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70 Cleaning Vocabulary Words

Hi. I’m Vanessa with SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com. Do you like cleaning? Let’s talk about it. Do you love cleaning? Is it your dream to do the dishes and take out the trash? Okay, probably not, but these are necessary parts of daily life. Today you’re going to learn how to explain over 30 common household chores. The word chore means a necessary cleaning activity.

Maybe when you were a kid your parents made a chore chart and you had to check off the various chores whenever you finished them, or maybe they just said, “Doing chores is a necessary part of daily life, so do them.” Now that you’re an adult, they definitely are. You’re invited to my mother-in-law’s house to clean. Today I’m going to be showing you around her house and we’re going to be cleaning around it using these important expressions.

All right. Let’s get started with some daily household chores. Good morning. It’s time to make the bed. Maybe I’ll put the pillows here at the top. I got to pull up the sheets, pull up the comforter, put some decorative pillows up. Looks pretty good. Now it’s time to change the sheets. All right.

I’ll probably take the pillowcases off. Got to wash the pillowcases. Take the comforter off. Take the flat sheet, take that off the bed. Take the fitted sheet off the bed, and I got to put some new sheets the bed after that. Next, I got to scrub down the tub and the shower. I’ll probably use a rag, maybe some kind of cleaning solution, and scrub the walls, scrub the tub, get around the bottom of the drain.

The drain is where the water goes down. Maybe I’ll clean the shower head, I’ll clean the faucet. All of these are important parts when you’re cleaning out your tub. Next is everyone’s favorite thing, cleaning the toilet. We could use the verb scrub, just like we used with the tub and the shower.

You might first start by lifting the lid, then taking a scrub brush, scrubbing around a little bit, and then you might pour some kind of cleaning solution into the toilet bowl, letting it sit for a little while, scrubbing it out. You might scrub around the toilet bowl. Maybe you’ll scrub behind the toilet bowl, making sure that everything is clean. We have so much laundry in our hamper.

It’s time to do the laundry. The first step is to take your dirty clothes, take them out of the hamper. The hamper is usually that thing that you use to carry your dirty laundry in your bedroom, or maybe in your bathroom. We got to load the laundry into the washing machine. Now, we can use two different verbs for this. We could just simply say, “Put laundry into the washing machine.” Put. Or, we could say, “Load the washing machine.

I need to load the washing machine.” It means you’re putting stuff in, so I’m loading things in. What do you think happens when it’s all done? Let’s imagine it’s finished washing. Well, you need to unload, unload the washing machine. Great. There’s a couple items that we use. This is washing detergent.

Usually we use the word detergent to talk about the soap that you put into the washing machine. You put the soap into the washing machine. Then, when it’s done you have two different options. One option is you might hang it on a clothesline. A clothesline is a rope, and you might hang it on the rope to dry usually outside, or you might have a clothes rack. This is just one piece of metal or wood that you hang your wet clothes on to dry. Here in the U.S.

it’s most common to have a dryer. It’s pretty interesting why some other countries don’t use dryers. I’m curious in your country do you have a dryer? Do you use a dryer often? In the U.S. it’s often used. It’s used almost every single time. As you can see, these are huge machines. These are not small. I know other countries I’ve lived in you have a small washer. Maybe it’s a washer dryer combo together, but in the U.S. they’re pretty big. Then, we’ll take the clothes, we’ll unload the washer, and we’ll put them into the dryer. Here we have a front-loading dryer.

That means you load the dryer from the front, so if you need to buy a dryer or washer in the U.S. you’ll definitely hear these terms, front-loading dryer. Maybe you have a front-loading washer, but this is a top-loading washer. Those are just some very specific terms about washers and dryers. There’s a couple of other items that some people use when they’re drying things in the dyer.

You might use dryer sheets. These are just little sheets. They’re supposed to help your clothes get softer. Dan and I … I don’t think we’ve ever used these. Some people feel like it’s essential. We don’t use them, but it’s just personal preference. What happens after the laundry is finished drying?

You need to fold the laundry, or fold the clothes and put them maybe in a drawer or put them in the laundry basket. Then we can take that to the bedroom or where you’re going to put them away. We say fold the laundry or fold the clothes, and then put it away. It’s a great phrasal verb for cleaning. Put it away. Whose job it is it in your house to prepare the meals? We might say “Prepare the meals,” or before you prepare a meal you might need to make a meal plan. Some people do this.

