Name: Talking About Housework in English | Easy English Podcast for Beginners
Uploaded: 2026-03-25T08:19:31.000Z
Duration: 19 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello everyone and welcome back to Everyday English Academy, where we make English simple and enjoyable.

Hello to all of our wonderful listeners wherever you are in the world right now.

So Mike, anything interesting happen this week?

Sarah, I had the most stressful moment of my life on Wednesday.

My mom called me and said I'm coming to your apartment in 1 hour.

I looked around my apartment and I thought, this is a crime scene.

I threw clothes into the closet, I wiped the kitchen counter with my sleeve, I hid dirty dishes in the oven.

Mike, I do the exact same thing when someone visits.

Yes, but I usually throw everything into my bedroom and close the door.

So you just move the mess from one room to another?

The living room looked perfect, but my bedroom—don't open that door.

See, this is why housework is so important.

If we just did a little bit every day, we wouldn't need to panic clean.

That's when you clean very fast because someone is coming to your home.

Your heart is racing, you're throwing things everywhere, you're wiping surfaces with whatever you can find.

And I think many of our listeners know this feeling.

If you've ever panic cleaned, tell us in the comments.

So I think today we need to talk about this, right?

Housework, chores, all those things we have to do to keep our homes clean.

this is such a practical topic because we all do chores, even if we don't like them.

And there's actually a lot of useful English in this topic, words you can use in real conversations every day.

So today we're going to talk about common chores, share our cleaning habits—the honest version—and help you learn how to talk about housework in natural English.

And later I'm going to confess something about my cleaning habits that is...

But first, let's talk about the basic chores.

Well, the one I do the most is probably the dishes.

I cook almost every day, so there are always dishes to wash.

And here's something interesting for our listeners: when you wash dishes, there are actually a few different steps.

To scrub means to rub something hard to remove the dirt, like when you have dried food stuck on a pan, you really need to scrub it.

Yes, you use a sponge or a brush and you scrub, scrub, scrub until it's clean.

And sometimes if the food is really stuck, you need to let the dish soak first.

To soak means to leave something in water for a long time so the dirt becomes soft and easier to clean.

That's what I tell myself every night, and then I forget about it until the next morning.

Mike, that's not soaking, that's just avoiding the dishes.

And after you scrub, the last step is to rinse.

To rinse means to quickly wash something with clean water to remove the soap.

Right, so the process is soak if needed, scrub the dirt off, and then rinse with clean water.

And honestly, it's not that bad, but I still hate it.

I try to do it once a week, but sometimes it piles up.

That's when something keeps growing because you don't deal with it, more and more clothes on the chair, on the floor.

You think, oh, I'll do it tomorrow, and then suddenly you have a mountain of clothes.

After you wash clothes, you have to fold them.

To fold means to make the clothes neat and flat so you can put them away.

To put off means to delay doing something.

You know you should do it, but you say, later.

I think everyone puts off folding clothes.

A stain is a dirty mark on your clothes that is really hard to remove.

Like when you spill coffee on a white shirt.

I got a coffee stain on my favorite shirt and I can't get it out.

Or when you eat pasta with tomato sauce and you know what's coming.

Okay, what about floor chores, because this is where it gets interesting.

So there are three main ways to clean your floor.

To sweep means to clean the floor with a broom.

You know, that long stick with bristles at the bottom?

You push the dirt into one place and then collect it.

I sweep my kitchen floor almost every day, especially after cooking.

Crumbs are those tiny pieces of food that fall on the floor.

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Talking About Housework in English | Easy English Podcast for Beginners

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