Master 400 Vocabulary Words in 2 Hours

Vanessa: Are you ready to amaze your friends as you speak  

English comfortably, confidently, and you can talk  about the world around you? Let's talk about it. 

Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.  And today, you are going to master talking about  

the world around you in your home, talking about  simple items in your home that you might not know  

the word for in English or what we commonly use  in daily conversation. We'll be talking about the  

house, the kitchen, the bathroom, and also some  common cleaning or household chore expressions  

that are commonly used. To help you with this big  lesson, I've created a free PDF worksheet with  

all of these expressions. It took a lot of time  to create this for you, so I hope that you enjoy  

it. I hope it's useful to you. You can download  this free PDF worksheet with the link in the  

Description so that you can review these words. Don't forget them and also use them in your  

conversations, grow your confidence and have the  right words to use. So, without further ado, let's  

go on and you'll be able to take a little tour  of my old apartment, where I used to live. And  

then after that, we'll take a look at my kitchen  where I live now, then we'll go to the bathroom  

and we'll talk about some bathroom vocabulary. And  finally, we'll talk about some household chores,  

some common actions for cleaning that we use in  the house. Are you ready to get started? Take a  

deep breath. You're about to expand your mind.  Congratulations. You're awesome. Let's do it. 

Welcome to my kitchen. I'm going to just go  around the room. And in fact, I'm going to go  

around the kitchen, the living room, the office,  the bathroom, and the bedroom. And we're going  

to go step by step through the different things  that I see, I'm going to name them. If they need  

any explanation, I'll try to explain them. And I  hope that it will be helpful to you as you expand  

your vocabulary. All right, let's start with  the fridge. Here's the fridge, or you can say  

"refrigerator," if you want to be extra intense,  but we often just say "fridge." Pretty simple. On  

the top, you have the freezer. My freezer is on  top. Sometimes, freezers are on the bottom, or  

sometimes, it's split down the middle and there's  a freezer on one side and a refrigerator or fridge  

on the other side. Mine's just on the bottom. You can see I have a lot of magnets and pictures  

on my fridge. That's pretty typical. I have some  magnets that some YouTube subscribers sent me,  

some pictures, some magnets that  we've picked up as we've traveled,  

but this is pretty typical that you'll see.  Some kind of personal mementos on the fridge.  

Here we have our dining room table. In the  U.S., typically, people will have a dining room,  

or maybe their kitchen will be a little bit  bigger than mine because we live in an apartment.  

It's from the 1920s. Actually, my apartment and  my house is quite different than what you would  

typically see if you visited someone's house in  the U.S., but a lot of the items are the same. So,  

if there're any differences from typical houses in  the U.S., I'll try to explain that to you as well. 

Here we have the table. Pretty simple. I bet  you learned that in your maybe first class  

in English class. We have chairs. We  usually call these kitchen chairs.  

Or if you have a separate dining room, you can  call them dining room chairs. Because we have  

a one-year-old, you're going to see a lot of  different items around our house that are for  

our one-year-old. Here we have his high chair. His  high chair attaches to the kitchen chair, so it's  

a little bit different than a stand-alone high  chair, that would be just a separate chair, but  

we don't have much room in our kitchen so we have  a portable high chair that attaches to a chair. 

Next, let's move on to this table, which is  where we cut things and prepare our food.  

Here you can see a fruit tray. You might call  it different things, depending on what region  

of the U.S. you're from. At the moment, we only  have two tangerines on the fruit tray. Typically,  

we have more. We also have a coaster. This  is where you put your cups or your mugs,  

usually hot or cold things to keep the table safe.  We also have a coffee grinder for grinding beans,  

and a sippy cup for our baby. Let's move along over here. On this side,  

we have our cheese grater. This is with the "T,"  even though it sounds like a "D," "grader." It's a  

cheese grater. Our knives, we have some measuring  cups in the U.S. We use cups and tablespoons and  

teaspoons to measure things. A lot of people have  these in plastic, but ours are cute little cats.  

And here we have some condiments that we often  use when we're cooking, so we have them close  

by and handy. We just have honey, some balsamic,  some chopsticks, some salt, some olive oil. And,  

of course, you can see my plants, which are  not doing too well. I don't have a green thumb,  

as they say. Our plants often die, so they  don't have a good future looking ahead of them. 

This is our oven where we cook and bake things.  Typically, we call the top the "stove top" or  

the "stove," and there's four burners on this  stove top. And we have some nobs for turning  

on the stove. Inside is the oven. Often, I'll  just say the "oven" to mean the full stove or  

this full device, but you can kind of  use them interchangeably. Some people are  

sticklers about that kind of thing. Sticklers  means picky. Picky about those kind of terms,  

but we often say "oven," "stove" for this general  device. But technically, the top is the stove and  

inside is the oven. I have some pots and  pans here. There's more under the counter. 

Here I have my glass lid because inside I'm making  some butternut squash for lunch a little bit  

later. And my cutting board, I have a couple of  other cutting boards, but this one is my favorite  

so it stays close by and handy. On this side of  the kitchen are the oven mitts and our spice rack.  