It means that you write down Monday through Sunday and you decide what am I going to eat on Monday? I’m going to eat spaghetti. What am I going to eat on Tuesday? Tuesday I’m going to eat fish tacos. Then, you write down each day so that when you go grocery shopping, which is another chore, you can easily decide all of the things that you need to buy and you don’t need to keep going back.

I’m curious, do you make a meal plan? Who prepares the meals at your house? After you’ve finished preparing the meal, maybe after you finished eating your meal, you need to wipe down the counters, or we could say the kitchen counters. This is a kitchen counter, so we need to wipe it down. This phrasal verb, wipe down, is useful for almost any room. You can wipe down the kitchen counter, you can wipe down the bathroom counter. You could wipe down the kitchen table.

You can wipe down a lot of surfaces. It just means you have a wet cloth and you are wiping that surface. What do you have to do after you cook? You got to wash the dishes. You might use a rag, like this, or you might use some kind of steel wool, depending on how tough the dishes are.

Or, you might use a scrub brush or you might use a sponge. My mother-in-law doesn’t have a sponge here, but you might use a sponge. You might use a rag like this. After you wash them with some soap, or some dish soap we could call it, you have a couple options. You might air dry them, so we could put them on the drying rack. Put them on the drying rack means you just set the things here to dry and let the air dry them, or, if you’re extra lucky you might have a dishwasher.

It’s true, my mother-in-law has a dishwasher, so you can load the dishwasher. It’s the same verb that we use for the clothes in the washer in the dishwasher. We don’t call this simply the washer. We always call it the dishwasher, because the washer is for clothes and the dishwasher is for dishes, for things that you use for eating. You might put them on the top shelf, maybe the bottom shelf.

Maybe you put them in the silverware rack at the bottom, and you load up the soap, the detergent in here, and turn it on and it’s done. So easy. If you don’t have a dishwasher you have to wash them by hand and you need to set them in the drying rack. You’ve got two options. What do you use at your house?

Whose job is it in your house to take out of the trash? Maybe this is something that you do every day, maybe it’s something that you do weekly. If I can figure out how to get my mother-in-law’s trash, aha. I did it, open. Maybe it’s something that you need to do weekly. Maybe it’s something that you need to do daily.

You need to take the trash bag out of the trash can. Maybe you put it in a dumpster, maybe you put in a bin outside, but you need to take the trash bag out. If you’re already taking out the trash you should probably take out the recycling, too. This is another great phrasal verb.

We use phrasal verbs a lot for household chores. Take out the trash, take the trash out, or take the recycling out, take out the recycling. What about your refrigerator? Or, we can call it just a fridge. There might be a couple things that you do. The first simple step might be to simply wipe down, using that great phrasal verb, wipe down the fridge.

It means inside you’re just wiping the surfaces, but maybe you’ve got a lot of food in your fridge. My mother-in-law has a lot of food in her fridge, which is always exciting whenever we come to visit. You might find some food at is expired, or maybe it’s old, so you need to go through the fridge and clean out the fridge. Clean out the fridge means you’re taking things that are old or expired and throwing them away, so you need to clean out the fridge. Or, there’s another great clean word we might use.

We might say, “I need to deep clean the freezer and the fridge.” Deep cleans mean you take everything out, you scrub down the surfaces, you make sure that it’s spotless, it’s clean, and then you put things back that are not expired. You put the things back that you want to. Maybe this happens once a year, I deep clean the fridge. For me, that isn’t really happening on a schedule.

I think the last time that we deep cleaned our fridge was when I was pregnant and every smell was so terrible. I told Dan, “Our kitchen smells so terrible. I can’t go in the kitchen,” but really I was just pregnant. It didn’t smell terrible, so I asked him, “Please, can you deep clean our fridge and freezer? There’s something that smells terrible in there.” Really, nothing smelled terrible.

It was just my nose because I was pregnant, but thankfully Dan deep cleaned our fridge, and it was good for our fridge. It didn’t really help me because everything still smelled terrible, but for this moment you can deep clean if you want to really scrub and make sure it’s spotless. If you have any hardwood floors or linoleum floors in your house you need to arm yourself with a broom.

You need to sweep the floor probably daily if you have a small child like me, or maybe a dog. You need to sweep three times a day. But, you will definitely need a broom. Something that’s really common and easy to use if you have hardwood floors is a Swiffer. Swiffer is actually the brand, but in English we say, “I’m going to swiffer the floor.” We use it as a verb, or, I’m going to get the Swiffer, which is this device. Usually there’s a little cloth that is the Swiffer brand cloth.

