the US, and we use only two of these. Can you guess which two we use? You just heard me
say one of them. We use bathroom and restroom, but there is a difference between these, a bathroom
is generally in someone's house in some kind of comfortable location. And a restroom is usually
used for a public situation, maybe a restaurant or in your office. If you need to go to the bathroom,
you might use this because it feels a little bit more formal. It's a little more indirect, it's
a restroom. You don't know what's happening in the restroom, I'm just resting. So we use
restroom generally to be a little more polite or to talk about bathrooms in a more formal setting.
As for the word washroom, in the US I don't think I've ever heard anyone use this. I could be wrong.
It's generally more associated with Canadians. So in Canada, they often say washroom, but anytime
that I say, this is what they say in Canada, this is what they say in the UK. Please just understand
that I am not an expert in other types of English, I only know what I've experienced here in
the US. What about these words? Toilet, loo, John and water closet. Well, we do use
the word toilet, but we don't use it to talk about this room. We never say I'm going to
the toilet, it seems gross or just too direct. And loo, we never say loo in the US. Also John,
we don't really say the word John, either. But this expression water closet, if you saw this
sign, what would you think that means? Let's say you're at a restaurant and you're looking for the
bathroom and you see this sign on a door. Would you know that, that's the bathroom? You might be
able to guess, but water closet or WC is sometimes on a bathroom door and it just means that's the
bathroom. Now, sometimes we use a kind of silly words to talk about the bathroom. For example,
you might hear lavatory, powder room, girls room. And these are always, usually said with that
same tone of voice that I just used. Lavatory, this is a very high class way to say bathroom.
So if you are wanting to be a little bit silly, you might say, excuse me, where's your lavatory?
If you're in your friend's house, you might say, that'd be kind of funny. Or you might say, I
need to go to the powder room to freshen up. And I think this is something that we don't
ever say seriously. It's usually just kind of as a little joke, oh, I need to go make sure that
there's no food in my teeth, I'm going to go to the powder room, or you might hear the girls
room. And this is not just for little girls, this is talking about the bathroom. If you
go to your friend's house and you need to go to the bathroom, you might ask where's the
girls room. But only if you're a girl, oh, we don't really say where's the boys room. I think
that maybe this is just because sometimes women are more indirect about these types of things.
I'm not sure, but occasionally you will hear these silly expressions used with the bathroom.
Now we have two more. What about these two words? Port-a-Potty and port-a-John. Do you
have a port-a-Potty in your house? I would be very shocked. These are a port-a-Potty
or a port-a-John, usually that's what you would see it at a park, or maybe if you go
to an outdoor concert or somewhere that doesn't have an actual bathroom structure or some
kind of restroom outside. So you might see these types of facilities. All right, now that we
have cleared all that up. When you come to the US you can use bathroom or restroom, and let's get
on to talking about the items in my bathroom. Let's start off by talking about this. Here, we
have the sink. Sometimes it's called a sink basin, but generally that's kind of a more formal word.
If you're purchasing a sink, you might see it called a sink basin. Also, we have the faucet and
the hot water handle, or the cold water handle. I only have one, but you might see some bathrooms
that have two, that's also pretty common. At the bottom, this thing inside here, down
there is the drain. If you need to fill the sink, you might say, plug the drain. I need
to push that down, push the drain down so that I can plug the drain and fill up the
sink with water. And usually under the sink, you're going to find some plumbing. Plumbing are
the pipes that bring the water to your faucet, and then away from your drain. Notice that the
B here is silent, plumb-ing, plumbing. We're going to be talking about these items a little bit
later in this lesson. So let's move on to the next place in the bathroom. All right, here we are by
the toilet. One of the features of the bathroom, in the US, we always call this the toilet. We
don't call the room, the toilet, as I mentioned. So on the toilet, we have two lids, this
is in the US. We have the lid and we have the seat, which can also go up. And this is
always a point of contention in marriages, right? Put the seat down. And this is what a lot of wives
say, put the seat down, don't leave the seat up. I'm curious if you have ever had this discussion
in your house, that we have the lid. And we have here, this is the toilet bowl, you can
imagine a bowl. And back here is the flusher or the toilet handle, because we can push this
to flush the toilet. Don't forget to flush the toilet, when you're finished. To flush the toilet,
our bathroom, we have installed an extra feature on our toilet, it is this thing, it is a bidet.
This is becoming a little more common in the US, but it is certainly not a well-known feature of
a toilet in the US but because my husband and I have lived abroad, we know about bidets.