Typically, people will say "spice rack," or "spice  cabinet" if they're inside a cabinet. We have,  

technically, it's a shelf, but we call it the  "spice rack" because all of the spices are there.  

I also have some tea and some cookbooks and  some miscellaneous things on that shelf as well. 

This is something that's pretty  different from typical houses in the U.S.  

We have a sink. Most places have a sink with  a faucet. We have the strainer or colander,  

usually a strainer, for straining pasta  or other things that we're washing.  

But, we didn't have a dishwasher until about  one month ago, and it's because this is an old  

apartment. As I mentioned, it's from the 1920s.  There's not air conditioning, not regular heating,  

no dishwasher, no washer or dryer for clothes,  but we decided to buy a, you can see here,  

table top dishwasher. This is not typical in  houses in the U.S., but it's the same idea.  

Typically, they're under the counter and it's  kind of part of the furniture, but you can open  

the dishwasher and see the dish rack. Here we  have some clean dishes and, apparently, toys  

that needed to be cleaned too. We have the dish  rack and you put your dishes in the dish rack. 

And up here, I have a small dish rack just for  more fragile things, like these mugs or these  

glasses, but you can hand dry things and put them  in the rack as well. That's just depending on what  

you have in your house if you have a dishwasher,  or if you need to hand wash things and then put  

them in the drying rack or in the rack. Above the  dishwasher, we have a cabinet where we keep our  

dry goods. You can see we have some  spices, some popcorn, things for baking.  

There's some pasta, some kind of leftover dry  goods that we put in there to keep. A lot of  

people will have what you call a "pantry." A  pantry is kind of like a closet where you keep dry  

goods, but our apartment's pretty small, it's old.  We don't have a pantry, so we just have a cabinet. 

Beside the dishwasher, we have a toaster oven,  and a lot of people will also have a microwave. In  

fact, I'd say 99% of Americans have a microwave.  We just don't have it because we don't have a  

lot of space. This is an old apartment like I  mentioned, so there's a couple key elements,  

there's one more key element that you will not see  in our house that I'll mention a little bit later,  

but we have a toaster oven. A lot of people will  have a regular toaster and it will just have  

slots. We call this "the toaster" because it's the  only one we have. But if you have a toaster with  

slots and a toaster oven, you probably need to be  a little more specific and just say, "Put it in  

the toaster oven" or "I put it in the toaster  oven," just so people know which one it's in. 

We have a paper towel rack. This is the paper  towel rack, the metal piece. And here are some  

paper towels for cleaning up things. We also  have a water kettle, a hot water kettle for  

heating up water. This is kind of like our little  drink station. I have tea things. Dan has some  

coffee things. We have some dish washing soap.  This is where all of those kinds of extra kitchen  

things happen. And finally, it's a little bit  awkward for me to show you with the camera because  

it's a little bit high up so I have to hold the  camera myself, but here we have our dishes. We  

have big plates, little plates. You might come  across some specific words for different sizes of  

plates, but in reality, we just say "big plates,"  "little plates." We have some wine glasses,  

some regular glasses, tall glasses, short glasses,  and bowls. A lot of people have different sizes of  

bowls or different functions for different  bowls, but we keep it simple. "Bowls." 

Up on top as well we have some mugs as you can  see. We have a lot of mugs because I feel like  

choosing the right mug for that moment is  an important part of drinking a hot drink.  

You have to have the right mug. Do I want the mug  with birds on it? Do I want the mug with a rainbow  

on it? It just depends, and it kind of lends the  experience, a richer feeling. I don't know if you  

feel the same way about the mug that you drink  your coffee or your tea out of, but I feel like  

the mug is important to me. All  right, let's go to the next room. 

When you first come into our house, we have a  shoe rack where we line up our shoes, and this is  

typical in some American houses. But, in a lot  of American houses, people keep their shoes on.  

For us, we lived in Korea for a couple of years so  we got used to taking off our shoes, and we have a  

sign on the door that says, "Please take off your  shoes. We will appreciate it." But, a lot of our  

friends have never actually looked at the sign and  we don't tell them, "Hey, take off your shoes."  

We're pretty relaxed when it comes to guests,  but for ourselves, we always take off our shoes.  

If we need to run into the house for something  quickly, then it's not a big deal, but we have  

a shoe rack so that we can easily take off our  shoes and put them away when we come in our house. 

Welcome to our living room. There is one thing  I want to mention about our living room, maybe a  

couple of things, but specifically one thing that  you're not going to see in our living room that's  

pretty typical, and that's just a TV. You could  say "television," but we often just say "TV."  

Why don't we have a TV? Well, it was a conscious  decision to not have a TV. First of all, because  

I'm not a big fan of different TV shows and  it's just not that enjoyable for me. But also,  

I feel like I don't want to just have  it on and always be watching. Anyway,  

we can talk about that another time. I want to let you know that it's pretty typical  

to see a TV in American households in their living  room or you could say "family room." Some people  

say "main room." Some people say "den," kind  of like a "lion's den." This is like a cave,  

but people say "den." I don't know if that's  a Southern word, but some of my friends in the  

south say that. But, we call this just  the "living room" or the "main room."  

