Episode 13 of The Spring Cleaning and Decluttering Series
Does your husband desire a cleaner home, but you find yourself overwhelmed with it all?
In this episode Sasha chats with Desireé Robinson, homemaker, homesteader, homebirther, homeschooling mom of 3 boys on a mission to help busy Christian moms experience an Organized, Low Tox , Peaceful Home & Biz.
Desireé shares how her husband was like “what is this mess” and how she went from feeling overwhelmed to having a cleaning routine that made it all simple for her. She shares her top tips on how to create a simple cleaning routine as well as examples of what to do daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonally.
God brought Elyse to a mindset shift that helped her create abundance and joy in her life as well as effective home routines that have God at the center of them.
Want to connect with Desireé?
Free Stress Free Cleaning Schedule (example & template)-https://mailchi.mp/db3b11ac71ea/cleaningschedule
Wholistic Lifestyle Podcast- https://anchor.fm/wholisticlifestyle
FB Community- Unprocessed Momma https://m.facebook.com/groups/490669698120001/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF
Website- https://unprocessedmomma.wordpress.com/
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Transcription
Sasha Robertson: We are here with Desireé Robinson today. She is a homemaker homesteader home birther and homeschooling mama of three boys. She lives with her husband and does this all in North Carolina. She’s on a mission to help busy Christian, Mamas, Can I get? Amen, experience and organized low talks, peaceful home and business Desireé. You are right in our wheelhouse here. This is exactly what we talk about, on the intentional mom, like with Jesus Community. I love all of these home things in your introduction and it’s just, it’s so encouraging and a breath of fresh air to see someone so like minded on the same mission. And so, thank you for being here. Is there anything more? You’d like to add to this bio?
Desireé Robinson: Now, I feel like that pretty much sums it up, I’m sure we could all talk about more things over time, but that’s a good summary.
Sasha Robertson: Awesome. Boy, mom of three. I just have to ask, are you gonna have any more? Are you like one? That’s gonna go until you have a girl?
Desireé Robinson: You know, my husband, I have really been talking about this and just how we can let God lead us in that. So we don’t really know. We’re just working on trusting God, throughout that right now. We’re doing like a natural family planning method because we would like Lord willing. A little bit of a gap between,…
Sasha Robertson: Yeah.
Desireé Robinson: you know, the last two I had, we’re only a year apart. So we’ll kind of see over time. I like the idea of having another kid so we’ll see how that works out. Speaking of, you know, little ones here with me right now, the youngest, that’s three months right now.
Sasha Robertson: Yes, I love it. I love talking to other moms have babies and I’m like, I absolutely do not mind when you have your baby here in a podcast recording or even on a coaching call because a lot of times my little one has to join me too. Sometimes my you know, preschool or we’ll have to join me too but but babies are just such a gift. They’re so sweet and so precious. So I love getting to be here with you while you have him.
Sasha Robertson: I know the meat and potatoes of our conversation today that I want to talk about is cleaning because it’s a huge thing that’s coming up right now. It’s spring. And so everybody’s in this spring cleaning feeling which is a little bit more cleaning, right? It’s that deeper cleaning and that seasonal transition cleaning but also just about cleaning in general. And how we as women in the home as moms and business. Women can be good stewards of our home through having, maybe a cleaning schedule or a cleaning system in place. And I know that’s a strong suit of yours. And so, I would love to just give you the floor. You can talk maybe a little bit about how this cleaning schedule. You’ve created for yourself, came about and give us a few tips on what we can do. As busy working moms, stay at home moms who have a side business
Sasha Robertson: How can we be good stewards of our home and implementing different routines habits or systems like you have?
Desireé Robinson: Yeah, well, I originally started like, really paying attention to my cleaning routine because my husband is cleaner than I am. And he’s like, What is this? This is a mess. And to me, it wasn’t that bad. But, like, as we had more things because, you know, having kids and combining me. And my husband stuff, like, all the stuff just really quickly gets over a whelming and hard to keep up with. And I was kind of sick of it and originally I looked into like decluttering to help me with that and that did help some. But really like decluttering is not all of keeping the home clean. And so the actual deep cleaning part of like getting in the fridge and under the stovetops and you…
Sasha Robertson: The.