So we have a bidet installed in our toilet. Also around the toilet, you will see there is
a plunger here for helping the toilet to flow freely. And we have a toilet brush, for cleaning
the toilet. Some extra toilet paper, but here, if you can see on this side, we have our toilet paper
holder and our toilet paper. I have a question for you. Do you have your toilet paper coming over
the top or do you have it coming from behind? For me, I prefer it like this coming from the top,
but I know everyone has different opinions about this. Sometimes on the back of the toilet, you
will see a box of tissues. In the US, we almost always call these Kleenex. This is the brand, but
it's also just what we generally call this type of item. Or for us, we have a baby, so we have
some baby wipes also on the back of the toilet. We have one more thing, this. Do you
know what this is? Can you guess? It is called a Squatty potty. I
actually got this online. I got this from somebody in my city, online. Somebody online
said, I'm selling a Squatty potty thing that you put under your toilet. Does anyone want to
buy it? And I said, me, I want to buy it. So I met her at a gas station, kind of felt like
a drug deal because she hopped out of her car. She said, are you here for the Squatty potty?
And I said, yes, I am. And I gave her my 10 bucks and she gave me the Squatty potty. And we left.
But this is a kind of a device that helps your body supposedly to be in a better position so that
your bowels can move freely. So I'm not sure if it actually works or not, but it's something that I
thought was pretty cool. And it was worth the try. Next, let's talk about the shower or the tub. Now
in my bathroom here, we have two bathrooms in my house. In this bathroom, we do not have a tub.
I didn't feel like cleaning our other bathroom. Otherwise, I would show you a tub,
but this is what it looks like. Most bathrooms have a tub and then there is also
a shower. This bathroom does not have a shower curtain. A shower curtain is a kind of cloth that
comes over. Instead, we have these glass shower doors. You can barely see them in the video, but
there are glass doors that block the water from spraying everywhere in our bathroom.
In our shower, we have a shower head, and sometimes the shower head is detachable, or
sometimes it's just fixed on the wall. There's also a shower handle where you can turn on the
hot and cold water. I'm not going to turn that on right now. So I don't get too wet. In
our shower, we have a squeegee because we have these glass doors. When they get wet, it's
good to take care of them and not let the water accumulate on the sides. So we will squeegee them
after taking a shower. And this is a verb and a noun. This is a squeegee, and I need to squeegee
the doors. Sometimes I squeegee the walls too. This is my three-year-old son's favorite activity
to squeegee everything. It is pretty fun, but we do this to take care of our shower. On
this end of our shower, we have our shower goods. There is shampoo, conditioner. There's also liquid
soap and bar soap. You might have both in your shower or you might have some kind of shower
scrub. This is a liquid that has some kind of little abrasive pieces in it to scrub your skin.
A lot of people will use maybe a loofa or a sponge or a wash cloth to wash their body. We have this
little, it's the thing that we got in Korea. Well, it's not the same one from Korea, but it's this
little rag. You can put your hand in it and it's a little bit scratchy and you can kind
of just wash yourself with this. I like it. On the wall of our shower, we have tiles.
These are the shower tiles. A lot of people like this look, but they don't like taking care
of it because in between here is called grout and you have to occasionally clean the grout in your
shower. Maybe you need to get an old toothbrush and scrape it. You need to do something. We have
this spray that somebody gave us, cleans without having to rinse, spray it on your shower once
a day. I don't do that. I spray it maybe once a week, if I remember, but you can spray it on the
tiles and maybe it makes it so you don't have to scrub them. I don't know. We'll see what happens,
but there's different products like that too. You might notice here in the bottom of our
shower is a little turtle. It's a secret that all Americans keep a little toy turtle in the bottom
of their shower. Don't tell our secret. Just kidding. It's my son's toy. One more thing is you
might hear the term shower stall. A shower stall is generally in a more public place like in a gym
or in a dormitory where there's multiple people showering at the same time. A shower stall
are going to be those individual shower spots. There might be a shower curtain. There
might be nothing. It might just be open, but this is kind of a more public thing. So
we don't really use the term shower stall to talk about the bath shower area in your house.
That's more in a public place. In our bathroom, we have several types of towels. One type of towel
is simply a bath towel and we hang that bath towel on a hook, or you might have a towel rack or
a towel bar where you hang your towel. We only have these little hooks to hang our towels on.
