The Family Clean — Episode 134

Wondering how your house could be cleaner, and you could also teach your kids valuable life skills that really make a difference as they grow up? There’s an answer, but you might not like it.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Organized Home — the organizing class for FAMILIES. You CAN help your family be more organized, and make life easier on you!

In this episode

Why I started the family clean

How it transformed off my 10 minute tidy.

Why I started the family clean

Other things that might interest you

The Family Routines course has a whole chapter on The Saturday Clean

Producer: Drew Erickson

Check out my other household tips podcasts:

Transcript

[00:00:00.190] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys, welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 134, we are talking about one of my favorite things that we do as a family, and it’s about cleaning. Let’s untangle it.

[00:00:21.270] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary Erickson, the curly head behind the Pulling Curls Podcast, where we untangle pregnancy, parenting, home, and even travel. We know there’s no right answer for every family, but hopefully we can spark some ideas that will work for yours. Life’s tangled just like my hair.

[00:00:43.450] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys, before we get started, it does sound like I’m begging, but maybe I am. Could you leave a review? Thank you so much.

[00:00:49.540] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, it’s just you and me. You’re in your car, you’re walking, or you’re wiping the counters in your kitchen, which is when I seem to podcast most often or listen to podcasts. I’m not actually podcasting or cleaning the counters in my kitchen, but I sort of realized that my kids didn’t really know how to clean. Is anyone else on the same page? I had been so busy for a number of years that I really just hadn’t taken the time to show them how to do tasks. My oldest, I had been a little bit more present until he was in the junior high zone, and so he was pretty good at it all. But these last two in my marathon of parenting were just kind of failures in that area, and I knew that the way to show them how to do it was to do it with them, but I just didn’t want to. First of all, I think that there’s a difference between tidying up and cleaning. So we started a Saturday morning tidy, and I had been doing my ten minute tidy.

[00:01:45.910] – Hilary Erickson

Like, I would expand it to 20 minutes on the weekends. But there was still just a lot that I wasn’t getting put away. And frankly, let me know on Instagram if this is true for you. A lot of it wasn’t my stuff. A lot of it was their stuff. And I thought, you know what? My kids are sleeping in. Let’s take some of that time and do a quick clean together. A tidying up where we can just pull the house together every Saturday morning and just work together.

[00:02:10.690] – Hilary Erickson

Do you ever just feel like it’s unfair that some people can have company over at a moment’s notice? Their house is just super easy to clean up, and they can relax on the couch with Netflix while you feel like you always have things to do around your house that can totally be you. The Organized Home is all new in 2021. We’re talking about decluttering zones, organization systems that actually work. We’ve got assignments and challenges. I hope you’ll join us. You can use coupon code UNTANGLED. Look for the Organized Home link in the show notes.

[00:02:40.450] – Hilary Erickson

So the reasons behind this were threefold. First off, I was tired of doing it alone. It shouldn’t be my job to clean the house alone. I’m making the money. I am a person too. So it just wasn’t my job to do a loan. My kids are old enough. Yeah, let’s do it together. Second of all, my kids didn’t know how to clean. And third of all, it needed to be done right. And they needed to know how quickly you could really pull an area together. So we came up with a Saturday morning clean and our tidy. Stay tuned. There’s a cleaning portion too. And you just heard my 17 year old die, as I mentioned that. So what we do is I picked six songs that everybody really likes. I made an Amazon playlist because we have Amazon music free with our Amazon Prime. And we just hit play on that and I shovel it. And all the songs are about the same length, three to four minutes. And every song we just do a different room. So we do bathroom, we do bedrooms, everyone does their own of that. We do the living room, dining room, we do the kitchen and we do the playroom.

