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Hi, everybody.
My name is Shauna, and this is the American English Podcast.
My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States.
Through common expressions, pronunciation tips and interesting cultural snippets or stories.
I hope to keep this fun, useful and interesting.
Let's do it.
Hi everyone, welcome back to this week's episode.
For today, we've got a five-minute English episode, and it's all about cleaning.
Cleaning is an activity that many of us dread.
We don't look forward to it.
We don't like it.
But it often comes up in small talk, especially when you're chatting with somebody about their day.
So without a doubt, this will be useful.
As usual, the goal for five-minute English episodes is to teach you the vocabulary, phrasal verbs and collocations.
You need to have a discussion about this topic.
I call this fluency one topic at a time.
Now, recently, one of my students asked me what I mean by fluency.
Fluency is a term that's interpreted differently by pretty much everyone.
So for me, fluency in a specific topic is when you're able to talk freely and comfortably, when you aren't looking for words or translating from your native language.
It doesn't mean that you need to know every vocabulary word, but you know the essentials and are able to use them without doubting yourself.
With that in mind, I construct these five-minute episodes by making a list of what I consider to be must-know words and phrases in the topic.
For this episode in particular, I imagined the messiest, dirtiest possible state that a home or an apartment could be in, and then described it.
Then I tried to explain what you or any other individual could do to clean that home and bring it from its worst state to its best state.
There's a lot of vocabulary in here.
It's an advanced listening exercise.
So don't be surprised if you don't understand everything.
It's more challenging than regular episodes.
If you're interested in getting the bonus material for this episode, you'll have the PDF transcript so you can read along and learn new vocabulary that way.
There's also images. so you can look at pictures to understand terms.
We've got vocabulary exercises, a listening comprehension quiz to test you and, of course, conversation questions so that you can reuse these terms with your language partner or teacher.
To access all of this material.
Be sure to head to the episode notes to find the link to the Academy.
You can also head to the website at AmericanEnglishPodcast.com.
Oh, and one last thing.
To hear tips on how to clean with kids the messiest people in the world then be sure to stay tuned until the end.
Without any further ado, let's get into this five-minute English episode all about cleaning.
It's Saturday morning and you wake up feeling groggy.
It's been a long week at work, filled with late nights and fast food.
When you look around your apartment, you realize that the chaos in your work life has taken a toll on the state of affairs at home.
As you make your way to the kitchen, you trip on a pile of dirty laundry and a stack of books that you haven't put away since you looked at them last Saturday.
In the kitchen.
There are empty bottles and wrappers on the counter and dishes stacked high in the sink.
There's an odd stench coming from the trash can as well.
That's when you realize you're living in a pigsty.
It's been weeks since you've done a deep cleaning, and the result is unbearable.
You have to do something about it ASAP.
The problem is, you don't quite know where to begin.
So you break out a pen and paper and start to list all of the chores you need to do, starting with the kitchen.
First things first.
There's no reason that there are so many dishes in the sink, given the amount of takeout you've eaten recently.
You put on some rubber gloves, grab a sponge and start scrubbing plates, bowls and silverware, wondering at what point you turned into such a slob.
After all, you grew up in a nice and orderly household.
Your parents did the dishes every night after dinner and left the kitchen sparkling clean for the morning.
They were the type of people that polished wine glasses and silverware even though no special guests were coming to visit.
Everything was always immaculate at their house.
You can't help but wonder what your parents would say if they saw the filth you lived in now.
They'd probably insist you hire a maid or a housekeeper to keep things orderly.
It might not be such a bad idea, you think, as you attempt to scrape off day-old oatmeal from a bowl in vain.
You decide to let the bowl and a few other pots and pans soak in the sink.
After all, the dish drain is full and you've loaded the dishwasher.
It's full and running.
You look at your chores list and decide to hold off looking at it for a while.
It's long and it's overwhelming.
When you look around your kitchen, you realize there's still so much more to do.
You wipe down the counters with a wet rag, gathering crumbs into a pile as you go.
And then you use some elbow grease to get off some sticky patches.
Unfortunately, when doing so, you come across a puddle of grape juice.
You'd spilled a few nights back and forgotten about.
And now there's a light purple stain on your white granite countertop.
You make a mental note to bleach that spot later on.
Stepping back, you look at the kitchen and it's not half bad.
The floor, however, needs to be vacuumed and disinfected.
From experience you know that the vacuum doesn't quite fit under the stove or the fridge.
So you grab a broom and a dustpan to sweep those hard-to-reach places.
Afterwards you get smudges off the floor by mopping, dipping the mop regularly in soapy water as you go.
In the end, your tile floor is so shiny you can see your reflection in it.
While you have all of your cleaning products out, you make your way to the bathroom, your least favorite room to clean.
The hot, wet air is responsible for the patches of mold on the ceiling and on the walls, and so you scour them and the grout with the abrasive side of a sponge to remove it.
When you're done scraping off the grime, you rinse the surfaces with warm water, plug in an air freshener and head to your bedroom, which is in complete disarray.
The floor is scattered with pieces of clothing.
You can hardly see the carpet.
It's part of the reason why you had such a hard time finding your keys this morning.