And that's where we spend a lot of our time. On  this side of the living room, we have a piano,  

some shelves for displaying different  things. You might hear this called  

"knick-knacks," and that means sometimes  sentimental things sometimes just  

junk. But for us, we try to keep only things that  matter to us. We have some sentimental items on  

our shelves. And on the piano, there's  some picture frames and another coaster. 

You might see as well that we have a lot of baby  gates everywhere in our living room. It blocks  

off the full living room. And that's because we  have a one-year-old. It keeps him safe. It keeps  

us sane. And maybe for you, if you have a baby,  you also have some baby gates. I highly doubt that  

you have a tent in your living room, but if you  have a baby, if you have a kid that likes to play,  

maybe you have a tent. We just have this tent  with all of our baby's toys inside. And he  

goes in there and plays and we play with him in  there. And it's just part of our living space. 

Now, let's go on to our bookshelf. Our bookshelf  is one of the main items, main pieces of furniture  

in our living room. We have the bookshelf, the  couch, and the piano. Those are kind of the  

centerpieces of this room. On our bookshelf, of  course, we have books. They are somewhat organized  

by topic, not so much right now because I  just tried to organize them there myself.  

On the bookshelf, we have some speakers. We  have some other miscellaneous things up here,  

like our pumpkins that are kind of rotting.  Do we need to get rid of them? On the bottom,  

we have some toys for our baby. The first two  shelves are baby things. And then, these shelves  

that he can't reach, those are for us. We can say,  "This is a bookshelf," and "These are shelves." 

This is where we lounge. This is the couch. We  call this a "coffee table," even though we don't  

typically have coffee on it, but it usually just  means that kind of small-ish table that's in the  

middle of your living room or close to the couch.  You might be surprised that sometimes Americans  

put their feet on this. I don't know if you do  this, but I know in some cultures, it's seen as  

extremely gross, but you just prop up your feet  up on the coffee table and kick back and relax.  

Behind the coffee table, you can see we have  a side table. I know this expression is really  

simple and it's kind of obvious, but if you want  to denote which table, you could just say the  

"side table" or the table beside the couch. And  on the side table, there is a lamp that we use to  

light our reading in the evening. On this side of our living room,  

we have, we call this just our Ikea  chair because it came from Ikea. But,  

you might see people who have comfortable chairs  like this in their living room. You might see them  

calling them an "easy chair." Usually, an easy  chair is a little bit bigger than this, a little  

bit more comfortable. Or, you might hear them  call it a "lazy boy." They're not talking about  

how you're not studying and you're not working  hard. "I'm sitting on the lazy boy." No, it just  

means that when you sit on it, you feel lazy, you  feel comfortable. A lazy boy has a foot prop that  

comes up so you can completely relax and lay back.  But, for us, we just call this our Ikea chair. It  

kind of bounces a little bit. It's not a rocking  chair, it doesn't completely go back and forth,  

but it has a little bit of movement. We have here our window sill. The window sill  

is the place where we can put seasonal things or  just some decorations if we want. And the window,  

here we have the inner window. It has some kind  of maybe more old fashioned, the 1920s style,  

panels here. We also have inside our window  another feature, so let's get a little closer  

and take a look. Most windows in the U.S. have a  screen, and that's on the other side of this main  

window, just to prevent mosquitoes and bugs coming  in in the summertime. But because it's winter,  

we also have another pane, a window pane that's  down. It's the storm window. So, here you're only  

seeing the regular window pane, but on the other  side, we have a second layer that's called a storm  

window. You could put it down in case of a storm,  but typically, it's used in the winter time,  

usually for older houses, because older houses  have two layers of window. They don't have  

maybe some modern technology for the windows'  structure. We have a screen, a storm window,  

and just this regular window inside. Before we leave this room, I just want to  

quickly talk about the basics of a room. We  have, of course, the walls and the ceiling.  

But, here we have hardwood floors. We don't have  any carpet in our house and that's mainly because  

it's an older apartment so it has wood, but  also because we have two cats and a baby so  

it's a little bit difficult to clean carpet. But,  most American houses will have carpets, usually in  

the bedrooms, or if they have an upstairs area  in the upstairs, but some will have it as well  

in the main room or in the living room. I think it's kind of becoming a more modern  

thing to have hardwood floors, kind of going  back to that classic style. You might see that,  

you might have that in your house if you live in  the U.S. Carpets and rugs. Rugs are just removable  

small carpets. Rugs and carpets are pretty  typical, but we just have hardwood floors. This  

is not laminate. In the kitchen, you saw laminate.  Laminate is just kind of like a plastic flooring.  

It's typically in kitchens because it's easy to  clean, but here we have real wood hardwood floors. 

Welcome to our office, drum room, spare bedroom, a  little bit of everything, and another dying plant.  

And oh, we have Dan. Dan's working on editing a  vocabulary video for The Fearless Fluency Club.  

If you'd like to learn with us, you can learn  with us every month. In this room, we have the  

office desk. We have the desktop computer. We have  laptops and whatnot as well, but the desktop is  

great for editing videos and having a big screen.  He is sitting in an office chair, and he is using  

some of the office equipment. How's it going? Dan: 

It's going well. Vanessa: 

Are you getting some inspiration from the fish? Dan: 

Obviously. There are huge ball of algae over here. 