You also might use a washcloth. I mentioned this previously that you might use this in the
shower. For me, I use this to wash off my face in the morning or in the evening and I hang it on
this little rack to dry. Another type of towel you might have is simply a hand towel. All of these
are pretty self-explanatory, right? Bath towel, washcloth, I guess you could wash anything with
that, and hand towel. Can you guess what you wash with a hand towel? You use it to dry your
hands and it's hanging on this ring to let it air out in between washings.
Next, let's talk about some of the items which might be in your bathroom. On our
counter, we have a comb. This is not a brush. I have some hair ties, my glasses, some deodorant,
and a contact lens case. You might just say also a contact case. I have my jewelry. There
is an outlet for plugging things in. On the other side, we have a soap dispenser
here. Then we have our toothbrush holder. Inside that toothbrush holder is a toothbrush
and toothpaste. Beside it is an electric toothbrush. There is some floss, some more
deodorant and underneath here is a glasses lens cleaner and another glasses lens cloth.
A lot of bathrooms in the US will have a little closet or some shelves for linens. If this is
a separate area, or if it is in your closet, we still call this a linen closet. Linens are our
sheets, towels, blankets. Mine is a little bit messy, a little bit disorganized, but it's okay.
So here, these are where I keep my linens. On the other side of that linen closet is another shelf
where we keep some band-aids, extra shampoo, these types of things and we could call this a medicine
cabinet, but it's not necessarily a cabinet. You're going to see that in just a moment.
Instead, we'll still say that this is in the closet and these are some extra bathroom items.
Some other items that you might have in your bathroom is some contact solution. This goes
with my contact lenses that I wear occasionally, some contact lens solution. You might also have
some Q-tips. I don't really use these, but for some reason, we have them. Instead of Q-tips,
you might have cotton balls that look like this or cotton rounds. Sometimes people use these to
take off makeup or for other things, I guess, but you might have other kinds of cotton in
your bathroom. In the bathroom, you have some tweezers and fingernail clippers. These are
giant fingernail clippers and sometimes on the fingernail clippers, or you might have a
separate piece as well, there is a nail file for filing your nails. Occasionally, this is called
an emery board. I haven't really heard this an awful lot in my life, but if someone said,
"Oh, I need to buy an emery board," I would know what they were talking about, but it's not as
common as a nail file, which is pretty clear, right? It's a nail file for filing your nails.
For shaving, you need a razor. Sometimes it comes with some extra razorblades. I think
Dan has already finished using all of those. This is his razor. We also have some shaving
cream and maybe you use some aftershave. I don't know if this is true in your house, but my
side of the bathroom counter has way more things than Dan's side of the counter. I think in his
drawer, oh, there's nothing but an empty box. But on my side, there are quite a few
things. For example, I have some makeup, some different bottles of potions, like makeup
remover. I have a, this is just some witch hazel, but it can be used as like a toner for your
skin. I have some other hair supplies like clips and some things for my hair like
bobby pins. I'm not sure why we say bobby, but these are called bobby pins and you can
put them in your hair to keep your hair back. In the bathroom, there's also a curling iron
for curling your hair. You might also have a straightener or you might have a hairdryer. Do
you know what? This hairdryer, I got two weeks ago because the hairdryer I had before that I have
had since high school. This hairdryer was 15 years old, is amazing. No, I guess older than that,
maybe like 16, 17 years old and finally it died, but I can't believe it lasted that long. It was
just a cheap hairdryer from the grocery store, but it lasted a long, long, long time and finally it
just stopped working. So I have a new hairdryer. Hopefully, this one will also last for 15 years.
If you choose not to use a hairdryer, you can do what's called air drying. So you might say, I
often say this, I need to air dry my hair and this is the opposite of using a hairdryer. I need
to use the hairdryer or I need to air dry my hair. Generally, they say that air drying your hair is
better for your hair so usually I air dry my hair for a while and then if I'm going to go to bed and
it's still a little wet, I'll use the hairdryer a little bit, just to kind of make it so that
I'm not sleeping in a wet mop. The final thing I'd like to talk about in the bathroom is laundry
and the trash can with the trash bag. Your laundry might be in a laundry basket. You might call this
a laundry hamper. I personally don't use the word hamper. It feels a little bit old fashioned, but
it might just be a regional difference in the US where some places say hamper, some places
say basket. This is a laundry basket. This is kind of soft, but you might have a hard
plastic laundry basket too. In the laundry is dirty laundry and this just means dirty
clothes. There's dirty laundry. I need to put it in the washing machine and then after that,
I'll fold it and I'll put it away in the closet. Oh, good morning. It's time to make the bed.