Desireé Robinson: especially deep cleaning like we’re doing right now with something that I really wanted to improve. It not only for myself but for you know my
Desireé Robinson: Kids. And for my husband and it’s actually one of the ways that I show love to him by keeping a clean home. And so, I really sat down and I follow a which this would be my first tip, a time, blocking schedule or planner. And that right there allowed me to see where I had time to get stuff done and where I didn’t have time to get stuff done. And so going by that, I pretty much created this cleaning schedule that it’s helpful for everybody but it really was something that worked specifically that I made for myself. And so I’ve shared it with other women and, you know, sometimes they’ll keep it the same, sometimes they’ll change a couple of things but I can kind of go through right here. So for daily, I will do a sweep. I will do the dishes after each meal. A load of laundry in the morning, and by the afternoon, I’m folding that I’m putting that away.
00:05:00
Desireé Robinson: And then weekly, I will. Well, let’s go one other thing because moms we have toys everywhere. So in the daily, I have my kids help me clean up the toys and I usually will actually have us at nap time. Like right before, we’ll clean up the toys in the living room because I let them play in the living room and their playroom. So we’ll clean up the toys in the living room and then at the end of the day we clean up the toys and the playroom. So kind of splitting that up, makes it a little less overwhelming for me and the kids because like doing it all at once is just so much sometimes.
Desireé Robinson: And then weekly, I will deep clean one area. I choose to do that on Thursdays because that’s just a day that I have less going on in my schedule and worst case scenario, if I were not to get it done that day because I’m all about having a flexible schedule, you know, something that you can change easily and it’s not a big deal, you know? No, shame don’t have any guilt about it and Fridays are another, you know just home kind of day for me home, focus day and so I will actually you know do my deep cleaning Thursdays but if I don’t get to it then I have Friday also. And during that, I’ll share a little bit more on that a little bit later, but for other things, I do weekly would be cleaning the floors and
Desireé Robinson: Something which this is going to be tip. Number two, is to ask for help and so this is one of the areas that I was able to get a little bit of help in. So I will actually sweep and vacuum and my husband will mop for me because he doesn’t mind cleaning the floors. But if I ask him to do dishes or laundry, he’s like having a hissy face. So this is something that I was like, okay, you don’t mind doing this, can you help me out? So he helps with mopping once a week and he will usually do that on Fridays and ironically something I do kind of a little mom hack here is I clip all the kids’ nails. Just like laying down on the carpet. Right before I vacuum.
Desireé Robinson: Like it just kind of like, okay, it’s actually clean and I just love doing it that way. Just makes it easier. My husband’s not like Why are their nails all over the place? Because I totally used to just like clip them and then vacuum whatever and he did not like that. Another thing I do weekly is clean the bathrooms because of course they need that and when you’re keeping up with it like the bathrooms used to seem so overwhelming to me like such a big roast task and honestly it’s not especially if you’re keeping up with it. It’s like a spray everywhere and a wife everywhere and that’s it. So I really like that. I also change our sheets weekly as well and so It kind of you just get into this flow of things.
Desireé Robinson: It takes typically about three weeks to create a habit. And so, you know, when you’re studying this up, give yourself some grace throughout that but you’re gonna get it down. And before, you know, it it’s gonna actually feel like, Oh, I’m just kind of flowing through this.
Desireé Robinson: So monthly I will do like a declutter and organize of one focused area which that’s kind of how I follow my deep cleaning. One area weekly is like you know when I’m deep cleaning, one area weekly, I’m going to be focusing on the kitchen like the kitchen appliances. That’s what I’m focusing on. So when I’m doing my monthly, you know, declutter and organizations okay, I’m focusing on just the kitchen, it’s not like I have to deep clean the entire house. All at once I tried to do that, it was exhausting. It knocks me on my butt like I cannot do it and so that switch really helped me. And then seasonally I will do my deep clean declutter and organize and this is something that since I’m already maintaining all the areas pretty. Well, it’s not so daunting anymore and so it really looks like
Desireé Robinson: Things that I don’t get to as often or choose to not get to as often so that’s things, like, dusting because who likes to dust weekly if you do like,…
Sasha Robertson: Right.