Vanessa: Yep. Yep. 

Welcome to our bathroom. We have  only one bathroom in our apartment.  

A lot of American houses have at least two, but  our apartment's a good size for one bathroom.  

Typically, in the U.S., we say "bathroom."  In the UK, you're going to hear people say  

"toilet," but in the U.S., we do not say "toilet,"  unless we're talking about the physical object,  

the "toilet." In the U.S., when you say "toilet,"  you feel a little bit dirty maybe because you're  

imagining the throne, that chair that you sit  on. So, it's a little bit weird in the U.S. if  

you say, "I'm going to go to the toilet." We can  imagine that piece of furniture. It's a little  

bit better to say, "I'm going to the bathroom." We use the term "restroom" to talk about a public  

place. Some people might even say "bathroom" for  a public place. Maybe in a restaurant or maybe  

in a gas station, or if you're driving on a road  trip, there might be a rest stop and you go to the  

restroom inside the rest stop. Those are the most  typical expressions that you're going to hear in  

the U.S. Bathroom and restroom. But, I would not  say, "This is the restroom." If I said "restroom"  

at a friend's house, "I'm going to go to the  restroom," it's quite formal, and it seems a  

little bit weird like I'm trying to be too formal  when really I'm just going to the bathroom and  

it's my friend's house. So, I recommend using  "restroom" only for maybe workplace situations,  

or for public places like restaurants or gas  stations where you're going to the bathroom. 

It's going to be a little bit tricky to film in  here because the bathroom's long and narrow, but  

we're going to make it work. Here we have the  shower, and we know it's a shower because we  

have a shower curtain, but in the U.S., you'll  typically find two shower curtains. On the  

outside, there's one that has usually a nice,  pretty color on it. And then on the inside,  

you'll see a shower curtain liner. And this  is, I'll try to show you here, this is on the  

inside of the bath tub, and that's to prevent  water from spilling out. I know I visited some  

other countries that don't have shower curtains  at all and I found it quite difficult to take  

a shower without getting the whole bathroom wet.  In the U.S., it's convenient, we've got a shower  

curtain, and we have a shower curtain rod up  here you can see to hold the shower curtain. 

Inside the shower, we have a bathtub. You can take  a bath in here, but most people don't take a bath.  

Usually, just kids take a bath. It's  kind of small, it's not so comfortable,  

and it's not really part of American culture  for adults to take a bath. You might see in some  

movies maybe a woman in a bathtub with a glass  of wine and there're some candles. This is not  

typical at all. That hardly ever happens. We just  don't really soak in the bath. Some people find it  

dirty to sit in the bath water, because  maybe we don't clean the bathtubs as often as  

countries who take baths. Here have also a shower  rack. You can see it's hanging on the shower  

head. The shower head is where the water comes  out. We have the shower head, the shower rack,  

and up here, we have our shampoo and conditioner  and soap and whatnot, but we have the shower rack. 

Moving on in the bathroom, we have a  little table here with some toiletries on  

the table. There're some lotions or contacts  or toothpaste. These are things that you use  

to get ready in the morning or to get ready  for bed. They're toiletries. We have a soap  

dispenser and we have the sink and a faucet. And  it's pretty typical that you'll see an outlet as  

well in the bathroom. I know some countries don't  have outlets in the bathroom. It can be kind of  

dangerous to have an outlet in the bathroom, so  of course just don't put your hairdryer in the  

sink. Little word of wisdom. And it wouldn't be  a bathroom without a toilet. We have the toilet,  

we have toilet paper, and we have the handle  for flushing the toilet, as well as usually  

two separate lids on the toilet. I know  some countries don't have two separate lids,  

it's kind of a all in one combo. But  in U.S., we have two separate lids,  

and usually a brush, a toilet brush for cleaning  the toilet, and a plunger in case you need it. 

And don't forget some more dying plants just  to round out your full experience of our house.  

Oh, I don't want to forget as well. We have  these hand towels. This hand towel is for drying  

your hands after you wash your hands. And a  wash cloth. This is for washing your face.  

Oftentimes, a hand towel will have a little  ring and it will be inside that ring,  

but we don't have that so we just  hang it over the shower curtain rod. 

Welcome to my bedroom. The lighting is a little  bit different in here because we have some extreme  

blackouts shades and blackout curtains so that  we can sleep and so that our baby can sleep,  

especially when he takes a nap during the day.  You can see here on the window, we have some  

black shades and also some black curtains that  is essential and it has helped our life so much.  

All right, let me show you around. Of course,  the main feature of a bedroom is the bed. Here's  

our bed. We have a quilt on our bed. This is  something that Dan's great-grandmother made,  

but you'll often see simply sheets in  the summertime or maybe a thin blanket. 

