037: Cleaning, Laundry, and Yardwork
This is another short and sweet episode where we get tactical and deliberate about the things in life that must be done, even though we don't love doing them.
We'll break down some tips and tricks for simplifying the cleaning, laundry, and yardwork, and an abundance money mindset will also apply here.
Click here for the grocery shopping app I mention in the episode.
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Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues, and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.
Hi, and welcome to this episode. That's all about cleaning, laundry and yard work. And quick reminder that we are now at the very end of the working mom happiness Method program. We only have one episode after this, which is crazy. And it's all about creating your best life schedule. And so as we go through this, we're getting very tactical here in these last few episodes. There will be mindset stuff worked in though don't worry, always mindset stuff. Just a reminder, though, that as part of this episode, I'm going to have you do a couple of exercises and you're going to want to jot down what comes out of those to help you with creating your schedule that you're going to do in the next episode. If you're planning to go for a walk, or you're driving or something, I think it's probably fine. Just do this exercise like as a mental exercise, but then try to remember to jot it down afterward, because like I said, you will use it later. And quick reminder, as always, if this is the first episode you've ever listened to, I highly encourage you to go back to the very beginning episode one because the working mom happiness method is meant to be done in sequence. So values, goals, boundaries, tools for success with an underlying theme of body image, and I promise it will change your life. If you go back and start from the beginning and do the homework and really engage it absolutely will change your life. Alright, this is going to be short and sweet. And I'm hoping you get some helpful tips out of it. So let's go ahead and just jump right in. So just like we talked about in the last episode about meal planning and grocery shopping, the ultimate goal here is to just get very deliberate about how you want to do these things, cleaning laundry and yard work because typically what happens as we get adulting, and especially those of us who are moms and working moms and studies have shown that working moms take on the vast majority of the household work. And that is not because our spouses are bad guys. It's because of subconscious programming. So if you are a millennial or older, the chances are very high that you watched your mom do all the things around the household for the children for the food for the cooking and the cleaning, and you watch her dad come home from work and probably watch TV or do whatever he wanted to do. Now I know I'm stereotyping there, but for the majority that is very, very real. And so most of our husbands, even though they're good guys have subconscious programming, that they are not the ones that are going to be doing this. And most of them honestly don't think we should be doing it all either. They just don't care as much as we do. Anyway, go back and listen to the relationships episode because I talk all about this stuff and how to get your, your spouse to help around more with the House and the chores and that sort of thing. Go back and listen because it's I go very deep in there. The moral of the story here is you have to stop doing everything. And you have to start getting deliberate about having the hard conversations with your spouse and doing them in the right way right? As I lovingly call speaking dude. Doing it in the right way speaking dude, go back and listen to the relationships episodes. So you're not doing all the things because it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. We we should not be working in a household where both partners work full time and doing all the things now, if you are a single mom, I mean, sending you all the love because I realize you don't have a partner to split these things up with it actually becomes that much more important for you to get very deliberate about them. Also allow yourself to pay for help where you can afford it and we'll talk about that more in just a second. But get very deliberate about when to do these things and how to do these things in ways that will protect your energy the most. Okay, so some of the decisions that we want to start out by making to be deliberate about As with cleaning, laundry and yard work, right, we talked about grocery shopping and meal planning. In the last episode, and just a reminder, like, the reason that we're talking about these specific things is that when I created this program, before I created it, I interviewed many working moms to gather all of the pain points, all the things we struggle with. And by the way, we all struggle with the same things, you are not alone. And these are the things that kept coming up, they kept coming