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258: Cleaning Your House (with Becky Rapinchuk)

Cleaning Your House (with Becky Rapinchuk)

The purpose of having a clean home is to create a feeling. It might be a feeling of calm, peace, order, or just less stress and less pressure to keep up. My guest today is a master of cleaning and organization, and her tips will help you create the feeling you want in your home.

Becky Rapinchuk is a wife, mother, author, and owner of Clean Mama, an online housekeeping community. She expertly guides her community to create a peaceful home that is quick and easy to maintain. With Becky’s method, you don’t have to be perfect or spend every weekend going through a checklist. In fact, she makes cleaning fun. 

Listen in today to hear my conversation with Becky on all things housecleaning, tidying, clutter-busting, and how to involve your family in the upkeep. Her tips have blown my mind and completely changed how I approach certain cleaning tasks in my home. You’ll learn what daily tasks to focus on, why you need clutter-catchers, and so much more.

I am so excited to invite you to join me in February of 2022 for the Vibrant Happy Women Retreat in Florida! If you love the idea of amazing women, sunshine, gourmet food, fun activities, and lots of Vibrant Happy Women workshops, join us for this 5-day all-inclusive experience. Click here to grab your spot!

If you’re tired of not feeling good enough and letting anxiety and depression rule your life, you need to join us in the Vibrant Happy Women Club. The doors won't be open forever, and we have tons of new and exciting features inside. It’s time to make your own happiness a priority, and the Club is where you’ll learn how. I can’t wait to see you there!

What You’ll Learn:

  • My journey with cleaning.
  • What sent Becky on the quest to keep her home clean.
  • 5 daily cleaning tasks that make a huge difference.
  • What whole-house clutter catchers are and why you need them.
  • How Becky deals with snow gear.
  • Becky’s advice for people who are clutter-challenged.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

You’re listening to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast, episode number 258. I’m talking with a guest, a really awesome fellow Wisconsinite who now lives outside of Chicago, about cleaning your house in a fun and easy way, that’s quick. Stay tuned.

Hi, I'm Jen Riday. This podcast is for women who want to feel more vibrant, happy, aligned, and alive. You'll gain the emotional, physical, and spiritual tools you need to get your sparkle back and ensure that depression, anxiety, and struggle don't rule your life. Welcome to the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast.

Hey my friends, Jen here. We’re talking about cleaning our houses today. Now, you could bury your head in the sand and quickly run away or you can stay tuned and learn that it’s not as hard as we sometimes think. Now, I know some of you out there, you’ve nailed this, it’s not too bad. Others of you out there it is one of the most horrifying topics in the world. Whichever camp you fall into or if you fall in between, take a deep breath and open your heart and your mind to this conversation.

Now, before I dive in with the guest, Becky Rapinchuk who is the author of Clean Mama’s Guide to a Peaceful Home. She’s the founder of the Clean Mama movement, I love this. Before we dive in there I want to talk about my journey with cleaning. It’s weird. I’ll start there. So when I was five years old I used to take everything from my room and pile it on my bed, all my knickknacks, all my toys, all my dolls, everything piled on my bed. Then I would carefully dust all the shelves and put it back very neatly.

And my mom was kind of brilliant at noticing this because one of her top values is cleanliness. So she would come in and say, “Oh my goodness, this is amazing.” So I was quickly wired into my brain early on that clean equals praise. Clean equals important. Now, if you’re listening you’re like, “Jen, I didn’t get that.” Rest assured I don’t think it has any impact. That’s just the story I tell myself.

I have a friend whose mom was just like mine. He has three sisters and he said, “It’s totally genetic, it can’t be learned.” Because his mom was a neat freak, two of his sisters are complete slobs and one isn’t. So we have both camps. I’m going to put your mind at peace and say I think it’s both, it’s nature and nurture. And just like any behavior, any skill you want to learn whether that’s public speaking, losing weight, being more patient as a mom, like any skill, we can learn.

And what we know about genetics, well, epigenetics tell us that genes can be switched on and off. So let’s come at this with an open mind. My journey with cleanliness, it used to be way too important for me, way too emphasized. Luckily I married someone who grew up without it and he taught me to relax.