Maybe I'll put the pillows here at the top. I got to pull up the sheets, pull up the comforter,
put some decorative pillows up. Looks pretty good. Now it's time to change the sheets. All right,
so I'll probably take the pillowcases off. Got to wash the pillowcases, take the comforter
off, take the flat sheet, take that off the bed. Take the fitted sheet off the bed. I got to put
some new sheets on the bed after that. Next, I got to scrub down the tub and the shower
so I'll probably use a rag, maybe some kind of cleaning solution and scrub the walls, scrub
the tub, get around the bottom of the drain. The drain is where the water goes down. Maybe I'll
clean the shower head. I'll clean the faucet. All of these are important parts
when you're cleaning out your tub. Next is everyone's favorite thing, cleaning
the toilet. We could use the verb scrub, just like we use with the tub and the shower. You
might first start by lifting the lid, then taking a scrub brush, scrubbing around a little bit and
then you might pour some kind of cleaning solution into the toilet bowl, letting it sit for a little
while, scrubbing it out. You might scrub around the toilet bowl. Maybe you'll scrub behind the
toilet bowl. Making sure that everything is clean. We have so much laundry in our hamper. It's
time to do the laundry. The first step is to your dirty clothes. Take them out of
the hamper. The hamper is usually that thing that you use to carry your dirty laundry
in your bedroom, or maybe in your bathroom. We got to load the laundry into the washing
machine. Now we can use two different verbs for this. We could just simply say, put laundry
into the washing machine, put. Or we could say load the washing machine. I need to load the
washing machine, it means you're putting stuff in. So I'm loading things in and what do
you think happens when it's all done? Let's imagine it's finished washing. Well, you
need to unload, unload the washing machine. Great. There's a couple items that we use. This is
washing detergent. Usually we use the word detergent to talk about the soap that you put
in to the washing machine. So you put the soap into the washing machine, and then when it's done,
you have two different options. One option is you might hang it on a clothesline. A clothesline is
a rope and you might hang it on the rope to dry, usually outside, or you might have a clothes rack.
This is just one piece of metal or wood that you hang your wet clothes on to dry but here in
the US, it's most common to have a dryer. It's pretty interesting why some other countries
don't use dryers. I'm curious, in your country, do you have a dryer? Do you use a dryer often?
In the US, it's often used. It's used almost every single time and as you can see, these are
huge machines. These are not small. I know other countries I've lived in, you have a small washer,
maybe it's a washer dryer combo together, but in the US, they're pretty big. So then we'll
take the clothes. We'll unload the washer and we'll put them into the dryer. Here
we have a front-loading dryer. That means you load the dryer from the front. So if
you need to buy a dryer or washer in the US, you'll definitely hear these terms. Front-loading
dryer. Maybe you have a front-loading washer, but this is a top-loading washer. Those are just
some very specific terms about washers and dryers. There's a couple other items that some people
use when they're drying things in the dryer. You might use dryer sheets. These are just
little sheets, and they're supposed to help your clothes get softer. Dan and I, I don't
think we've ever used these. Some people feel like it's essential. We don't use them, but
it's just personal preference. What happens after the laundry is finished drying? You
need to fold the laundry or fold the clothes and put them maybe in a drawer or put them in the
laundry basket and then we can take that to the bedroom or wherever you're going to put them away.
So we say, fold the laundry or fold the clothes and then put it away. It's a great
phrasal verb for cleaning. Put it away. Whose job is it in your house to prepare the
meals? We might say, prepare the meals or before you prepare a meal, you might need to make a meal
plan. Some people do this. It means that you write down Monday through Sunday and you decide, what
am I going to eat on Monday? I'm going to eat spaghetti. What am I going to eat on Tuesday?
Tuesday, I'm going to eat fish tacos. Then you write down each day so that when you go grocery
shopping, which is another chore, you can easily decide all of the things that you need to
buy, and you don't need to keep going back. So I'm curious, do you make a meal plan and who
prepares the meals at your house? After you've finished preparing the meal, maybe after you
finished eating your meal, you need to wipe down the counters or we could say the kitchen counters.
This is a kitchen counter so we need to wipe it down. This phrasal verb wipe down is useful for
almost any room. You can wipe down the kitchen counter. You can wipe down the bathroom counter.