up. And if you're like me, before, I learned how to set boundaries and value myself and go to therapy. And before my husband and I did all our therapy together, I was doing all of these things and working full time even the yard work it not because he wasn't a good guy, he just didn't care if they get done, that got done. He didn't care if the lawn was mowed or not mowed. He didn't care. And I did I did care. And so I was doing all these things. And that actually seems to ring true with lots of the ladies who I coach and who I work with. So that's kind of why we're here at cleaning laundry and yard work seems a little random, but it's not. Okay, so the first set of decisions that you need to make is, Well, number one, the first decision is are you going to pay for health care or not? Two episodes ago was the money mindset episode, I highly encourage you to listen to it if you haven't. Because what happens here because of the way society raises us is that we believe we cannot afford to pay for help for these things we believe only like rich people do it. And for most of us, that is not true, we can absolutely afford it. We just think it's too extravagant. And we should air quotes should be doing it because we can do it ourselves. And we should be saving that money. I talk all about in the money mindset episode. And I think that's episode number 35. I want to say if you're looking for that, how having the courage and valuing yourself enough to spend on things that make your life easier, and protect your energy will actually lead to you making more money. And it's not in a magic way, it's in the way that it frees up your energy and your mind space to focus on things that will make more money. So go listen to that. And it'll tell you all about it. So I strongly encourage you to challenge your beliefs on what you can and can't afford as it relates to paying for health care. Now, a couple of the ladies who I've coached who truly cannot afford to pay for all of this stuff, have done it in very small increments. For example, one of the women who took the working mom happiness method one on one with me, she just started paying for somebody to clean her bathrooms, okay, because that's what she could afford. And that was her biggest pain point around her house and cleaning or the bathrooms, and even that she felt like life changing, okay, so really get creative here. And don't just brush it off, even if you really maybe can't afford some of this stuff. And you do fall into that. That bucket, which is more rare of the women who cannot afford to pay for help in some of these areas. But you could pay for help for all these things. You could pay for a cleaning company to come clean your house, you could pay for a laundry service to do your laundry, and you could pay for a landscaping service to come and do your yard. Okay. Now I absolutely understand if you're doing all of those things, it it certainly is going to be more expensive. And not everyone can afford to do all of that. I just want to challenge you to actually make some phone calls and see how much it would be. And if you can only afford one, think about what is your biggest pain point. But you're worth it. Have the courage to spend on yourself, have the courage to have that discussion with your spouse. If your spouse disagrees, go back and listen to that relationships episode, I actually think there are three or four in the relationships piece, but I go really deep into that. Okay, so that's the first decision. And I promise you paying for help with these things will absolutely change your life. I mean, it's it's just, it's amazing. And it's so life changing. Okay, I'll get off that soapbox. Who's going to do what is the next thing. So if you're not going to pay, if you can't afford, it truly can't afford to pay for help with these things. You got to stop doing all the things as we've talked about. So have the conversation with your spouse with your partner, if you have one. If you don't have one, I get it, it's going to be you. But if you do and you're both working full time you have to balance you can't be doing all the things Okay, so who's going to do what? How often do you want to be doing the things that so the cleaning the laundry and the yard work? And when what days because staying consistent on these things, just like the meal planning and the grocery shopping, life changing like complete game changer to stay consistent. And that doesn't mean every single week but for the majority if you're not going on vacation or you don't have something out of the ordinary come up, plan this in to where you can always do it at the same time every week. It's huge. And the amount of stress it will relieve in your life and the amount of energy it will save to stay consistent on these things is going to be totally and completely worth it. Okay. I want to pause and talk about cleaning for a minute and the mindset on cleaning, because cleaning is really where we're going to go a little bit deeper here before we end. And like I said, this is going to be short and sweet.