My friend Maggie is really good at focusing on friendship and connection to the point where she’ll let her house go, not completely, but she can just relax and have fun with her friends while all the kids that are there just trash her house. I’ve come to admire her.

So my point is, whatever you think about cleanliness, whatever you think about your ability to be clean or tidy, whether it’s a high value for you or not, this episode is going to teach you some things because Becky, what I love about her is she has mastered the ability to make cleaning unobtrusive, a regular part of your day. It’s not going to take you an entire Saturday. It’s not going to require you to spend three hours a day or use complicated file card systems, or checklists, or whiteboards. It’s just so easy.

I felt myself breathing out a sigh of relief when Becky presented a way I can get all the sheets and towels clean in our house and it was so obvious, but I had never thought of it. She has ideas on what to do with the clutter, to have clutter centers. What to do with — to make those tasks feel more fun. She’s really got the psychology figured out. So I loved talking with Becky, I think you will too. Have a listen and see if there are some tips you can pick up for your home and for your life. Alright, let’s dive in.

Jen: Hey everyone, I’m talking with Becky Rapinchuk today. She’s a fellow Wisconsinite which makes me love her even more. She’s the founder of Clean Mama, a really popular home keeping community. And she’s the author of Simply Clean and The Organically Clean Home. And she’s been an advisor and homecare expert for many brands like Dyson and Home Depot. She’s also been an advisor and an expert for magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, Bon Appetit and even Oprah. She’s a mom of three and lives outside of Chicago. Becky, welcome to Vibrant Happy Women.

Becky: Hi, thanks for having me.

Jen: Okay. So tell us how in the world did you get started in this home keeping world that you’re doing so well in today?

Becky: I started sharing online because I felt like no one was talking about cleaning. And I really liked talking about cleaning and liked sharing how I was keeping my home clean with two little kids. And it was just kind of naturally happened from me just sharing my routine and what I was doing and how I was cleaning my home. Before that I was a teacher. I’m actually an art teacher so I have the artistic background, all those wonderful artistic messes. That’s where I kind of started to hone in on cleaning up quickly, helping kids clean up quickly and translating that to my house.

I used to clean houses, too, while I was teaching. In the afternoons I would clean my colleagues’ homes which is just kind of funny to think about now because I would never do that. But I was 22, 23, 24 and it was fun. And I learned, you know, came up with my own skills and figured out from there.

When I started Clean Mama I literally just showed a clipboard of the routine, what I did every day of the week. I printed it out. That’s just how I did things in my home. And I started showing that online on my blog and people were like, “Where can I get that?” I was like, “Well, I made it.” And so I started selling my printables on Etsy and that’s kind of where the blog actually took off. I started my business in 2010, so it was just a couple of months after I’d started the blog. And that’s kind of the rest is history.

I’ve just continued to share cleaning tips and how I keep a home clean with three kids and two dogs. And figuring out how we can enjoy our homes, keep them clean and enjoy all the other stuff even more.

Jen: Cool. So you’re a cleaning expert, did you get that from your mom by chance or did you have it in you?

Becky: Probably a little bit of both. I would say we always had a clean home. But there were certain things that my mom taught me how to do different methods. But I was definitely more into it than anyone else in my family.

Jen: Yeah, okay, so it’s kind of in you too, yeah. Well, so I’m excited. We’re going to talk about a lot of things today and I’m going to kind of recap some of those, putting routines to work for us, cleaning routines that work with any schedule. Whole house clutter catchers. Let’s start though with finding our pain points and our happy tasks, tell us about that.

Becky: Well, the theory behind it is everyone has things that they don’t like to do. And so I call those pain points. So those are things that you either put off doing, don’t like doing, try to get someone else to do, whatever it is. But when it comes down to it, you probably need to be doing those things even though you don’t like to do them.

So let’s figure out a way to bridge that and make them a little bit more enjoyable, whether it’s pairing it with something you enjoy doing, or rewarding yourself when you’re done. And a reward can be a cup of coffee, it can be a walk, I mean it doesn’t have to be something that’s monetary or something you have to go out and buy. It can be just a little reward at the end of that pain point task.