You could wipe down the kitchen table. You can wipe down a lot of surfaces and it just means you
have a wet cloth and you are wiping that surface. What do you have to do after you cook? You got to
wash the dishes. You might use a rag like this, or you might use some kind of steel wool,
depending on how tough the dishes are. Or you might use a scrub brush, or you might use a
sponge. My mother-in-law doesn't have a sponge here, but you might use a sponge. You
might use a rag like this and after you wash them with some soap or some dish soap,
we could call it, you have a couple options. You might air dry them, so we could put them
on the drying rack, put them on the drying rack means you just set the things here to dry and
let the air dry them. Or if you're extra lucky, you might have a dishwasher. It's true,
my mother-in-law has a dishwasher. So you can load the dishwasher. It's the same
verb that we use for the clothes in the washer, in the dishwasher. We don't call this simply the
washer. We always call it the dishwasher because the washer is for clothes and the dishwasher is
for dishes, for things that you use for eating. So you might put them on the top shelf, maybe
the bottom shelf. Maybe you put them in the silverware rack at the bottom and you load up
the soap, the detergent in here and turn it on and it's done, so easy. So if you don't have a
dishwasher, you have to wash them by hand and you need to set them in the drying rack. You've
got two options. What do you use at your house? Whose job is it in your house to take out
the trash? Maybe this is something that you do every day. Maybe it's something that you
do weekly. If I can figure out how to get my mother-in-law's trash, aha, I did it, open. Maybe
it's something that you need to do weekly. Maybe it's something that you need to do daily. You
need to take the trash bag out of the trash can and maybe you put it in a dumpster. Maybe
you put it in a bin outside, but you need to take the trash bag out. If you're already taking
out the trash, you should probably take out the recycling too. This is another great phrasal verb.
We use phrasal verbs a lot for household chores, take out the trash, take the trash out, or
take the recycling out, take out the recycling. What about your refrigerator? Or we can call it
just a fridge. There might be a couple of things that you do. The first simple step might be to
simply wipe down, using that great phrasal verb, wipe down the fridge. It means inside you're
just wiping the surfaces, but maybe you've got a lot of food in your fridge. My mother-in-law
has a lot of food in her fridge, which is always exciting whenever we come to visit, but you might
find some food that is expired or maybe it's old so you need to go through the fridge and clean
out the fridge. Clean out the fridge means you're taking things that are old or expired and throwing
them away. So you need to clean out the fridge or there's another great clean word we might use.
We might say, I need to deep clean the freezer and the fridge. Deep clean means you take
everything out. You scrub down the surfaces. You make sure that it's spotless, it's clean and
then you put things back that are not expired. You put the things back that you want to.
Maybe this happens once a year, I deep clean the fridge. For me, that isn't really happening
on a schedule. I think the last time that we deep cleaned our fridge was when I was pregnant
and every smell was so terrible and I told Dan, "Our kitchen smells so terrible. I can't go in
the kitchen," but really I was just pregnant. It didn't smell terrible and so I asked him,
"Please, can you deep clean our fridge and freezer? There's something that smells terrible
in there." Really, nothing smelled terrible. It was just my nose because I was pregnant. But
thankfully, Dan deep cleaned our fridge and it was good for our fridge. It didn't really help me
because everything still smelled terrible. But for this moment, you can deep clean if you want
to really scrub and make sure it's spotless. If you have any hardwood floors or linoleum
floors in your house, you need to arm yourself with a broom and you need to sweep the floor,
probably daily. If you have a small child like me, or maybe a dog, you need to sweep three times
a day, but you will definitely need a broom. Something that's really common and easy to use if
you have hardwood floors is a Swiffer. Swiffer is actually the brand, but in English, we say, "I'm
going to Swiffer the floor." We use it as a verb, or, "I'm going to get the Swiffer," which is
this device and usually there's a little cloth that is the Swiffer brand cloth and you
put it over top. It's a disposable thing. It might be dry and it kind of picks
up some cat hair or dust, or it might be wet and you can kind of easily mop the floor.
But if you don't have one of these, you might need a mop or maybe two maps. My mother-in-law has two
maps. We have a part at the bottom that collects the liquid, the moisture. You might dip it
into a bucket or maybe you pour some water on the floor. That's usually what Dan does when he
mops. He just pours some water on the floor and mops around it. You might mop the floor with your
mop, an important activity for hardwood floors. Then after you're done, you might dry it up with
some kind of sponge or maybe you have a rag and you just dry it up with that. Here you saw that
I use another phrasal verb to dry up something. You could say, "I'm going to dry the floor with
a rag," but it's much more natural to use the phrasal verb. I'm going to dry up the liquid on
the floor with a rag. I'm going to dry it up. I can't remember the last time I used one of
these, but if you have some little knick-knacks around your house, you might want to use a duster
to dust around the knick-knacks. So you might say, "I need to dust," or, "I can't find my duster."
