The Layers of a Clean House (Why Cleaning Feels so Hard)

I'm Dana K white I'm the author of decluttering at the speed of life and I'm here to talk about the layers of a clean house because I'm sorry to tell you this but there are layers to a clean house and I did not used to understand that and not understanding that meant that I was constantly frustrated and I was mind-boggled when other people would say things like I never clean and I would look around their house and I was like yeah you do cuz your house looks perfectly fine how dare you say you don't clean or when other people would like clean their house and it was like walking around cleaning and I was like okay why is it a a 3-day or 2 we process for me to clean my house because I didn't understand that there are layers and that the third layer is actually cleaning okay so I'm not for sure if I'm going to use this video or not I'm using my phone here um I didn't even have anything that wasn't wrinkled sorry um I have been in an Airbnb for the last four days working on a writing project and had this realization of oh yeah this is basically the situation that I was in when I had this realization about the layers of a clean house I thought I'm just going to talk about it I might remake this video at some point but here's here here's what I mean by that okay so uh the situation where I first realized this was uh an my parents used to have a lake house and we would go there as a family and we would spend you know our free vacation time there it was lovely when our kids were little um and and we had to get it cleaned up before we left right okay cuz that was just what it was so I realized oh okay this is actually really nice to just be able to clean once everything else is done and I was like well what are the other things that are not usually done or hadn't usually been done in my house that always made it so hard to clean so here's what I mean when I talk about the layers of a clean house the first layer is the daily stuff okay this is what the Airbnb looked like in that moment where I realized oh yeah this is like that same thing actually I had been doing pretty good at doing you know quick throwaway and stuff and then I was like oh this would make a good video so I'm just going to kind of do what I used to do which is just you know live and not go Dana make sure you take a moment to throw things away put okay so I was like I'll just do that and see what we got after four days um but but this is what it looks like okay because that's all stuff that needs to be done daily right it's the doing of the dishes which while I was here I tried to drink and eat soup and egg salad and cereal and everything all out of the same mug but but dishes are the first thing like the daily stuff the the five- minute pickups that takes care of throwing away any Trash trash that I didn't think to throw away in the actual moment when I you know didn't need it anymore uh it's the picking up and putting away of stuff it's the not leaving things out on the counter because I have that 5 minute time so those are my daily things they need to be done daily if they don't if they're not done daily then they become part of cleaning the house and that's what makes cleaning the house completely overwhelming okay so if I'm doing them daily then when it's time to clean the house I'm just cleaning the house I'm not first doing all of that catching up that I used to do and the key to under I mean the the benefit of understanding that there are layers to a clean house is that once I understand oh this right here this stuff is not cleaning it is not what I would need to be do doing in the moment of cleaning in the time of cleaning then that's motivating to me to keep up with it so that it doesn't pile up and it doesn't steal all the time and the energy and the effort that I should actually be devoting to cleaning okay uh the second layer of a clean house is clutter so when we would be in the lake house and need to get it all cleaned up before we left I would uh you know I I would work really hard to keep up with the daily stuff so that I didn't have to do all that on that last day too uh but as I was you know catching up on whatever I hadn't gotten done and telling my kids and the and my husb the husband and my husband you know get all of your stuff out like get all of your stuff out of the house like anything that is not supposed to be in here needs to be out of the house well y'all that's decluttering right now I know it's not the exact same thing here but it was what opened my eyes to the fact that oh like in order for me to be able to clean this house get it to where it needs to be all the excess stuff that doesn't actually have a home here that isn't supposed to be in here needs to be gone and once that stuff is gone then that's when I'm able to actually clean and so decluttering is the second layer of the clean house so daily stuff that's not cleaning your house my house okay I'm not saying this like you I'm saying this this is what I had the realization of that really helped me the second layer of a clean housee is decluttering not having the clutter in there okay the reason cleaning was so overwhelming to me is that I was catching up on daily stuff doing the decluttering which at that time was really just stuff shifting moving everything into the master bedroom because that was the place where I could lock the door and justify not letting people come in right so I would move all that