But in the winter, you'll see a comforter. This  is a thick, fuller type of blanket. In Europe, a  

lot of people use a duvet, but in the U.S., I had  actually never heard of a duvet until I went to  

Europe. It's not so common in the U.S. Maybe I'm  just like in the little isolated bubble of people  

who don't have duvet. If you're in the U.S., let  me know if you have a duvet. But typically, you'll  

see a quilt or a comforter or just some sheets. You'll see over here is my baby's crib. A lot  

of people in the U.S. who have a child, they  have a separate room for their child, but our  

apartment is small so we make do with what we  have. He sleeps here in this crib. On this side,  

there is a night stand. I have a  night stand as well over on this side.  

The night stand is the table that goes beside  your bed. And typically, there's a lamp on the  

night stand. Maybe there's a drawer or a shelf,  and you can put some books or something in that  

night stand that you use when you're sleeping. This is our set of drawers. You might hear  

people say "dresser drawers." This feel like it's  a little bit older English, like maybe my parents  

or my grandparents might say "dresser drawers."  But for me, I just say "a set of drawers" or  

"It's in the drawer." This is a difficult word to  pronounce, so I hope that you can say it clearly.  

Drawers. Drawers. Inside our closet, you'll  see some clothes that are hanging up. We hang  

up the clothes in the closet, or you can say  "They're hanging in the closet." And they're  

hanging on what? They're hanging on hangers.  A lot of words that have to do with "hang"  

that have to do with the closet. The clothes are  hanging up in the closet. Some people also fold  

their clothes up here, maybe some winter clothes  or some pants that you don't want to hang up. 

One quick thing that I'd like to mention that we  don't have but often typical American houses will,  

especially standalone houses, apartment  sometimes have this, sometimes don't, but a  

lot of houses have a master bath or you can say  "master bathroom." And that's a bathroom that's  

connected to the biggest bedroom. Typically, if  you have a household of parents and two children,  

the parents' bedroom is the biggest bedroom,  and attached to the parents' bedroom  

is the master bath. In the house that I grew up  in, my parents had this, Dan's parents had this  

as well. But in our apartment, we only have the  one bathroom that I showed you. We don't have a  

master bath. It's just the bathroom of the house.  You might see this. And if you are in someone's  

house or if you're describing a house or maybe  you're buying a house or renting one in the U.S.,  

you might hear that term mentioned. "There's a  master bath," or "There's a master bathroom."  

Both of those terms are the same thing.  It's just a shortened version of "bathroom." 

Let's start by talking about some common kitchen  appliances. One of the most common appliances is  

the fridge, or you can say "refrigerator," but  this is a pretty big words so we often cut it down  

and just say "fridge." Good news for you. In the  U.S., we have giant fridges. I've never been in  

any other country that had fridges as big as in  the U.S. Maybe that's kind of typical. We like to  

make things super big. On the top in my fridge,  we have the fridge part, and on the bottom is  

the freezer. We'll take a look at that in just a  second. It's pretty typical that in the fridge,  

you have different shelves. It's a little  bit bright on my camera. I'm sorry. 

And then at the bottom, we call these  vegetable crispers. "A crisper."  

We don't use that that often, but it's the crisper  bin. And it's somewhere that you'll put your  

fresh vegetables, fresh fruit to keep them crisp  and that is fresh exactly the way you want them.  

On the bottom of my fridge is the freezer.  Sometimes, the freezer will be kind of split  

in half and it will be on one side or the other,  but mine is a top and bottom type of deal.  

On the bottom is the freezer, which is where we  keep some leftover soup, some frozen vegetables,  

frozen fruit, ice, ice cream. Anything that you  want to keep super cold, you put in the freezer. 

The second most common kitchen appliance is a  stove and an oven. In the U.S., we call the top  

of this the "stove" or you might say the "stove  top," and that's where you cook things with pots  

and pans. And inside the oven is where you bake  things. Usually, there's a door on the oven,  

and inside here, there are some racks. That's  what we call these things. It's a little bit  

hot in there so I'm not going to grab them, but  they are racks. You might see a recipe that says,  

"Put this on the bottom rack" or "Put this on  the top rack when you're baking it." And that's  

referring to those kinds of metal shelves inside  your oven. You might hear some Americans calling  

all of this, this whole device, the oven, or  call the whole thing the stove, instead of  

separating the top is the stove, inside is the  oven. Sometimes we just kind of use one of those  

words to talk about the whole device. You might  hear that in movies and TV shows. It's technically  

the stove and the oven, but you might kind of  interchange those sometimes. Some technical words  

about the stove top are we have the knobs. These are knobs to turn on the stove. And  

when you are baking something in here, you  need to set the temperature. In the U.S.,  

we use Fahrenheit. When I turn on the oven and I  click bake, the first temperature is 350 degrees  

and that is in Fahrenheit. If you're cooking in  the U.S., make sure that, you know if your recipe  

is American, if your recipe is not from the U.S.,  if your stove is using Fahrenheit. I've never seen  

a stove in the U.S. That didn't use Fahrenheit. But I know when I've baked things in other  

countries, I had to convert everything and it was  a little complicated. Don't mess up your food.  

Just check on the temperature, check  on what you're using for the recipe.  