This is what this is called. I need a duster to dust on the mantle, or maybe on some shelves
around your things. Of course, don't forget to water the plants. This is not a watering can, this
is just her tea kettle, but I couldn't find my mother-in-law's watering can, but you can imagine
you need to water the plants with a watering can, unless you're me and I always forget to water
my plants. If you saw my other video about household words, you know that all the plants
in my house have suffered a terrible fate. They're not living, but she has a green thumb
so all of her plants look beautiful, probably because she has remembered to water them.
If you have any windows, at some point, you'll need to wash the windows. You might use a
device like this, which has some kind of pad on it so that you can get the window wet and then it has
a little thing here, a little strip at the top, that's usually rubberized and that's called
a squeegee, a squeegee. So you can kind of do it like that and then all of the water flows off
of the window and it's nice and clean. This is a perfect device for this. I don't have one of these
things. That's why I came here to film this video, but you might need to wash the windows and
then squeegee the windows. You might notice that a lot of these words that we're using for
household chores are nouns and they're also verbs. This is a squeegee, but I can also say I'm
squeegeeing the window. I'm using it as a verb. So there's a lot of interchangeableness and this
is great for your vocabulary. You learn one word, you can use it in two ways so it's kind of a
two-for-one deal. Of course, at some point you'll need to clean up or tidy up. Tidy up means you're
putting things in their proper place. If you have a kid, you're probably constantly tidying
up, hopefully teaching them to tidy up after themselves, but you'll probably be tidying
up at least once a day. It's a good rule of thumb. So here I am, tidying up or just generally
cleaning up, putting things in their proper place. Another thing that you might do infrequently is
to wipe off, wipe off the baseboards. These are called the baseboards or the moulding. Moulding
is this similar type of wood, but maybe it's around a doorframe or it's on the wall somewhere,
maybe around the windows. Is there some moulding? So you might just wipe down the moulding.
You might have some clothes that need to be ironed. This is an iron and we're
ironing the clothes. I'm using this as a noun and as a verb. This is an iron,
I'm ironing the clothes and I'm ironing it on an ironing board. Honestly, I can't remember
the last time that I actually used an iron, maybe 15 years ago. This isn't really something,
obviously that is necessary in my life these days and don't be fooled, it's not even plugged
in. I'm not using it now. It's just for show. If you have a carpet, you might not need a broom
or a mop, but you will probably need a vacuum. You will need a vacuum because you will need to
vacuum the floor. So you need to vacuum the carpet or maybe you have a rug. A rug is one that
comes up. You can move it. You can remove it. You might need to vacuum the rug or
vacuum the carpet or vacuum both. If you have a garage where you put your car, at
some point, you'll probably need to clean out the garage. Clean out means like we said with the
fridge, take everything out and make sure that what you have in there is only essential. This
is a big task so it might only happen once every five years, once every 10 years but at some
point you'll need to clean out the garage. You also might just want to clean up the garage.
You want to go inside and make sure that things are in the boxes that they should be in. A lot
of people use a garage for storage. Of course, you put your car there, but they might
have some boxes of Christmas supplies or things that they don't use that often so at some
point, you might just want to clean up the garage. Congratulations on finishing this long two
hour English vocabulary lesson but I hope that you were able to learn about how to talk
about the world around you. This can really empower you to have the right words to say at
the right time. So don't forget to download the free PDF worksheet for this lesson. You can click
on the link in the description to download that, review everything that you've learned
and use it. Whenever you need to use it, you can reference that worksheet. I hope it
will be useful. Now I have a question for you. Can you let me know in the comments, which one of
these expressions or words was new for you? Maybe some of them were a review. You were familiar with
them, and then it just kind of reminded you of the word again. But which one of these words did you
not know before this lesson and you learned today? Let me know in the comments, will be very
interesting to see where the gaps were in your vocabulary. Let's learn about it
in the description. Share with me. I can't wait to see what you have to say and I'll
see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye.
The next step is to download the free PDF worksheet for this lesson. With this
free PDF, you will master today's lesson and never forget what you have learned. You
can be a confident English speaker. Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
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