Hello and welcome back today’s podcast. So today we’re going to be talking about the fact that all you need to change your life is a 15 minutes power clean. So it might sound like, well, that doesn’t sound like it’s going to be enough to change my life. That’s a really big statement to make. So here’s why I think it’s going to change your life. Of course. Let me go into a story first. Most people, what they do is when they’re trying to create a new habit, they go into over mode. I call it in my head, basically, or like overwhelm mode or over commit mode. And they like to change their entire life, turn everything upside down. 

So in regards to maybe diet, instead of saying, okay, I’m going to eat less junk day by day, I’m going to eat better fruits and vegetables day by day and kind of just transition that out of my life. People go on this crazy hardcore extreme, know this, know this, and then the list of no’s is like the length of their arm. And then they try and change their life and they wonder like, wow, why is this so hard? So it’s the same concept for cleaning. Sometimes that works for people. Sometimes you need a big shock. Like if there is a medical emergency and you have to stop eating all the crappy foods, then I understand why you would do something extreme. But majority of us, we don’t need to do something this extreme. So same thing when it comes to cleaning. 

Most people think that it has to be some hours and hours spent cleaning, when in reality most of us would go ahead and benefit from spending 15 minutes here and there cleaning. And why am I talking about cleaning? Well, of course the podcast is clear. The Clutter. Sometimes that means physical clutter. So physical clutter will mean that we have a room in our home that just doesn’t make us feel amazing anymore. So it could be aesthetically appeasing. Like maybe the room looks pretty, maybe it’s still inviting, maybe you can still have guests over, but it just doesn’t feel good to you anymore. Or it could be a certain drawer or a cabinet is just frustrating because you can’t find anything anymore. 

So instead of just being frustrated with that and letting it go on and on, why don’t you just take your phone out, put a timer on, put 15 minutes on the clock and see what you accomplish. So the reason why I always like to recommend to people 15 minutes as a starting point, not an hour, not 45 minutes. And you can do the 15 minutes four times a day. So I’m not saying you can only do 115 minutes chunk, but the reason why I start out with 15 minutes is because I am trying to rewire your brain so you get used to small wins. And the other thing too is once you’ve gone through a decluttering and cleaning process, I want you to help keep the clutter to a minimum. 

It should genuinely outside of the fact, like, say if your home is a three bedroom, two bath, and under 20 minutes to take everything and put it away is like what should be to put everything away in your house. So let me rephrase that because that came out really crappy. It shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes to go through your house and put everything away if you have already decluttered and cleaned your home. I’m talking like all the little stuff that happens throughout the day. So putting your purse away, putting the keys away, putting maybe your kids backpacks away, little things like that. 

The other thing in regards to retraining your brain because you want to start loving small wins, it starts to help retrain other people’s brains and lets them understand that, hey, if I’m asking for help, let’s do as a family a 15 minutes power clean. So maybe you’ve got kids and maybe they’re on an appropriate age where they could go ahead and start helping you clean. Depending on how old they are. If they’re really young, they might not have the attention span to do an hour long cleaning session with you. But maybe all of you guys could get together and you could put some fun music on and put three songs or whatever the scenario would be, and you can say, okay, we’re going to take all of our toys and put as many of our toys away we can before this song is over. 

Ready and go. And you make it fun. So now you’re teaching a really good life skill to your children, but you’re also teaching it to yourself. You’re showing yourself that, look at what I can accomplish in 15 minutes. Look at what I can accomplish in 15 minutes. Look what I can accomplish in 15 minutes. And then over time, the power clean turns into other things. So maybe it can turn into power cleaning. The tasks on your to do list that you really don’t want to do. You’re like, okay, I really don’t want to make phone calls today, but you know what? I’m going to take 15 minutes and I’m going to knock out as many phone calls as I can today and then I’m done for the day. 

There is plenty of books out there that talk about that stuff, but they don’t necessarily talk about the whys behind it. And it comes back to you’re building a muscle. You’re building a muscle that most likely is fatigued because you just weren’t aware it existed. So if you don’t know this muscle exists, how are you supposed to strengthen it? How are you supposed to keep it strong? So that’s why I always say start with 15 minutes if you have coworkers. So maybe you’re a boss and you have coworkers, that you’re trying to train them and have new habits. You don’t want to do everything all at once because again, you’re going to break them. 

Instead, start identifying the most important things that you can start working on, and work on them in chunks and work on them over time so that this habit builds and builds and builds so that it can become second nature. So again, going back to that 15 minutes power clean, maybe you only want to spend that 15 minutes power clean and clean your bathrooms. I know bathrooms are gross. Like, to be honest, I hate cleaning our bathrooms. Yes, I clean them. Yes, they’re always clean, but I don’t like doing it. So I’ll say, okay, 15 minutes on the clock. Let me get this all done in 15 minutes, and then I get it done and it’s over with. And you know what? 