Make sure that you are cleaning for the right reasons. Okay. We talked about this way back in, I think it was episode two, when we talked about values. How one of the things that happened to me and that I've discovered with a lot of the ladies that I've coached is a lot of us are cleaning because we're worried that our neighbor is going to like show up unexpectedly or somebody in our family is going to show up unexpectedly, the doorbell rings and we get such anxiety about it because our house is a mess, right. And I had this so badly I can't remember if I told this story back in episode two, but if I did get excited to hear it again, I this thing happened to me where we had a lab, a dog, a big yellow lab at the time. And he would go nuts barking at the doorbell. And we worked like I read all the dog whisperer books, we worked with him, we did all the things. And we just couldn't get him to not bark like mad every time the doorbell rang. And it was awful because we had babies and the babies would wake up you know that feeling. If you've had a dog and a baby, it is just so anxiety provoking, you want to just beat the dog. And don't worry, I would never beat the dog. I love dogs and animals but you do want to it fills you with rage when the dog wakes up the baby and so could not get the Stop stop barking at the damn doorbell. What I realized later, as I started going through therapy and learning how to value myself and where my value and my worth came from, is that and and reading going deeper into some of the dog whisperer stuff in the dog training in that dog psychology kind of stuff. What was happening back then, was that my anxiety was so high when the doorbell ring, because it was like terror, like I thought it was going to die if somebody saw my house a mess, because I thought that they weren't going to think I was valuable or worthy or that I wasn't valuable, or didn't have worth as a human because my house was messy. Okay, and I little kids back at this time. So my house was always messy. In the dog reads the humans energy, and I never fixed my energy. That's why we could never get the dog to stop barking like crazy because the dog thought there was danger at the door because the way my body was reacting to the doorbell ringing. That's how deep it was. That's how stressed I was about my house being a mess. But I was so exhausted and overwhelmed with this big job and little kids and doing all the things because this was before Mike and I went through our marriage therapy and he made the changes that he needed to make. I was so overwhelmed and exhausted that I couldn't keep the house clean. And I was just really like my brain, my body thought it was going to die because I didn't want people to see my messy house now. Fast forward, you know, 12 years later, I've been through all the therapy. I know, my value and worth has nothing to do with how messy or clean my house is. And so what's so funny is even back then funny is not the word what is so not okay is even back then when I would go into somebody else's house and it was a mess. I didn't care. I wasn't judging them. I could care less if somebody's house was a mess. I never was like, oh, this person sucks and is a bad mom, because their house is messy and their stuff on never like I never thought that
how hard we are we are on ourselves. It's just not okay, but that's what this program is all about. Right? So I'm challenging you to make sure you're cleaning for the right reasons, okay, because one of the steps here might just be to let go of needing your house to be clean all the time. And that could free up a lot of your energy too. Right? Now, there are some of us who really need our space to be clean in order to function. Okay. And that's different. That's, that has nothing to do with like, worrying about people seeing it messy. It's just a different sort of way the brains wired. And there's actually nothing wrong with I mean, it can go OCD, like literal OCD, and then you probably do want to get some therapy and some help with it if that's the case. But in general, as long as it's not going into that OCD kind of space, and needing your space to be cleaned before you can work on other things. There's nothing wrong with that. You just need to put cleaning high on your list of prioritized values. And we talk all about that back in episode two and three. So go back and listen to those. But just make sure that you are not stuck where I was with the high anxiety about somebody seeing my house being messy because right letting go of that alone. Just so life changing, just awesome. Okay. All right. So let's talk about this is where you're going to I want you to do like some exercises and if you have the ability, you could write some stuff down in your phone maybe or jot it down or just do it mentally. That's fine. Let's talk about a weekly cleaning system. Okay. This has been a game changer for me and it has worked for lots of the ladies who I coach so hopefully it can be helpful to you. So for the first exercise, I just want you to think about what areas of your house bother you the most like get the most clutter Getting away the most you see them and it drives you insane that it's a mess. For me, it's like my entry area. Because even though we have these little cubbies, my kids when they come home from school, throw all their stuff on the bench. So it's just out and it's a mess, right? So that comes to mind immediately for me or like, my kitchen island gets really cluttered really easily because the kitchen is just such a hub. And everybody sets things there. And we keep them away from the dog there, right, so the dog doesn't chew stuff up. So those are kind of two like hot areas for me as it relates to areas that bother me. But you might have more like, bedside tables can get cluttered, that sort of thing. So really think like kind of go through your house mentally and think what are the areas that really bugged me the most, they get dirty, not dirty, but like cluttered really easily Right? Or maybe dirty. And what I want you to do is just write those down. And then I want you to start scheduling 15 