So for instance, I am not a fan of unloading the dishwasher, or loading the dishwasher, or anything kitchen dishes related. And I talk about this quite a bit in the book. But one of the things that has really helped me is that in the morning, I get up before anyone else does, it’s nice and quiet.

I come downstairs to a clean kitchen because we clean it up together as a family after dinner. And I find that that’s a really good way to start a day is to have a nice clean kitchen so that you’re not starting kind of behind in the morning, especially if you’re trying to get kids ready for school, or if you’re leaving for work, or whatever your situation might be. But I will start unloading the dishwasher while my coffee is brewing. And then I kind of brace myself to get the dishwasher unloaded and I can usually do it in about the time that my coffee takes to brew, about three minutes.

And now I have, once I’ve finished the unloading of the dishwasher, I have a dishwasher that’s empty and ready for breakfast dishes, so my kids can load up their own breakfast dishes, they’re not going to stack them on the counter because the dishwasher still needs to be unloaded. And then I also have a cup of coffee, so I can go and sit down and relax while the house is so quiet. I know that the dishwasher’s unloaded and I’ve rewarded myself with that cup of coffee.

Jen: That’s smart. So you’ve paired it to something rewarding at the end.

Becky: Right. So another example would be I’m not a fan of cleaning bathrooms, I don’t know if there’s anyone that really is. But I do those on Mondays as part of my routine. And by doing that on a Monday I’m getting it out of the way so that I ensure that it’s done. I’m starting the week off well. And then sometimes I’ll put on a podcast or typically a Monday when everything’s normal, if you have older kids they’re at school. If you’re at home, whether you’re leaving for work or coming home from work, or at home all day.

I have a routine that’s a 15 minute bathroom cleaning routine. So I can clean my bathrooms in 15 minutes, all of them. And I have rewarded myself while I’m doing that with either calling someone and talking on the phone with my headphones on and my phone in my pocket or I might listen to a podcast while I’m cleaning bathrooms it kind of numbs the feeling of doing something you don’t like doing because I’m distracting myself with either a podcast or, if you enjoy listening to books, you can put a book in and listen to it.

I mean whatever it is, think of a way, something that you enjoy doing while you’re doing something you don’t like and the time goes much more quickly.

Jen: Totally. So we have this list of pain points, the things we don’t want to do but right next to it you could create a list of the happy tasks, podcasts, and audiobooks, and brewing the coffee. That’s a great idea. I mean I’m just riffing on your idea. I’m thinking I could do this on my fridge and then tell my kids to pick one from each list and go. Yeah, that’s so good. Okay, so you have routines, do you do something every day of the week?

Becky: I do. And the reason that I do that, there’s a couple of different reasons, but I have found that – I started my routine when my husband and I were newly married, so this is over 20 years ago. And it was just the two of us in a little one bedroom apartment, I mean like little, little. And we were both working a couple of jobs and had the weekends. But I was spending all day Saturday cleaning for two of us in a one bedroom apartment. To me logically it didn’t make sense. Why is this taking a whole day? Why is it such a mess? What are we going to do when we have kids? I can’t even imagine.

So that sent me on the quest to figure out how to split it up so that I wasn’t doing everything at once. I talked to a lot of friends about it, everyone felt the same but no one really had an answer. My grandma was the person that actually said, “Well, we used to do it where every day had a task, one day was washing day, one day was floors day.” So she said, “Try to split it up.” So I asked her what she did and then I looked at my own schedule and kind of figured out what made more sense for me and assigned tasks to days.

So the routine started with building those days out. So Monday has always been bathrooms day because I try to get it done at the beginning of the week. Tuesday is dusting day. Wednesday is vacuuming day. Thursday is floor washing day. And then I used to have something also on Fridays but I felt like I wasn’t getting everything done. So I turned Friday into a catch all day, which is a day to catch up. I also use it as my grocery shopping day, my menu planning day. And it’s kind of you make it what you want.

