Let's Learn English! Topic: Saturday Chores! 🧹🚽🛒
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Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson about Saturday chores. The things that most of us do on the weekend, usually on a Saturday, maybe some of these chores you do on a Sunday but the things you do once a week. Um for me, there is a little bit of a list of things that I don't do every day but we usually do on a Saturday. So, Saturday chores include things like cleaning the bathroom,

wiping down all of the surfaces in the house. Maybe on a Saturday you do the laundry. I'll get into all the details in this lesson in a moment. So this lesson will be about Saturday chores. Hopefully it helps you learn some new English words and phrases that you can use in your next conversation when you talk about the chores you do on a Saturday.

Get groceries. So, depending on where you live and depending on what your normal habits are, you might get groceries on a Saturday. You might go to the grocery store to buy food. You might buy cookies. You might buy bananas. You might buy butter, flour. You might buy beans. Whatever you usually eat, you might regularly go on a Saturday to get groceries.

some cultures people do go get groceries or buy groceries every day or every other day. I will simply tell you what Jen and I do. We have a

two, sometimes three grocery trips every week. I do have kids living at home still. We have what we call our big grocery trip and that's usually on a Saturday. One of us or both of us will go to the grocery store on a Saturday but then usually on a Tuesday and maybe a Thursday, we have like little grocery trips where we just go to buy a few things. When we buy milk on a Saturday, we

doesn't last until Monday or Tuesday. We usually need to go and buy more milk. So, on Saturday, we do what we call our big grocery trip. We go and buy all of our major food items uh and then throughout the week, we will also buy a little bit to top up what we have. You might tidy up. So, you

We try in our house to be tidy people, to keep the rooms that we use and live in clean but throughout the week, sometimes, stuff gets left in those rooms. Maybe I'm reading a book and I leave it on a coffee table. I

maybe there are uh maybe Jen and I have a snack in front of the TV and we have a couple plates or maybe there's a bag of chips that gets left on a coffee table in the back room because we watched a baseball game. So, on uh Saturday, we'll often tidy up. So, throughout the week, you try to keep things tidy and clean but sometimes you end

little things that you leave here and there and you need to just tidy up a bit. So, when you tidy up, it means to put things back where they're supposed to be. The chip bag goes back in the snack cupboard. The plates go into the sink so we can clean them later when we do the dishes but you might tidy up.

you might sweep the floors. So I'm not sure how you clean your house or apartment but we sweep our kitchen floor every day after we eat our evening meal. We call supper. Uh we call it supper. You might call it dinner. We sweep the kitchen floor. But

But on Saturdays, we usually sweep all the floors. So, we sweep all the floors that can be swept. The front entranceway, the hallway leading to the kitchen but because we eat in the kitchen and sometimes crumbs fall on the floor and those kinds of things, we usually sweep the kitchen floor every day but on Saturday, we will sweep all the floors that need to be swept. So,

then we will vacuum all of the rooms that have carpet. Again, a vacuum or a vacuum cleaner is something that sucks things up. It's called a vacuum because it sucks. That's the best way to describe it. So, we will vacuum this room, the room I'm in right now. We will vacuum the back room because it has carpet. By the way, the

have a room in our house that we call the back room. You could also call it a family room or living room. There's different names for it. We just call it the back room because it's at the back of our house. Um but yes, we will vacuum all of the rooms on a Saturday morning that have carpet. And yes, in the UK, you would probably call this Hoover. You're going to Hoover. In

In Canada, in my part of Canada, we say, I'm going to vacuum or I'm going to use the vacuum cleaner to vacuum the rooms. And then you might mop. So, we don't mop our kitchen floor every day.

you mop you use what's called a mop and you make it wet with water and soap or water and some sort of cleaner and then you actually wipe the floor with the mop which is wet. It does a much better job than a broom. A broom is great for using every day but generally once a week sometimes every two weeks we will mop the floors. So any floor that needs to be cleaned thoroughly. So

we will mop that floor. And then, this is an interesting one. We will wipe surfaces. Now, on a daily basis, we wipe our kitchen table and we wipe the counter in the kitchen. That's the area where we prepare food. Every day, we will wipe those surfaces multiple times to keep them clean. But

But there are other areas in the house where we don't do that. The coffee table in the back room. We don't wipe that every day. We wipe that once a week. The counter in the bathroom. We wipe once or twice a week. Um so we don't clean every surface but when you wipe you will get a cloth and you will put the cloth in water and probably soap and then you will wipe the surfaces so that they are clean. So that again is something that

We do daily in the kitchen but we do weekly in other places in our house. You don't have to wipe off the coffee table in your living room every day in my opinion but you should probably wipe it off once every week.