minutes a day. And I literally want you to set a timer. So use your phones at 15 minutes. And you're going to put those in like number orders, maybe you have four areas or whatever 1234. And you're just the next day for 15 minutes, you're going to go to area number one, and you're going to just clean it until the timer ends now, what you might find is that area number one gets cleaned in like six minutes, okay? Because we make these things really big in our mind. But they're actually not that big. Once we start like unloading the dishwasher. Have you ever timed yourself unloading the dishwasher, like for whatever reason, unloading the dishwasher is always like this daunting, big task. And if you time yourself, it's like a minute and a half, like maybe two minutes depending on how full it is, which is like blows your mind right how quick it is. So maybe maybe you put the dishwasher as one of your areas but and then so if you get done with area one before the 15 minutes is up, go to area two and start on that right. And then maybe you get done two areas and you go to the third area, maybe area one takes your 15 minutes, and then you're done. But that's it. That's the thing, just stop, it's just 15 minutes, you can tackle 15 minutes. And then the next day you go to area two, and you do that. So you just rotate you just and then and then once you're through to area four, whether that takes a couple of days or one day or whatever, you go back and start at area one again. And this is a game changer for keeping those areas uncluttered. And not it doesn't take a lot of your time and it doesn't seem daunting. You don't have to do the 15 minutes every single day, either. Maybe you want to do them on the weekdays or maybe want to do them every other day. But just schedule it inconsistently when you create your best life schedule that we're going to do in the next episode. And doing it this way. Game Changer. Okay. The next exercise I want you to do is I want you to divide your house into one hours zones. Okay. Let me tell you what this means we'll break it down. Now, this is probably for those of you who truly cannot afford to hire a cleaning company. Because if you can afford to hire a cleaning company, you really don't need to deep clean your house. I mean, my income my cleaning company comes every two weeks. And I don't need to like dust or clean bathtubs, or showers or anything like that, which is just amazing and wonderful, life changing. And so this is more for like if you can't afford it. So divide your house into one hour zones. So what I want you to think about is think about your house and think about different areas that you could get clean, like clean like scrubbing, like picking up clutter and washing and scrubbing. So for example, like the the bathroom, that is your main bathroom, where you take the majority of like your baths or showers or use the sink or whatever in your house, that's probably going to take a decent amount of time, it may not take a full hour, but it may take a good chunk, you know of May takes 30 full minutes or 45 minutes or something like that. But think about how much time it takes you to really clean that space. And then let's say if it's like your main bathroom that gets used a lot and it takes, let's say 40 minutes to really clean it well, then you could maybe add on something else into that same zone that takes 20 minutes, maybe your bedroom, right maybe your bedroom just takes 20 minutes to pick up the clutter and vacuum and duster or something like that. Obviously, you know better than I do, but you're creating one hour zone so so zone number one might be that that bedroom and the bathroom or like your entire kitchen, maybe only one zone in itself if it takes you a whole hour to declutter and then clean the whole kitchen, that that's what we're talking about here. Okay. And then, in reality, your house shouldn't have more than like, four to five zones. And if it does, you probably live in a mansion and you can probably afford a cleaning company. Just keeping it real, okay, just keeping it real. Like if your house has more than four or five zones, you're probably like cleaning way too much too hard. Or you have a big huge house and you probably can't afford a cleaning company. So I would challenge you to hire a cleaning company and not do this exercise at all. Okay, so the reason that's important, like four to five zones is because you're going to your gonna do this one hour, per weekend, or whatever your day off is, most people aren't gonna want to do this on a work day, but one hour a week you're gonna schedule in, and you're gonna start on zone one. And then the next week, you're gonna do Zone Two, the next week, zone three, the next week, zone four, and then you're going to come back to zone one. And so that's a month's time. And by the time you get back to zone one in a month, you should be fine. I mean, obviously, like, you're gonna have to clean your toilets more often than once a month, you know what I'm saying. So you can kind of schedule that into maybe your 15 minutes a day, but for the most part, that should do just fine with keeping things clean enough. And that's another challenge is if you're cleaning for the wrong reasons to really challenge your mindset on that. Okay. So hopefully, that's helpful. And you can play around with those. And the reason I want you to jot those down is when we go into the next episode, we're going to create your best life schedule, and you're gonna schedule these things in and it's going to be awesome. I'm just I'm really excited. Okay. We're going to end it there. Short and sweet. Like I said, I think we kept this one at about 20 minutes, which makes me so happy because we are busy. All right, great. Thank you so much for listening. As always, please, if you're getting benefit out of this, please leave a five star review and a comment it helps the podcast be shown to so many more women and that's what this is all about. And I will talk to you in the next episode. Thanks so much for listening to the working mom happiness method. 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