So sometimes I’m catching up from something during the week, other times I am just doing what I want to do, like looking at my calendar, planning that week ahead, doing the menu, putting in a grocery order, whatever it might be. That to me makes the most sense. And then on Fridays we do sheets and towels. And the reason that I have that – or on Saturdays is because everyone’s home and everyone can help. And that way kids learn how to make their beds, put sheets on their beds, all that stuff from a young age and it makes it just so much more easy.

Jen: I have to confess, we’re really bad in our house about sheets and towels. One time someone was in my bathroom and she said, “I think you need to wash your towels.” And I’m like, “Oh.” And then I took a sniff and I said, “I think you’re right.” So I might just do Saturday sheets and towels. And I’m going to think of you in Chicago and I’m going to be motivated.

Becky: Yeah, well, and just putting it on the schedule, even if you don’t – sometimes it’s easier, you can even split it up and do half of the sheets on one week, and half the next week so that you’re kind of rotating through it as you’re kind of getting into that groove. Because if you have four or five beds it’s hard to manage all of that in one day, definitely figuring out how to split it up, making it work for you. I give people the framework and then you can figure out the best way to make it work for your family.

So once you have those weekly tasks down, the thing that I actually recommend first are daily tasks. And those are things that I recommend doing every day and starting with those because they’re things that you probably know you should be doing. Or you might already be doing it but now you get to check it off of a list instead of not remembering if you did it or not. But I recommend doing a load of laundry every day. If you have a load to do, I recommend 10 minutes of clutter clean up.

So kids can get involved in that, you can set a timer before dinner and say, “Alright, go pick up whatever you can find on the floors or go pick up your room for 10 minutes. Go sort out your books.” I mean you can be specific or vague, but 10 minutes of clutter pick up every day is really helpful. And it keeps things a little bit tidier because you’re putting away your stuff.

When my kids were younger and at home all day I would have to do two or three clean ups during the day just because it would get to be too much and then no one wants to clean up because it’s too overwhelming. And so we would kind of do before or after meal times would be the time that we would do that quick little clutter. So we’ve got laundry and clutter, wiping the counters is something I recommend doing. So it’s like a kitchen clean up.

And then checking the floors, so if you need to vacuum, if you need to sweep, do it. If you don’t, you don’t have to. It’s checking under the kitchen table, if you need to ask your kids to grab a broom and sweep up a little bit go ahead and do that. It’s kind of simple. And then making the beds, I always say you start with that, start by making your beds and do that every day for a week and then add in another daily task as you’re kind of learning the routine.

But those five daily tasks really help keep – people see a huge difference just by adding those even before you start doing the bathrooms and dusting and all that.

Jen: So I love this. I do laundry daily as well, it’s totally the secret. It’s the weekly laundry that I think throws everyone off. I really believe it. So people say, “But then I only have to think about it one day.” But then it’s so overwhelming and it takes the whole day. Is that true for you?

Becky: For sure. And what if you don’t get to it? So what if you don’t get to do it on that day, now you’ve got an even bigger problem. And I mean I just think that it’s – there’s something about doing your laundry that – if someone disagrees with me, I always just say, “Just try it for a week.” Just stop asking and just try it and then you tell me what you think is easier. Because I guarantee it’s easier to do a little bit every day.

Jen: Yeah. So I have currently five of my six kids live at home. And I’m going to share the method that works for us for those – I mean you have three so it could be similar. My kids will bring the laundry to the laundry room. If they’re over the age of 12 I expect them to start a load if there happens to be something else in there. I’ve become the person who daily is just moving the stuff through. And then I return the basket to them with their clean clothes. I never fold anything except my own things. At any age, once they’re five, I should add.

And so I just cycle it through, it takes me maybe no more than three minutes a day and it all keeps functioning and they fold it. So is it kind of similar for you guys?

Becky: Yeah. Everyone has a laundry day. I do mine on Tuesday then it goes oldest on Wednesday, middle Thursday, youngest Friday. And then sheets and towels on Saturday. So it works for us just because we have five people.

Jen: And then how do you train your kids to remember their day?

Becky: You know what? They just kind of know it or I’ll say, “Bring your laundry to the laundry room.” My older two can run the load from start to finish and fold it, put away. I will move it from washer to dryer if I need to. But they can run it completely by themselves. My youngest is nine and so he’s still in the helping me stage with the folding. My older two were folding younger, but he’s just easily overwhelmed.