That's all really essential. One thing also,  above the stove is the microwave. This is a really  

typical placement for a microwave in an American  kitchen. Maybe in your kitchen too. The reason  

why they put a microwave above the stove is it's  a convenient location, but also, listen to this. 

What do you think that whirring sound is? It's  a fan. So underneath here, there's a fan. I have  

a light on as well. You can see that light. And  that fan is going to help to suck up all of the  

smells and steam and anything that you're  cooking here. It's going to help that not spread  

out throughout the rest of the house. In my old  apartment, we didn't have a microwave and there  

was no fan above our stove. So whenever we cooked  something, our entire house got so hot and it  

smelled so strongly like whatever we were cooking. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad.  

But it's really nice to have a fan so that all  the smells and all of the steam can get sucked  

up and the rest of your house isn't completely  humid from your cooking. The last common item  

in an American kitchen is a dishwasher. I love  the dishwasher so much. In our old apartment,  

we didn't have a dishwasher and we bought  this tabletop dishwasher. It was so amazing. 

If you live in a place where you are always  hand-washing dishes, I respect you a lot, because  

that is tough work, especially when you're cooking  a lot. We cook a lot at home. When you have kids,  

it's not easy to spend time doing the dishes  by hand. You could do the dishes by hand,  

or you could use a dishwasher. Yes, thank you  dishwasher for existing. Inside the dishwasher,  

there are racks. You might recognize that word  from the oven. Inside the oven, there are oven  

racks, and there are racks in here as well. Something you might notice is on some dishes on  

the bottom, this one doesn't say it, it might  just say dishwasher safe. But on some dishes,  

they might say top rack safe only. For example,  we have these cool little bamboo bowls that we  

use for Theo, our two-year-old, and we use them  too. There are some plates to go along with it.  

These are our dirty dishes. But when I  bought these, it said top rack safe only,  

and that's because there's also a bottom rack. And this rack usually gets a little bit hotter  

and it's going to have a little more pressure.  It's just going to be a little bit more intense  

for whatever you're washing. Some things might  say top rack safe only. And if I'm not sure,  

sometimes I just put it on the top rack just  to be careful with it. Next, I'd like to just  

simply go around the kitchen and talk about what's  out on the counter, the things that are visible,  

and then we're going to go into the cupboards  and into the drawers and discuss what's in there. 

It could be appliances. It could be things you  eat with. It could be food. Let's start on the  

counter. This is the counter. Simple word, or you  might call it the countertop. This is where we  

prepare food. It's where we set out food. This  countertop is kind of unusual. Usually you'll see  

laminate counters, which we'll take a look at over  here. You might be able to see a little bit right  

here, kind of like a plastic type surface, or  you might see granite countertops that's stone. 

It's really nice, but this is a wood block.  The family who lived in this house before us,  

the woman was a professional baker, so  she had this wooden block to replace  

the old countertop. And now we get  to use it, which is pretty cool.  

It's kind of unusual to see a big wooden  block like that, but usually you'll have  

a big counter where you can prepare  food. And this one is especially big,  

which is wonderful because in our old apartment,  we had a small counter space for preparing food. 

And now we can prepare everything, which is great.  The next thing that you'll see on this counter  

is a fruit stand. We have some fruit hanging out  here and some fruit bowls, and then Dan's precious  

coffee maker. If you've been watching my channel  for a while, you know that I don't drink coffee,  

but Dan loves it. We'll get to what I have over  here. You have the coffee maker. Your coffee maker  

might look a little more traditional than  this, but this is Dan's special thing. 

And then we have the paper towel stand. Sometimes  this paper towel stand might be underneath the  

counter and it kind of attaches to the bottom of  the counter and you can roll it out underneath a  

shelf, something like that. But ours just is a  standalone paper towel rack. And at the sink,  

we've got a couple of other things. Let's go take  a look. This is our sink where we wash things,  

where we fill up water, all of those great  things happen. And most sinks you'll see  

dish soap. It's quite clear. Liquid dish soap. Easy to  

understand. This is what you're going to use when  you're hand washing dishes. You do not, do not  

want to put dish soap into your dishwasher.  If you put dish soap, and it usually says  

something about, yes, dish soap for hand-washing  dishes that uses biodegradable bio-based formula,  

blah, blah, blah. It says  hand-washing. That's your key. If  

I put this in my dishwasher, our  house would be covered in bubbles.  

So please don't do this, unless you  want to have some fun experiment. 

There is specific soap that you put in  the dishwasher. It might be a little pod  

like this. Usually we buy just like powder  that you put in the dishwasher. It's a little  

box that has dish washing soap. Make sure that you  use dishwasher soap, it's for washing your dishes  

in the dishwasher, in the right place. And you  use this in the right place. Little friendly word  

of warning. Usually at the counter when you're  washing dishes, you'll find some kind of towel.  

We don't use sponges, but you might find a sponge. This is like a reusable cool little  

microfiber towel. We have a bunch of these,  and that's what we use to hand wash dishes.  

You might also find... This is called  steel wool. It's just a little piece of  

metal meshed up together, and you can use it to  kind of scrape some hard spots on pans or pots.  