Now, there's a couple of general things that need to be done. You need to clean the bathroom. So, there are things of course in the bathroom that you need to clean but the general term that I would use is I would say on Saturday, someone needs to clean the bathroom. We have two bathrooms. It's my job to

clean the toilet. I think I've mentioned this before. Um but we try to clean the bathroom thoroughly. So we will clean the toilet, clean the bathtub, mop the floor, clean the sink, and all those kinds of things. Sometimes if we're really busy, we

we will just clean the toilet and clean the sink. The two things we use the most and we'll just leave the tub or shower for a week but yes, it's nice to keep the bathroom nice and clean. It's nice to mop the floor, clean the toilet, etcetera.

then of course I just mentioned this. It's important to clean the toilet. It is the worst job in my opinion. Um I hate cleaning the toilet but it is really nice to have clean things in your house including the toilet which you use when you need to go to the bathroom or go to the washroom. And

So, if your toilet isn't clean, I'm sure that's a job that you will be doing later today. You will probably take some time to clean the toilet. Run errands. So, this is something I don't actually do on a Saturday. Most of the errands I need to do are in the same town where I work.

but there are sometimes little errands I do have to do on a Saturday. An errand is when you have to go somewhere to do something. Um groceries can be considered running an errand but also maybe going to the bank or maybe you drop your clothes off to be cleaned at a dry cleaner. Um maybe you have to return something to a friend. That's an errand I would do on a Saturday. If

I borrowed something from a friend. I might drive to my friend's house to return that item. Um but errands would be all the little things you have to go and do. Either you need to walk or drive your car there or take the bus in order for you to have a nice life. Groceries are probably getting groceries is probably a really good example. So again most of the time I run errands during the week. I

Because all of the places I would need to go are close to the school where I work. So, that is what I do. Mow the lawn. So, if you live in an apartment, you don't have to do this. If you live out in the city somewhere in a house, you probably have to mow the lawn. If you rent your house, you

the landlord might mow the lawn for you or someone might come who the landlord pays to mow the lawn. My mom had that when she lived in a house. It just got mowed. Um but if you own your house, you will have to mow the lawn. You will need to get a lawnmower. We call this a push mower because you have to push it.

If you're um if your lawn is big enough, you might own a riding mower or what we call a lawn tractor or garden tractor where you can sit on it and drive while you mow your lawn but a common thing that people do uh in North America at least is they will mow the lawn on a Saturday morning. Very, very common.

I've never done this. Okay, I shouldn't say never. I'm not someone who will go out and wash the car on a Saturday. I don't have a really nice Ford Mustang like this though. Um Jen and I usually just wait for it to rain and and that the rain can wash the car but some people love their cars.

They will get a pail with soapy water and a sponge and they will go out and they will wash their car with soapy water and then they will rinse it off with a hose um at with uh um a nozzle at the end. So, they will wash the car in the driveway on a Saturday. This is a classic kind of American

of thing. So, when you watch older American TV shows, sometimes the dad will be washing the car on a Saturday morning in the driveway and maybe the kids are helping. I don't know if people wash cars as much now as they used to but this used to be a pretty common thing to do on a Saturday morning.

fill up with gas. This is something I do. So, we now have three vehicles on the road because we have five people in our house who drive. So, we have three vehicles and five people who drive and so that means we

I go to the gas station a lot. Thankfully, gas is 25 cents a liter cheaper now in Canada than it was a week and a half ago because the government removed one of the taxes. So, that's really really nice. Um but yes, I will go fill up with gas. Um I will take each vehicle and drive to town. I live only three kilometers from the gas station and you will often see me on a Saturday going and filling all three vehicles up.

Um so that they are ready to go for the week. We don't use a full tank of gas in every vehicle every week. So, it's not like I'm not always uh putting a full tank of gas in but yes, I do fill up with gas. I think if you're in Britain, you would say petrol but in Canada, we will say gas. I fill up with gas at the gas station.

So, this, you can remove the word soccer and insert almost any word you want. When our kids were little, they were often involved in something. In English, when you say someone is involved in something, it means that they are on a team. Maybe they're in a club. Maybe they play

are in some sort of um dance club or something like that. So, you need to take the kids to dance. You need to take the kids to soccer. You need to take the kids to football. You might say. You need to take the kids to baseball practice. Notice, I can add or leave off the word practice when I say that. If I said to a friend, I can't help you Saturday morning because I have to take the kids to soccer.