Jen: The youngest kids always get so lucky that way.

Becky: I know.

Jen: That’s great. Well, tell us what are these whole house clutter catchers? I think I need this.

Becky: Yeah. So whole house clutter catchers are things that you put in place in your home, once you have some systems and routines, rituals in place. If you put these clutter catchers in place in your home it’s going to make things a little bit easier and things will run more smoothly. So it’s really simple things like making sure you have hooks up where things need to be hung. So for instance if you have bathroom towels that are always on the floor, maybe putting a hook right above where it ends up on the floor. That can help.

Or robes, or anything that can be hung, put a hook up. I always use these Command Hooks, the bigger more sturdy ones, while I’m testing something out before I screw anything into the wall. And some of them are pretty enough you can just leave them permanently, especially if you need them at a lower height for younger kids.

Another thing that I do is have a basket for donating items. So you can decide where you want to keep it, if you keep it in your garage, you could keep it in – I keep ours in our master bedroom. And anything that needs to – my kids know to put things in there if they have something that they’ve outgrown or something that is ripped or torn, whatever it might be. You put it in that donate basket and then I will find the right place, whether it’s, you know, whichever one of our donating places that we go to, I’ll put it in a bag for that.

But that keeps it so that instead of deferring an item, “Okay, I know this doesn’t fit me but I don’t know what to do with it”, just put it in that basket. And then once that basket is full then I can transfer those items to the proper place and take them there.

I also find that if you have – I mean it really depends on the family. So if you have people in your family that put things on the steps or if you have people that leave things out and you want to do a quick clutter clean up and grab those things. Put them in a basket and put that basket on the steps, there are baskets that are step shaped. And you can – so that they fit right on the steps and that way you can grab that and they can go upstairs and put those things away.

Jen: How do you find these?

Becky: Yeah. I think the best one I’ve seen is from Ballard Designs. It’s super cute and it just fits on your steps and that way you don’t have things on the steps to trip over. I always recommend having a command center of some sort for your family with a calendar and a place for file folders where you can put your information, things that you need to still deal with, things that need to be filed. So you’re not letting paper kind of take over.

And another thing is having a place for your keys. If keys don’t happen to be on a key hook you might have a little dish that works too, where those keys end up on a counter, just put a dish there and that will contain them nicely too. And on the laundry issue I find that smaller laundry baskets are better than the big ones too.

Jen: Me too, yes, for sure.

Becky: Because then when it’s full it’s not going to be a huge load. And with modern – people always argue with me, “You’re going to waste water.” But with modern machines they fill up to that level. You don’t have issues with you’re not wasting water, the machine puts in the amount of water that you need and washes the clothes, I mean we’re good.

Jen: Everyone says that. “Why would you only wash a half a load, you’re wasting all that electricity and water?” I’m like, “You guys, it’s pennies, who cares.” Yeah.

Becky: Right. And the water is the right amount for your clothes.

Jen: Yeah. Well, here’s a good one for you, snow gear. What do you do with it?

Becky: Yes. Well, I have a couple of things that I do with it because – and it depends on the age of the kids and the adults, and who does what in the snow and all of that. But what works best for us is I have one of those, it’s a hanging drawer system. You can get it at Target or Bed Bath & Beyond, whatever. We have it in hanging in our entryway closet. And there are drawers that come out, it’s fabric, so it’s not anything crazy. I’m guessing it’s under 30 bucks.

But each child has a drawer and that’s where we put snow pants, gloves, hats, that all goes in there. So that’s where the extra stuff goes. The kids that needs snow pants at school, they have a separate bag for boots and snow pants. And that usually stays in the garage. So they can grab it on their way out and it just keeps a little bit easier. We have a place in the garage for boots.

But I do have – so if they come in, their boots are snowy, they sit on a rug to drip off and then I will bring them inside so they thoroughly dry and then I put them back outside, because you don’t want a frozen boot.

Jen: Yeah, true.

Becky: That’s not fun.

Jen: So let me ask about the hanging drawer thing. So does it attach to the rod? And so if you’re facing the closet the drawers pull out toward you?