You'll also see a faucet. This is the faucet  and hot water, cold water. We're so lucky we  

are living in the 21st century. We can just have  hot and cold water whenever we want. It's amazing. 

Our sink also has this cool little thing.  I wonder if this exist in your country. I'm  

going to turn on the way, and then I'm going  to turn this. Wow! Isn't that cool? I'm amazed.  

This is just like a little sprayer, so you can  spray the sink out, or you can spray a dish.  

I once played a terrible prank on my dad  for April Fool's Day. This has like a  

little button on the side, and I put a rubber  band around it so it was always pressed. And  

when you turn on the water,  usually it comes out here. 

But if this button is pressed, it will  come out of the sprayer automatically.  

I had a rubber band around it. And in the morning,  he went to the sink and he turned on the water.  

You can imagine what happened. It didn't  come out here. It came out here and went  

and sprayed him. It was a good prank, and  it was April Fool's Day, so it's all right,  

but I thought that was a pretty clever moment when  I was in high school. Watch out for rubber bands  

around your sprayer. There's also hand soap. This is for your hands. That's quite obvious.  

Usually we use liquid hand soap. You might see  people use a bar of soap, but that's pretty  

unusual. I'm curious in your country if you use  bar soap or liquid soap like that. Let's continue  

on to the side and see some other things that  are on the counter. You might be wondering what  

this giant metal tub is. Well, this is not common  in most American households, but I'm a water snob  

and I love clean, pure water. In the U.S.,  it's totally fine to drink tap water. 

That's water that comes from the  faucet. It's not a problem. I'd say 98%  

of places in the U.S. you can drink the tap  water, and here you can drink the tap water.  

It's completely fine, but I think it tastes very  strongly like chlorine and just kind of chemicals.  

We have this water filter and we use this glass  jar, take the tap water, and pour it in here.  

And it has some huge filters. This is called  like a gravitational long filter device. 

I forget the technical term for it, but  it doesn't filter it automatically. It  

takes maybe two hours to filter, so  we're always pouring water in there. It  

stores the water down here, and it tastes amazing.  If you ever come to my house, drink some water.  

All right. The other part of this counter  is... This is kind of a fancy schmancy device,  

but I got it for Dan one year for Christmas  because he likes to drink sparkling water. 

I felt like it was a little bit wasteful to  buy cans of sparkling water, so I bought this  

soda stream device. It's pretty nifty. There's  a bottle, a specific bottle that goes with this  

machine, and you fill the bottle with water.  You put it in here, and it just carbonates the  

water. It makes it sparkly. You can do it as  much as you want. You can use your own water,  

and it's kind of an endless thing. And then  when you're carbonation device is empty,  

you can just return it and they recycle it. It's a really cool system. Anyway,  

if you drink a lot of sparkling water, check  it out. Well, the next thing is a toaster.  

You might have this in your house or maybe you  don't. In my other video, 150 Household Items,  

we had a toaster oven and that's with the door and  you have to lay everything flat. You can also use  

it like an oven. It's kind of like a mini oven.  But in this house, we decided to get a toaster,  

just a regular toaster that has slots at  the top. Then we have Dan's coffee grinder.  

More coffee devices. And here is my section. This is the tea  

section. I have a lovely teapot, some tea  strainers, a couple things of tea right  

here. I have another drawer that's got lots  of fun tea. If you drink tea in your country,  

I would love to try tea from your country.  That's always the thing that I love to try.  

I love to try lots of stuff when I travel.  But whenever I travel, I love to try the  

kind of traditional food and also the kinds  of tea that people drink around the world. 

I'm always curious what kind of things that other  people drink. My PO box is in the description if  

you want to send to me any. All right, we are back  at the stove top. But on the stove top, there was  

something I didn't mention and that's a tea kettle  for heating water. Pretty clear. It's for my tea  

or for something else if you want to just heat  up some water. It's got a cool little thermometer  

on the top so that you can see how hot it is,  because you don't want to overheat your green tea. 

It must be the perfect temperature. Maybe some  people don't care, but I do. And finally, before  

we go into the cupboards and the drawers, I'd like  to end at this piece of the counter, which has  

some important elements for cooking. We have some  cutting boards. These are wooden cutting boards  

that we have here and this kind of laminate wood  cutting board here. And some oven mitts. This is  

a flat oven mitt, and this is an actual mitt, like  a mitten, that you can use to protect your hands. 

And on this little tray, not everybody has this,  this is just something that we do for convenience,  

we have some common items that we use when  we're cooking Like olive oil or honey,  

or salt and pepper, or my prenatal vitamin for  our baby, some chopsticks, some knives, and some  

kitchen scissors. I'm curious if you use scissors  in the kitchen. We use scissors a lot. But  

I feel like growing up, my parents didn't  use scissors that much in the kitchen,  

so maybe it's kind of a more modern thing. I'm not sure. Do you use scissors in the kitchen?  

Next, let's take a look at some of the dry  goods, some things in cupboards, some different  

appliances and things that are put away.  These shelves are quite high, as you can see,  

but up here we have some dry goods. Dry goods  are any kind of food that doesn't need to be  

refrigerated. So for us, that's pasta or couscous  or quinoa. The types of things that don't need  

to be refrigerated. We have some alcohol. I was actually using that to make some apple  

cider spiked with rum. Not for me unfortunately  because I'm pregnant, but for our friends for  

our pumpkin party we had. And here is a little bit  messy, but it's all right. We have some cookbooks.  