[00:03:38.570] – Hilary Erickson

So maybe there’s just five rooms, but we just switch every song and the music keeps it fun. It kind of inspires them to get going and it just helps them realize how quickly you can actually pull a room together. Now when we do living room, there are a few tasks that we need done every week. My husband vacuums off the couch. My middle son, he empties our robot vacuum. So that gets done every week. There’s just some tasks that sometimes we do there in the kitchen. Usually somebody will spray cleaning solution on the counter so that we get that done. But really it’s just like putting stuff away. I have to say that when they do their bathrooms in their bedrooms because they’re in their room and I’m in mine, I literally have no idea what gets done. And honestly, things aren’t really getting clean. But I am showing them how to clean and tidy when we’re doing the rest of the house together. So that part has been doing better. And I think my kids have realized that it really doesn’t take that long to pull a room together. It might take a while to deep clean, which we’re going to head to their next.

[00:04:31.600] – Hilary Erickson

But just to put things away and stuff, especially if you’re doing it frequently, it really can be done quite quickly. So we started that family tidying and I decided that my husband and I were having to deep clean everything in the house by ourselves. And most of my friends have a maid. But I really didn’t want to get a maid because I knew my kids wouldn’t have a maid right as they’re going out of the house right now, we’re twelve and 17 and then we have one that doesn’t live here. But everyone can put in a lot of effort. And I wanted my kids to learn how to deep clean things on their own. So we added a 20 minutes clean that we do after that. And each week of the month is assigned a different area. So the first week of the month we do the kitchen. And honestly, it’s probably not 20 minutes of cleaning. Usually I just give them an assigned task and they should do it. And hopefully we’re all doing it together so I can see if they’re doing a crappy job or not. So like last week was the kitchen we did.

[00:05:25.780] – Hilary Erickson

Somebody cleaned out the sink, somebody wiped off all the counters, somebody cleaned the microwave, they cleaned out their snack bin that had been overflowing. So usually I just come up with some tasks that we should do in that area. The second week of the month we do our bathroom and it’s their assigned bathrooms. They each have to clean the bathroom every week, but this is the time that they decline it. So they do. One of my kids does the grout in the floor, the shorter one, and one of them cleans the tubs and the showers. I am just not a big believer that the tubs in the showers need to be cleaned weekly. So we try and do it monthly. The other one usually just kind of wipes down what she can reach of the tubs in the shower. It’s hard to do tubs and showers when you’re short. I will say that. But they also know how to use pummestone to clean the hard water off the toilet. They know how to clean grout really well. They know what a clean counter should look like and how you can deep clean kind of around the faucet area.

[00:06:14.020] – Hilary Erickson

So they’re really just learning important tasks that will follow them into their next life as they move out of the house. Because learning to deep clean is a skill that you have to learn. And I knew that I needed to teach them those things, which isn’t very fun but important. So those are the two things. We try and do them on Saturdays every once in a while. If everybody has a very busy Saturday, we’ll do them on Friday. And sometimes somebody gets a buy because they’re out of town or they have played musical practice the whole Saturday. And people just realize that sometimes you get a buy, but most often we’re doing it all together every week. So I don’t know if that’s something that you guys can implement in your house. This is actually something that I go through step by step in the family routines course. And I’ve had a lot of people who said that it was a really big change for them because the music ends up making it kind of fun. And it’s just really nice to look at your house on a Saturday that’s all put together and cleaned.

[00:07:03.590] – Hilary Erickson

It just feels so good. So why don’t you guys give it a try? And if you do give it a try. Tell me an Instagram there will be a post for this episode. Tell me what worked for you, what didn’t work for you or if you think that this would be a good idea for your family I would love to know over there.

[00:07:16.620] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, do not miss next week’s episode. I am talking with my favorite doula from TikTok and if you’re not interested in pregnancy, the week after that we were talking about kids and cell phones so stay tuned for that episode. I know a lot of you guys have questions about kids and cell phones. I know I do. I have questions every day even though we have like a plan. But anyway I really liked what we talked about on that episode so stay tuned.

[00:07:36.760] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode. We know you have lots of options for your ears and we are glad that you chose us. We drop episodes weekly and until next time we hope you’ll have a tangle free day.