Becky: Correct.

Jen: And how many drawers does it have?

Becky: I think the one that I have has six.

Jen: And I have six kids. That’s good. And the snow pants, and gloves, and hats all fit in it?

Becky: It all fits in there. I mean they’re probably a 12 – I am guessing they’re 10 to 12 inches high and then it’s a square.

Jen: Yeah, that’s great.

Becky: Yeah. And I just found that that – because then I don’t have to pack anything away. It just stays in there so when winter’s over I wash everything, refold it, put it in and it’s good.

Jen: Yeah, that’s really smart. We have a bench that all the snow pants go in. But I think your idea is better because they’re always digging to find their thing. So that’s great, yeah. Well, so this is all in your book Clean Mama’s Guide to a Peaceful Home?

Becky: It is.

Jen: This is cool. And you have recipes in there as well for making your own cleaning products?

Becky: I do. That’s something that I’ve been sharing online since probably pretty close to the beginning of Clean Mama was just really simple DIY recipes. You can find them on my blog too under the DIY recipe category. There are some there as well. But I think that it was really nice, especially when my kids were little, I did not know what was in cleaning products. And at that time there wasn’t a lot of transparency around cleaning products.

It’s definitely better but I really enjoyed being able to make my own formulas and come up with different things that actually work with ingredients that I had in my house that cost pennies to make. And they work better than what I could buy at the store. If you’ve never tried a DIY cleaner I would recommend starting with a window and glass cleaner, it’s super simple. Or my stone cleaning spray is another one of my favorites as well.

My all time favorite though is my kitchen sink scrub. And it’s a nightly sink scrub is what I call it. I talk about it in the book as part of a routine kind of capping off the clean kitchen at the end of the night. All the dishes are put away either in the dishwasher or they’re washed. And then I sprinkle this concoction of baking soda and lemon and clove, essential oils, I just sprinkle it on my sink, I add a little dish soap and I scrub the sink, rinse it, dry it. It’s kind of like a little bit of aromatherapy. It’s kind of relaxing.

And then I know my kitchen sink is nice and clean. Kitchen sinks are the dirtiest place in our homes. So knowing that it’s clean at the end of the day is nice and that’s just kind of a little thing that I do.

Jen: That’s smart. You make it sound easy.

Becky: I try.

Jen: I would imagine there’s someone out there listening hearing that your cleaning system pretty much runs like clockwork. Some people have a belief about themselves as clutter challenged, or clean house disabled, or whatever. So what advice would you have for someone who thinks this sounds impossible, where do they start?

Becky: Anyone that feels like that, you’re my person because those are the people that I really enjoy helping the most because you’re going to see the biggest transformation. I would always say start with 10 minutes a day, set a timer and just say, “Okay, I’m going to do something for 10 minutes today. You could choose a daily task. You could probably do two daily tasks in 10 minutes if you had to. I always recommend starting by making your bed. And the thing with my routine is that you’re never behind.

So if you didn’t clean bathrooms yesterday and now today is Tuesday and now you’re thinking okay, now I have to catch up on Monday and Tuesday, that’s not how the routine works. You just start on whatever the day it is. So you just start with dusting on Tuesday, you can either catch up on your bathrooms on Friday for catch all day or save them till the next week. It’s not the kind of thing where you’re behind.

Everyone knows that you’ll survive if your bathroom doesn’t get cleaned every week, because you’ve probably done it, it’s not a big deal. I mean it’s dirt, it will still be there for you, it will probably have multiplied slightly. But it’s not a big deal. So, sometimes people will say, “Well, I missed this week, we were out of town or I just fell behind so I can’t do it.” And I’m always like, “What? What’s today? Do today’s task, just do something, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

I always want to encourage listeners, readers to realize that no one does everything perfectly every day. There’s always room for real life, things happen. You might not feel like cleaning, so be it, that’s fine. But the problem is when you don’t feel like cleaning all the time, because then you’re not going to be moving forward. But there’s room in any routine to be a little bit flexible and say, “You know what? I can clean toilets today but I just can’t do anything else, that’s all I can do.” Fine, it’s okay.