Um it means they're either going to soccer practice or they have a soccer game. Um but yes, this is what a lot of parents do on Saturday mornings. Take the kids to dance class. Take the kids to soccer practice. Take the kids to baseball practice. Um take the kids to swimming practice if they're on a swim team, etcetera, etcetera. Uh lots of fun actually. As a parent, I did enjoy this because I had uh this. Uh

So, when I had to bring the kids somewhere uh and if I couldn't watch, sometimes you bring the kids to something and they have like practice and you're as a parent, you just sit in the hall and wait. That's how dance worked. Um I would just have my phone. It was really nice.

Do the laundry. So, this is another pretty common thing for us although when all of us are home, when all of us are in the house, sometimes there's laundry done on other days as well but for Jen and I, it's pretty common to do the laundry and

So, that means we wash our clothes in the washing machine on a Saturday morning. It's a pretty common thing to hear the uh washing machine going. By the way, in my part of the world, when you say washing machine, it means the machine that washes clothes. So, this person has a laundry basket. They're at a laundromat. So, they don't have their own washing machine and it looks like they are, I think they're going to wash those clothes.

Hard to tell, isn't it? But you will do the laundry. That's the phrase we use when we talk about washing our clothes.

then of course you fold the laundry when you're done. Um we hang our laundry up to dry on drying racks or outside on drying racks. We don't have a dryer and then when you are all done when the clothes are dry you then fold the clothes. You might say you sort the clothes as well like I'll put my clothes folded in a pile for my uh dresser and closet and Jen will put hers in her own pile so she will sort the clothes but yes I

you will fold the laundry after the laundry is dry. Clean your room. So, when I was little, this was my job. This was my chore on a Saturday. My mom would tell us, go clean your room. So, this is a phrase we often use to talk about children. As an adult, I wouldn't often say, I need to clean my room.

because when we say room here, it generally means bedroom. So, if you are visiting someone and they say to their kid, go clean your room. They're telling the child, go clean your bedroom. Make your bed. Put your toys away. Maybe there's clean laundry in a laundry basket. Put that into your dresser. You can see this kid has a dresser right here. So, generally, when we use this phrase, we're talking about children and

and it's a chore that children often will do on a Saturday morning and this is a good time to teach the word begrudgingly. When when you do something begrudgingly, it means you don't actually want to do it but you do it anyway. So, my children would often begrudgingly clean their room on a Saturday morning.

you might change your sheets on your bed. So, when you change the sheets on a bed, it means that you change all the blankets and the pillowcases that you use. Now, people all have different schedules for how often they change the sheets but the sheets, let me explain again. The sheets are the really thin blankets. So, we have a thin sheet on our mattress. We

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when you get in bed, you lay on the one sheet and the other one's on top of you uh and our pillowcases are all the same material. They all match and then on top of the sheets, we have blankets and other things to keep us warm. So, it's very common to take the sheets off your bed and to put clean sheets on your bed and to wash the other sheets on a Saturday um but it depends. Some people, maybe it's every two weeks or some people, maybe it's

day. I don't know anyone who changes their sheets every day. Uh maybe it's every three days but uh yes, at some point, you need to change the sheets. We do it once a week and then you need to dust. For some reason, yeah, see, there's dust. There's dust here. Let me see if I can get this in focus. You can see there's a little bit of dust there. Oh, now there's a little bit of dust in the air. So, I need to dust my monitor. I don't have my dust in

brush. I have one but I don't have it here right now but you need to dust things because in life there's even like a little bit of dust on my microphone. I have to clean the dust off every once in a while. So, dust is something that settles. So, dust is in the air and it settles on things through the week and then you need to dust to get rid of it. So, you go around with something like this or a wet cloth in order to remove the dust. Um

house has a lot more dust in the summer because we go in and out a lot more in the summer and so when we come in there's a little bit of dirt on our shoes and we have the windows open and there's just there's just more dust in the summer. In the winter it's cold outside and there's snow. There's no dust. Uh in fact I read somewhere that people who live in Antarctica are

like at a research station, one of the first things they say is there's no mud or um there's not a lot of um dirt in their entranceway because there's no mud in so uh in Antarctica. I was gonna say South Africa, Antarctic. You might need to water the plants. So, if you have house plants, you