You put it over top. It’s a disposable thing. It might be dry. It kind of picks up some cat hair or dust, or it might be wet and you can kind of easily mop the floor. If you don’t have one of these you might need a mop, or maybe two mops. My mother-in-law has two mops. We have a part at the bottom that collects the liquid, the moisture. You might dip it into a bucket, or maybe you pour some water on the floor.

That’s usually what Dan does when he mops. He just pours some water on the floor and mops around it. You might mop the floor with your mop, an important activity for hardwood floors. After you’re done, you might dry it up with some kind of sponge, or maybe you have a rag and you just dry it up with that. Here you saw that I used another phrasal verb, to dry up something.

You could say, “I’m going to dry the floor with a rag,” but it’s much more natural to use the phrasal verb. I’m going to dry up liquid on the floor with a rag. I’m going to dry it up. I can’t remember the last time I used one of these, but if you have some little knickknacks around your house you might want to use a duster to dust around the knickknacks. You might say, “I need to dust,” or, “I can’t find my duster.”

This is what this is called. “I need a duster to dust on the mantle, or maybe on some shelves around your things.” Of course, don’t forget to water the plants. This is not a watering can. This is just our tea kettle, but I couldn’t find my mother-in-law’s watering can. You can imagine you need to water the plants with a watering can, unless you’re me and I always forget to water my plants.

If you saw my other video about household words you know that all the plants in my house have suffered a terrible fate. They’re not living, but she has a green thumb, so all of her plants look beautiful. Probably because she has remembered to water them. If you have any windows at some point you’ll need to wash the windows. You might use a device like this, which has some kind of pad on it so that you can get the window wet. Then, it has a little thing here, a little strip at the top that’s usually rubberized.

That’s called a squeegee. A squeegee, so you can kind of do it like that, and then all of the water flows off of the window and it’s nice and clean. This is a perfect device for this. I don’t have one of these things, that’s why I came here to film this video, but you might need to wash the windows, and then squeegee the windows.

You might notice that a lot of these words that we’re using for household chores are nouns and they’re also verbs. This is a squeegee, but I can also say, “I’m squeegeeing the window.” I’m using it as a verb, so there’s a lot of interchangeableness. This is great for your vocabulary. You learn one word, you can use it in two ways. It’s kind of a two-for-one deal. Of course at some point you’ll need to clean up or tidy up. Tidy up means you’re putting things in their proper place.

If you have a kid, you’re probably constantly tidying up, hopefully teaching them to tidy up after themselves. You’ll probably be tidying up at least once a day. It’s a good rule of thumb, so here I’m tidying up, or just generally cleaning up, putting things in their proper place. Another thing that you might do infrequently is to wipe off, wipe off, the baseboards. These are called the baseboards, or the molding.

Molding is this similar type of wood, but maybe it’s around a door frame or it’s on the wall somewhere, maybe around the windows is … There’s some molding. You might just wipe down the molding. You might have some clothes that need to be ironed. This is an iron, and we’re ironing the clothes. I’m using this as a noun and as a verb. This is an iron, I’m ironing the clothes, and I’m ironing it on an ironing board.

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time that I actually used an iron. Maybe 15 years ago. This isn’t really something obviously that is necessary in my life these days, and don’t be fooled, it’s not even plugged in. I’m not even using it now. It’s just for show. If you have a carpet you might not need a broom or a mop, but you will probably need a vacuum. You will need a vacuum because you will need to vacuum the floor. You need to vacuum the carpet, or maybe you have a rug.

A rug is one that comes up. You can move it, you can remove it. You might need to vacuum the rug or vacuum the carpet, or vacuum both. If you have a garage where you put your car at some point you’ll probably need to clean out the garage. Clean out means, like we said with the fridge, take everything out and make sure that what you have in there is only essential.

This is a big task, so it might only happen once every five years, once every 10 years, but at some point you’ll need to clean out the garage. You also might just want to clean up the garage. You want to go inside and make sure that things are in the boxes that they should be in. A lot of people use a garage for storage.

Of course you put your car here, but they might have some boxes of Christmas supplies or things that they don’t use that often. At some point you might just want to clean up the garage. That was a lot of cleaning. I’m ready to relax now. I want to know what is the chore that you hate the most?

For me, that’s laundry, but thankfully my husband Dan is Dan the laundry man. He’s been doing the laundry for the last eight years, so I’m a lucky woman. I want to know which chore do you hate the most?

Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll see you again the next time for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel next channel. Bye.