Jen: You know what I love about your system? It’s kind of like life is the machine and what you teach is adding the oil to the machine so everything’s lubricated and runs well. The point isn’t necessarily to have the clean house as much as to be able to enjoy a life in the clean house. So it seems like you make things quick and doable so that you can get back to life, whereas a lot of other systems are so focused on the end result being the clean house. And you’re spending way too much time on that. And I don’t know about everyone else listening but minimal cleaning is my goal.

Becky: Absolutely. I mean it does not – I mean I guess I would like to run an experiment where you have someone that cleans their homes on Saturdays top to bottom versus someone that cleans a little bit every day. And if you could drop into those two houses without them knowing every day for two weeks which house would actually feel cleaner. And I’m going to guess that it’s the one that cleans a little bit every day rather than – and doesn’t get everything done perfectly rather than the one that has a top to bottom clean once a week.

But if that doesn’t happen then they’re going to miss that week and then it’s going to be two weeks or three weeks before they can get caught back up. And then that’s kind of that cycle that you fall into.

Jen: Plus if you have one cleaning day, I’m not saying it couldn’t be fun, but for me personally I would think, “Oh cleaning day”, rather than, “Hey, cleaning 10 minutes while I listen to this podcast!”, it’s just way more doable and light in the smaller chunks for me personally.

Becky: Yeah, absolutely.

Jen: Yeah. Well, this is so great, everyone go check out Becky’s book, Clean Mama’s Guide to a Peaceful Home. Also follow her on Instagram. She does a lot of cool stuff there. And is your Instagram handle just your name, Becky Rapinchuk?

Becky: No, it’s @CleanMama.

Jen: @CleanMama, okay, got it. Alright, thank you Becky, this is great. Everyone go do one thing you heard here today and grab her book to know the next steps.

Becky: Awesome. Thanks so much, have a great day.

Jen: Bye, Becky.

Becky: Bye bye.

I told you, so many great ideas that are doable. Breathe out that sigh of relief. You can adopt some portion of what Becky shared today, just do the first thing like she said, 10 minutes a day and then see where you’ll be a year from now. This is a great, great episode, full of good ones. Write down her tips and use them.

Now, I was thinking after Becky and I finished our conversation, in the end the purpose of a clean home is to generate a feeling. How do you want to feel in your home? Do you want to feel like you have a never ending pressure of performance and perfectionism hanging over you? Do you want to feel like you can’t find any clean laundry and there’s clutter surrounding you? No, neither. What is your happy medium? How do you want to feel at home? And that question can guide the decisions you make.

For me I want to feel peaceful, calm, connected, safe, all those beautiful words and we can totally achieve that. So give it a try, try your one thing and decide how do you want to feel at home? And make it a reality, a little step at a time, one baby step at a time.

Now, speaking of peace, thinking about how I want to feel also made me think about the Vibrant Happy Women retreat happening in 2022. Can you imagine a world where Covid’s not really a big thing anymore? I barely can anymore, but I know it’s coming. The Spanish flu didn’t last forever and neither will Covid. So I want to invite you to sign up and join me in Florida in February of 2022. The doors are open. Tickets are still available for a limited time. We have limited spots. We were able to take all our spots from 2021 and just move them to 2022.

So most of those spots are already filled up because 2021 people are on for 2022, but we would love to have you join us. If this resonates for you, you like the idea of amazing women, sunshine in February, gourmet food that is to die for, hot tubs, pools, paddleboarding, plus all of the Vibrant Happy Women workshops we’ll be offering. Sign up, join us! You can learn more at jenriday.com/events.

Well, my friends it has been fun, go do 10 minutes on your house, sign up to join me in Florida and I will see you again next time. Until then make it a vibrant and happy day. Take care.

If you enjoy this podcast, you have to check out the Vibrant Happy Women Club. It’s my monthly group coaching program where we take all this material to the next level and to get you the results that will blow your mind. Join me in the Vibrant Happy Women Club at jenriday.com/join.

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About jen

Jen Riday is a mom of 6 and life coach who loves to help women experience massive happiness as they let go of stress, sadness or other chronic emotions of negativity.

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