stuff so then I could clean but I was exhausted before I ever got to the cleaning CU I had done all this catching up I had done all this decluttering moving of stuff right and it never had a big impact right because that stuff was still in my house and so it's just going to kind of drift and Float back into those spaces or spread out wherever so that realization that those two layers are key crucial important need to be done and aren't the actual cleaning so the actual cleaning the the mopping and the scrubbing and the sweeping and all the dusting and all that kind of stuff that is the final layer of the clean house okay but you can't actually do that when there are dirty dishes covering the counter or when there is stuff everywhere that doesn't actually have a home and you can't usually get to it because you use up all your energy on those other two things if they're not dealt with first okay so that mindset shift of realizing that this is the reason I had always struggled this is the reason it was so hard for me was that I wasn't separating out the layers of a clean house I was viewing it all as cleaning my house and that was just flat out too much right like it it was too much so okay I am going to run through the house I'm going to do the catching up on the daily stuff I'm going to get rid of this first layer so that we move toward having a clean house because it has to be done right but it doesn't actually count as cleaning the house it's actually stuff that I just need to be keeping up with so that I don't have to spend the time I should be cleaning the house catching up on daily stuff all right what's great is that um you know not all airbnbs are like this but this one specifically said they will do the cleaning but again this is not cleaning this is not cleaning the house this is catching up on the stuff that I should have already done so in another video I did um I think it was where I was saying use the five steps to um break through overwhelm in any kind of cleaning situation any kind of home situation if you are like oh but I don't have my daily stuff under control oh but I don't whatever um use those five steps that's basically what I'm doing here right like I'm saying the first thing I'm doing is going oh my gosh y'all that's embarrassing uh going through and getting trash but y'all look this is only what 4 days if I I used to not do this every four days so times it not just being me there too so no wonder get very overwhelming right okay all right so there's my trash other daily stuff would okay so I've got like a spoon and a DOI I bet you they would wash the dishes for me but I don't want to be a jerk so I'm going to do that I don't want to I like my five star rain on Airbnb so I and I it's my favorite thing in the world when when my Airbnb host says oh my word this person is so clean that makes me happy yeah that's basically the um daily stuff I was catching up on and so now it's time for me to declutter get everything out that doesn't need to be here if it was my own home then it would be either give it a home according to the where would I look for it first or um get it out of the house but anything that's mine needs to leave so I'm going to get that stuff out of here my coffee creamer bohy cushion other bohy cushion and then we'll leave my last bohy cushion yes I have three here cuz it's rough um CU I'm probably going to work for a little bit longer till check out all right so it was easy here it's my house everything in M needs to go there were no decisions to make okay but even though in your real house actual decluttering may take a while with every single thing that you declutter and then you maintain that progress with your 5 minute pickups I mean it it means that that second layer is just completely eliminated right like you are eliminating that second layer you are moving your way toward a house that stays cleaner and is easier to clean let me show you something here look this is what it looked like when I came in I think unless I've missed something but I think so it looks fine right does it need to be swept and vacuumed yes it does but but a house that has those first two layers taken care of is a house that is sustainable and you can put off the actual cleaning the actual actual cleaning a little bit longer you can get away with it uh but the beauty of it is when you do clean it's easy like this is ready for the sweeping and the vacuuming and the dusting and nothing has to be done first like that's why I used to get so frustrated cuz I was like oh vacuuming didn't mean vacuuming it meant catching up on all of the things I hadn't been doing I had stuff that had no home I had to agonize over that I had stuff that did have homes but was just scattered everywhere and I had to deal with that first so vacuuming was this big deal which meant I put it off longer which meant it got more overwhelming and it was this very negative cycle okay all right I hope this was helpful there are layers to a clean house I go into all of this into cluttering at the speed of life and explain how to actually get the Clutter out so that you don't have you basically are eliminating that that layer from your house daily stuff decluttering cleaning okay um all right I hope this was helpful who knows if I'll use it or not I'll talk to you later bye

Channel: Dana K White

Views: 425,483

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Id: Rx2Bh9n6VKc

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023