Desireé Robinson: cool. But that’s not me. And so I will actually dust seasonally and I start just from top to bottom, just like when I’m wiping counters, you know, top to bottom We’re just wiping anything down, and
00:10:00
Desireé Robinson: Pretty much like doing that. Seasonally just makes it so much easier and I’m trying to think what else I also will wash like my curtains. I have shower curtains that are like the reusable cloth ones and so I’ll do that and then I’m trying to sing any other big things. Like if there’s anything else sticking out to me then I’ll clean that too and I will do my declutter of course and it kind of goes hand in hand. When you’re decluttering, you have the space that is cleared off and so go ahead and clean it and then organizing is the really fun part of it all. And I’m a huge fan of like multi-purpose items like furniture that has storage in it. For example, that’s a great thing to use and really if you’re struggling with like, okay, how do I find the time to do this like seasonal deep clean declutter and organize, definitely getting your cleaning schedule.
Desireé Robinson: Order will help a lot because like I said, that maintains everything pretty well. So you’re not doing so many things but also pretty much you’re just gonna focus on like one step at a time with everything and that you’re doing just one step at a time, you know. And that’s pretty much my cleaning schedule, overall.
Sasha Robertson: I love it.
Desireé Robinson: What?
Sasha Robertson: You shared so much goodness and just a short compact time. So I love the tips that you gave one, the time blocking schedule slash planner. It allows you to see where you have the time or where you can make some time to get stuff done. I love you said number two, ask for help and you pointed out that like your husband, he will mop like he doesn’t mind that. But doing the laundry or dishes, like he would not appreciate that. My husband will totally do the dishes in the laundry, but there are things like filing and a lot of that non-routine stuff that that he’s like, No. There’s certain things like in our home or our family dynamic that he just won’t touch. And so, don’t be afraid to have like a family meeting to have those discussions with your spouse and see, like, what kind of areas are they comfortable in in showing up and serving? Because that can be. So, so powerful.
Sasha Robertson: I love you that you talked about the before type things, I’m using air quotes the listeners can’t exactly hear. But before nap time have your kids, help you clean up the toys in the living room. Yes. Before bedtime have them help you clean up the toys in the playroom, Our playroom is on a different story of our house. And so, before we leave the playroom, my preschooler now, you know, because the baby can’t clean up yet. The preschoolers responsible for helping and so, he’s always like, clean up clean up everybody everywhere and…
Desireé Robinson: Look.
Sasha Robertson: he just loves it. It’s the sweetest thing, but incorporating them, encouraging them, allowing them to step into that role of self-responsibility and cleaning up after themselves is so important and so huge. But what I’m hearing too? Is this habit stack, right? Like, Oh, we’re gonna take a nap, that means we’ve got to clean up our toys first. And then you’ve even done this too with clipping the nails.
Desireé Robinson: Yeah.
Sasha Robertson: your husband sounds very similar to mine because like, when I grew up same thing like I Not that our house was disgusting, but like, we just didn’t have like a cleaning system at all. Really? It was like, I was responsible for doing the dishes. That was my chore, like, once a week. I think. And I hated it because it was always a mountain of dishes and like clipping nails, we would just clip them wherever,…
Desireé Robinson: Yeah.
Sasha Robertson: you know, and my husband like, he’s like, no, you will clip them over the trash can. And so I hear you in that clipping the nails and then vacuuming right afterwards. It’s a great way to to stack those habits on to each other. So it just becomes this this routine and this natural way of going about and walking through things, I also love that you broke your schedule down into like this is what we do daily
Sasha Robertson: This is what we do. Weekly this is what we do monthly and this is what we do seasonally and ladies if you’re not already in this kind of process definitely like lean in and figure out what those dailies and weeklies and monthlies are for you because Just like Desiree said here, it’s so important and so powerful.
Sasha Robertson: And it creates space for you to stay on top of things that creates the time for you guys to get the stuff done, it creates less stress when it comes to the spring cleaning or the seasonal things, because you’ve done a good job at staying on top of it all the rest of the time. And then lastly I want to say I love how you even hit on the organizing aspect of it and how important it is to have those multi-purpose items. And you mentioned like furniture that has storage as an example of that. I know organizing, you know, when I think about organizing, I think about the home edit and they’re like, clear containers and everything. Like some of it seems really efficient the way, people, organize of like taking things out of one container to put it in a different container when it was perfectly contained where it was before. It just wasn’t like aesthetically pleasing.
00:15:00
Sasha Robertson: I don’t want people to get caught up in that aspect of it but the aspect of being functional like what is practical and what works for your family in terms of that organizing, this was so,…
Desireé Robinson: I will. I’ll take functional over,…
Sasha Robertson: so good. What was that?
Desireé Robinson: I’ll take functional over aesthetically pleasing any day. I will always try to find some ways to make it look nice,…
Sasha Robertson: Yes.