It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
So you pick up your clothes and throw them into the laundry basket.
Strip off your dirty sheets and then head to the laundry room, where you throw a load into the washing machine.
Before starting it up, you add some detergent and... fabric softener.
Back in your room, you see that your dresser is covered in clutter.
Socks, sunscreen, pens, notes, knickknacks.
You feel like anything and everything is on there.
So you declutter.
You put things back where they belong.
Then you dust the shelves above your dresser, since your books have accumulated dust over time.
Before long.
Your laundry has been washed and dried, so you fold your clothes neatly and hang up your nicest clothes on hangers in the closet.
Then you pull out your fresh sheets that have a strong scent of downy and then make your bed.
Everything's really coming together.
To wrap up your big cleaning session, you take out the recycling and the trash.
And as a finishing touch, spray air freshener in each room.
At the end of the day, you feel relieved but exhausted.
No surface has gone untouched.
You've wiped down, scrubbed, and sprayed every nook and cranny of your apartment.
And when you look around, you're pretty proud.
The floors are squeaky clean, the surfaces are spotless, and the air smells fresh.
To check and see if you've done everything.
You grab that old, unused list of chores and read out loud, as you check off, what you've done.
Check.
I vacuumed and mopped the floors.
Check.
I Windexed the windows.
Check.
I did the dishes and put them away.
Check.
I dusted the shelves and I put everything back where it belongs.
Check.
Oh, and I also took out the trash.
Check.
Your deep cleaning is done and your apartment is in top shape.
Looking around you make a vow to yourself to clean up after yourself and to never let your place become such a mess again.
No hangovers, no buzz...
No subbing out for water in the second half.
Stock the fridge for tip-off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewingcom.
Your beer, fit for all times.
That's it for this five-minute episode.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Just an FYI, this is not a personal account of my cleaning day.
I don't think my apartment or my house has ever been quite so dirty.
Lucas and I clean up after ourselves and our daughters as hard as it may be at times.
It's funny, I actually posted this episode six years ago when Julia was just a baby.
And here's a snippet from back then.
It's definitely not abnormal to find measuring cups and spoons under our couch.
Last week we lost the remote for about 48 hours and then found it in the sock drawer, which is an interesting place to put it.
It wasn't us.
It was definitely Julia, of course.
Nowadays I don't often see measuring cups and spoons all around, but Barbies and homemade doll clothes are everywhere.
Julia and Clara cut up paper to make dresses on a daily basis.
And the leftover paper and pens are all over our kitchen.
It looks like a hurricane or a tornado came through.
I think I mentioned it in a recent episode.
It's chaos.
So I actually have two tips, two different cleaning techniques we use at home that actually work.
The first one is that I tell them they have to pick up 10 things, and it doesn't matter what they are.
So they'll count out loud and choose what they want to clean.
Might just be some pencils on the floor or paper or whatever.
And for some reason, giving them a goal of 10 is more doable than just saying, clean your room.
It's, I think, too vague for them.
It sounds like too much of a task.
But 10 things, doable.
Sometimes I increase that to 20.
And man, it's great when I don't have to pick up those things.
The second cleaning tip or technique is a game that my daughter Julia invented last year.
And I'm really impressed that she came up with this, because everybody that's played it including their friends and even my parents when they're over love it.
Everyone loves it.
Here's how it works.
Every person playing starts in a separate room.
Then set a timer for two minutes.
Everyone starts cleaning.
And quickly.
When the timer beeps after two minutes, you have to run to another room to start cleaning.
The timer starts again for two minutes, and then you switch rooms again.
And you keep doing this maybe four or five times.
Now, what's brilliant about this is that by the time you make it to the next room, it's cleaner than it was before.
So it's motivating to continue cleaning it.
And by the fourth or fifth time, the house is actually pretty clean.
So I know this is fun for kids because they have a great time.
They're laughing and running and actually cleaning up.
I think you could actually try this with your spouse or your roommate.
Let me know what you think.
I'm a big fan of it.
And if you don't like cleaning your house in general, you can always hire a house cleaner.
Let's talk about that.
To Lucas's surprise, when he moved to the US, he found that it's much less common here to have maids than it is in Brazil.
Maids are also known as housekeepers.
Maybe that's even more common nowadays.
Now he thinks it's partially due to the fact that Americans have a strong DIY culture, a do-it-yourself culture, and partly due to the fact that hiring labor is just more expensive here per hour.
According to Carecom, the cost of housekeeping is usually based on the size of one's house and whether the housekeeper needs to bring their own cleaning products.
Apparently, some housekeepers charge more if there are pets or kids.
And also they take into account whether it's just basic cleaning, such as cleaning surfaces and vacuuming the carpets, or deep cleaning, which may involve scrubbing the showers or scraping food off old dishes.
Just to get an idea, the cheapest rate for a house cleaner or housekeeper near me is 17 per hour, although most people charge between 20 and 40 per hour, depending on what's required of them.
In any case, we are all capable of cleaning, and now we're able to talk about it.
So why not download some podcast episodes or turn on a good playlist and make the most out of it?
It's spring cleaning after all.
Hope you enjoyed.
And until next time, bye.
Thanks and hope to see you soon.
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