plants that are in pots. On a Saturday morning, you will most likely water the plants. You might do this a little more often or a little less often but I know for us, this is the time where we check if the plants need a little bit of water uh and we will water the plants so that they can grow and uh

us happy. Uh houseplants keep me happy. Um I wish my room was brighter. Um the plant that I used to have over there is in the kitchen now. Uh cuz there wasn't enough light in this room but yes you might water the plants. Clean up the toys. If you have small children they are messy and you need to clean up the toys when they are done playing with them or

importantly they need to clean up the toys in my opinion. Um some parents do a lot for their kids. Um

would say Jen and I usually helped our kids clean up the toys and try to teach them to clean up their toys but we did not make our kids clean up their toys every day. We just let them play with their toys. Um we had an area where there was a lot of toys but on Saturday we usually said okay let's clean up all the toys. Especially if someone was coming over like if my mom was going to visit or something we would clean up the toys with the kids.

meal prep. So someone asked if cooking was a chore and I think it is. Um what some people have been doing is they will prepare meals on a Saturday and we call this meal prep. Um not everyone does this. Jen and I in the summer we will do some meal prep on a Saturday and for us it looks like this. We will cook our

lot of meat on a Saturday and then we will freeze it to use for the rest of the week because sometimes when you prepare a meal cooking meat is the most difficult thing to do. Um so we will sometimes we will prep. We will cook all of our chicken and hamburger on a Saturday and then we will freeze it for the each meal that we will have on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Some people actually do more than that. They will make all of their lunches

on a Saturday and then take one out of the freezer every day to go to work. Um but generally, if you meal prep, you're usually freezing whatever you are preparing. Like, I feel like this person is making supper for every night of the week and I'm a sure, I'm sure they will freeze it. Clean the oven. Um we don't actually do this every Saturday. Our oven is

doesn't really get that dirty. It's a modern oven but we will clean the oven regularly if it needs to be clean. Uh some people, some people will um clean the oven more often or less often than that. Wash the windows. I once again will admit, we do not do this every Saturday but when I

put together the list of phrases to teach. I I put all of the things that I do on the list. That's how I make a lesson.

then I usually after I have 15 or 20 items then I search the internet. Well what do other people do on a Saturday? And it said wash the windows. We wash our windows usually twice a year. Usually in the spring and in the fall we wash our windows. Apparently maybe you're you're like this. Some people wash their windows every Saturday. Um maybe when I'm older and have more time on my hands I will do that.

Uh some people do banking on a Saturday. Now this is an interesting one because you used to have to do banking during the week when the bank was open but now because of online banking you can do your banking any day of the week. I often will do some banking on a Saturday and what I mean by it is this. I have to pay the person who teaches one of my kids piano. So I will go to online banking and send her money. Uh

Um I might have to just check. Oh, I have a visa card. Do I owe money on the visa card and I will transfer money from my checking account to visa on a Saturday. Um I might just look at Jen's farm account and decide, okay, do we have enough money uh to buy the thing Jen wants to buy? So, banking, when you say you're going to do some banking, it means you're going to check your balance

You're going to maybe pay some bills and those kinds of things. A lot of it is just automatic now but I would say this is something I do regularly do on a Saturday. Just to make sure log in make sure everything that went through my checking account that week was supposed to check the visa see what Jen and I bought that week etcetera etcetera. Clean out the fridge. So I hate it when food goes bad. I

So, I kind of do this throughout the week a little bit as well. I'm always putting food that's that needs to be eaten close to the front where people can see it in the fridge but sometimes I think this happens to all of us. Something will go bad. So, maybe you buy celery and you eat most of it but then you don't

Saturday and the last couple of pieces are starting to turn brown and not look good. So you would then compost them. Sometimes you might find yogurt and the expiry date is two months ago. So you might have to throw that out. So clean out the fridge. That is something that I think a lot of people do on a Saturday. They might not. You can see this person is throwing out a lot of food.

I in my experience most people when they clean out the fridge they will often cook something with the food that instead of throwing it out like if cheese has mold on it you just cut the mold off if vegetables aren't totally bad you can make soup out of them but you might want to open your fridge have a look inside and decide what is worth keeping and what you need to throw out so you might clean out the fridge on a Saturday.

Hi, Bob the Canadian here. Thank you for listening to this English podcast lesson. If you would like to support me in the work that I do as an online English teacher, please visit patreon.com slash bobthecanadian.