Desireé Robinson: but I want functional overall.
Sasha Robertson: Yes. I love it. Like I don’t even have any more questions to ask because you hit so much right off the bat I guess I can ask.
Desireé Robinson: That’s why.
Sasha Robertson: It’s Are there any more? Is there any more like tips or encouragement that you would love to leave our listeners with today?
Desireé Robinson: Uh, yeah. Actually one more so, I don’t know if your listeners have heard much about greenwashing but pretty much it’s just the concept of like
Desireé Robinson: Marketing, that is fooling you and to thinking something is actually healthy for you. And so cleaning products is one of those major areas that there’s a lot of harmful junk in the products. And there’s a lot of products for like every single thing and you really don’t need that. If you just have like one staple non-toxic or low, toxic healthy cleaner, you can use that, like all purpose. Like I have one cleaner that is my go-to and I use it for everything. Occasionally, if something is really tough, like maybe the toilets are the tub. I add a little baking soda like that, is it. I have like, DIY option. And then I have like a just by option, which like, if you’re just making it vinegar, water essential oils, it’s that simple. And then if you’re wanting like to just buy it, there’s the thieves household cleaner and you just pour that with some water into
Desireé Robinson: Model and that’s it. Like it is so easy and you don’t have to have like 20 different products under your sink. Fluttering up that area.
Sasha Robertson: Yes, I could not agree more as somebody who suffers with Hashimoto’s. I know how much my environment can play into that especially toxic environment and and so I appreciate you mentioning that we have had somebody on the podcast before and might even have somebody else coming to share a little bit about like, in more in depth about some of that. But I 100% agree with you, I love the thieves. That’s the one that we use kind of across the board. It’s either the norwex cloths or the thieves cleaner. And as a boy Mom I’m sure you understand. Like there’s at least one bathroom in the house. That always smells like urine. So we use the thieves frequently in there because it’s my preschoolers bathroom.
Sasha Robertson: And it just it just always has a tendency to need to be cleaned and that is our our go-to cleaner and it’s amazing like it smells so good in there. Once we’re done with it. And so I love that you also presented a DIY option and I know you’re passionate about this. You’re passionate about this, no talk, slow talks living. And so, for people who want to connect with you, to learn more about all of these things, organization, low talks living cleaning and so much more. Where can people find you to connect?
Desireé Robinson: Yeah. Well, I have a podcast myself, the holistic, lifestyle podcast, I am always sharing tips on all those things as well over there. So you can find me on any podcasts, listening format you use. I’m also on Instagram, Unprocessed Mom and Desireé and I have a Facebook group called Unprocessed Mama, and that’s kind of like the main areas I hang out.
Sasha Robertson: Awesome. I will absolutely share all these links in the show notes so you guys can just scroll down, click, you can follow her subscribe, listen to her podcast, join that Facebook Community, follow her on Instagram and then Desiree. I know you also have a free stress free cleaning schedule that people can snag. Is that right?
Desireé Robinson: Yes. So we broke down a lot of it but I have it on a nice printout that you guys can have digitally or you can print it out. I have it all written down so it’s easy for you guys to see and just a little bit more specific detail of all what we discussed and more as well as a blank template for you to let customize anything that you want to as well. And I will share the link with that for y’all to download as well.
00:20:00
Sasha Robertson: Awesome. Yes, yes, that will be in the show notes, so scroll down, grab that. I know I’m going to as well because I can always use more help in the area of being a better steward of my home and staying on top of it. One last thing I wanted to circle back to that. You said was that you really enjoy keeping a clean home because it’s one of the ways that you show love to your husband and you show love to your kids by keeping a clean home. And so I love that. You said that I’m gonna just keep meditating on that. How I’m having that marinate, as a thought, and belief in my heart as well and just having that heart posture towards my home and the stewardship of it. So thank you so much Desiree. I know this podcast episode is gonna bless many, I think you for your time and for being here and God bless all you listeners.
Desireé Robinson: Thank you so much.
More about your Podcast Host
Sasha Star Robertson is an Intentional Living & Biblical Mindset Coach for busy Christian moms, wife of 13 years to her best friend, boy mom (blessed by adoption), travel addict, and Jesus freak. She is the founder of The Intentional Abundance Co., curator of the Life & Goals Planner, & host of the Intentional Momlife with Jesus Podcast.
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