It’s that little monkey mind anxiety in the back of your head that’s like, wow, this is done, this is over with. I can move on. I don’t have something nagging me anymore. I have a little win to celebrate. And that’s the other thing I want to talk about when it comes to those power cleans, the reason why we’re retraining your brain to do something in a small manner is because over time, it’s going to be really important to have those small wins. You’re going to be able to use it in other parts of your life, but you need to start building that muscle. Think of it this way. A 15 minutes power clean is the equivalent of starting out, going to the gym and say you’re going to build your arms and say, you haven’t done arms in years, right? Maybe a decade, even. 

A 15 minutes power clean is the equivalent of taking maybe a two or a five pound weight and lifting it and doing some bicep curls. And you may be thinking like, wow, this is really easy. This is way too easy. God, I should be picking up their ten or 15s. This is just ridiculous. That’s not the point. I’m trying to get you to focus on for using the gym analogy, I’m trying to get you to focus on proper form, proper execution, and the fact that you were just physically doing your arms. So maybe for the first three or four times you do arms, you start out with what you call the baby weights. But your form is perfect, your function is perfect. You’re working with the muscles. 

And then over time, you’re going to realize, wow, I really can, without losing my form, go up to maybe the five pound or the ten pound or the 15 pound. And then again, you focus at the five pound or ten pound or 15 pound level. And you focus on proper form, proper structure, and you do it over and over again until it becomes just really easy. And then from there you build up and you build up again. The power clean is the same thing. So some days you may need to do maybe a two hour power clean, but in 2 hours you can accomplish what it takes other people four or 5 hours to do because you’ve built that muscle. Everything in your home has a place. Everyone knows that. 

People let me rephrase everyone in your home knows that they need to put their things away. Everyone knows that when you guys are doing a clean, that you’re all doing it together and that there is an end in sight. You’re not reinventing the wheel from scratch when it comes to your house because you’ve already set up the rules and the structure. And you’ve built the baby muscle into a medium muscle and then eventually into a big muscle. So if you have, like me, in the past, came home and you only had 2 hours before guests came over, you already have your routine down. You know that it takes about 1520 minutes to take anything that’s out and about and put it away. You know that it takes maybe six minutes to sweep your house or vacuum. 

You know that it takes about 15 20 minutes to go ahead and mop. And then you know that it takes this amount of time to dust and this amount of time to prep for the food and that yada, yada. So you’ve done it so many times that within the 2 hours you can accomplish, and you can quote, unquote, make your house super clean, but you could accomplish what it’s going to take someone else three or 4 hours to accomplish because they’re just not used to it. They haven’t built the structure, they haven’t built the routine, and they don’t have the muscle memory. So you could go through. 

What I loved to used to do in the past was I had a laundry basket that I would use and I would go from room to room and I would grab stuff and take it out of one room and put it in the room that it belonged. But I’d made the loop twice. So that was entire goal. You would take everything that didn’t belong in the living room, for example, put it in the laundry basket, and then if there was something that belonged in the laundry basket, you put it back in the living room and then you go to the dining room. Same thing. Then you go to the kitchen, then you go to the bathrooms, and then you go to the bedrooms, and then you go to the outside spaces like your car or your garage. 

So I never really went anywhere more than twice, but it was me building the muscle memory of, oh, my DVDs need to go and live in my living room because that’s where their home is. My food, all of my food needs to live in the kitchen because that is where its home is. My dining room does not need to be a catch all. It needs to be a dining room. So let’s take the bills, and let’s take the purses, and let’s take the stuff that belongs in the garage and put it in those rooms, and let’s make the dining room, because that’s what it belongs to. Like, I should have my plates out. I should have my pretty napkins out. I should have my tablecloth out, because that’s what makes my dining room feel like a dining room. 

You get the point. So I started the 15 minutes power clean working on my dining room, because in our old home, the dining room was literally the catch all. When you walked into our house, it was one of the first places that you could legitimately put something down. So instead of putting it down in the appropriate spot, we would put everything down on the dining room table. And then over time, I got frustrated because the dining room table just felt like it had a mountain of stuff on it. And I like to have all my things put away before I go to bed. 

It makes it really calm so that when I wake up in the morning, my house looks clean, and it’s very calming and very inviting versus looking and reminding me, like, oh, my God, you have all these projects you haven’t even finished. So that’s where the 15 minutes power clean came from. It came from the fact that I wanted to have a dining room table that I really loved and was inviting and just screamed, come and sit down and eat with me, versus we use you as a dumping ground. So what I did is I would put a timer on the stove, and I would put 15 minutes, and I would see what I could put away in 15 minutes. 

And mind you, sometimes I would put as much as I could away, but the 15 minutes would end, and I didn’t put everything away. And instead of freaking out, sometimes I would keep going if I could. Sometimes I would just stop and say, you know what? I did a good job. And that’s the entire point. You build that muscle. And then over time, because things started to end up going to their home, the first go round versus making it to the dining room table, I could clean the dining room table in five minutes versus 15 or 20 minutes. So it may be a deceptively easy topic, but it has really big impact. So I would love to hear from you. What do you do to use a 15 minutes power clean? So do you use it at home? 

Do you use it at your job? Do you use it in your to do list? I’d love to hear your feedback, and if you could go and type it in the comments at MargaretStevens.co. I’ll talk to you later. Have a great day. Bye, guys. 

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Thanks for listening.