A lot of kitchens have cookbooks. You probably  do too. If you have any favorite cookbooks,  

please recommend them. I always love browsing  through cookbooks. And at the end of every year  

for Christmas, I usually buy a new cookbook. We have just a couple here, but it's always  

nice to start the year with new recipes and  new ideas. So if you have any recommendations,  

let me know. I have some cookbooks. This is  my personal cookbook. Not really my recipes,  

but these are just recipes that I have written  down in a little notebook. We also have some  

other... These are mainly knickknacks just  kind of for display. It's not really for the  

kitchen. But here we have other dry goods and  these dry goods are kind of our snack goods. 

We try to have healthy snacks, especially with a  two year old who always wants snacks. I don't want  

to give him something unhealthy all the time.  We always try to have a lot of nuts available  

in these different jars. These are usually  called Mason jars. It's the brand of jar,  

but we use it as just the name of it. It's a  Mason jar, or you could say it's a glass last jar.  

It has this type of lid that's kind of  two piece. It's got two pieces to it. 

We usually store different peanuts, cashews,  almonds, pistachios, Brazil nuts, popcorn seeds,  

or sunflower seeds, or raisins. Anything that's  kind of a healthy snack, we try to put on the  

shelf. All right, let's go back to the kitchen,  which is just right here, and we're going to take  

a look inside some of the cupboards to look at  some other appliances and things that might be  

hiding. Pretty much every kitchen has something  that you eat on, right? We have some small plates. 

There's not really a fancy term for these. You  might have really small plates that are called  

saucers. We don't have these, but you can use  it to put like a teacup on, and it usually has  

a little rim on the inside, some place where  you can safely set your tea cup. This is not  

a saucer. This is just a small plate for small  portions of food. And then we also have some  

big plates, some larger plates.  We do have bowls, but as you saw,  

they are dirty. All of our bowls are dirty. We usually go through bowls really quickly  

because especially now it's a little bit colder  outside, so we eat a lot of soup in our house.  

And we finish all of our bowls pretty quickly.  We do have bowls. I'm sure you know what bowls  

are though, so no problem. On the shelf  as well we have some mugs. Some more mugs  

in here, I love mugs, and some glasses  or just some cups. You can call this...  

It is glass. It is made of glass, but you can also  call it just a cup. There are some smaller cups. 

There are some beer glasses. This  is the right size for drinking beer,  

according to Dan. I don't know. I'm not a  big fan of beer. But we also have up here  

a strainer. Sorry, I'm a little bit low  here because the shelves are really high.  

This is a strainer. We put this in the sink  to wash our fruit and vegetables. Super handy.  

You probably have something like that in your  kitchen. And we just have some other coffee  

things like a hand grinder. Dan loves grinding  coffee by hand or a pour over for coffee. 

This is kind of the miscellaneous coffee  supplies. There's a French press up there.  

Other little devices. All right, let's  go to this shelf over here. I'm just  

going to sit up on the counter because it's  a little bit awkward to film a high spot  

and I'm down here and I'm showing this.  I'm sitting on the counter. No judging.  

All right, up here we have our wine  glasses. Your wine glasses might have  

a stem. A stem is that part on the bottom. A  stem is the word that you use with a flower. 

There's a flower, and then under the flower is  a stem and it looks like that. But these wine  

glasses do not have a stem. We have some little  fancy glasses too. And on the shelf is generally  

just knickknacks. This is a point of contention in  our relationship. Whenever Dan has a really cool  

beer glass, he wants to keep it because it looks  cool. But I feel like when you display too many  

beer glasses, it kind of looks bad, kind  of looks like you drink too much alcohol. 

And Dan doesn't drink that much  alcohol. But when you display all of it,  

it's not that great, I think. Anyway, so  I'm always secretly recycling them. Don't  

tell him. Actually, he knows. He knows. Sometimes  he'll look up and say, "Hey, where'd that go? Oh,  

Okay. I guess there were too many." These are some  glasses that Dan thinks are super cool. All right,  

now we're going to go around the kitchen drawer  by drawer. I'm going to pull some things out. 

You're going to see inside the drawers of our  kitchen. Not so clean, but maybe yours is not  

so clean either. All right. Inside this drawer,  there are all of our lids for our pots and pans.  

We actually haven't looked at our pots and pans  yet. We'll take a look at those in a moment.  

They're kind of hanging up in an awkward spot  to film, but we have a lid rack so that you can  

hold all of the lids. It's so convenient. I really  like having that. Down here we have a lot of our  

baking things. There's  

cookie sheets or baking sheets. You can use  these for baking cookies, for baking french  

fries, whenever you want to cook, baking  vegetables. This is technically called a  

cooling rack. You can bake cookies and then  set them here. And because there is some space,  

it will cool the cookies and they won't get  too moist. It'll cool evenly. But I also use  

this for baking. It fits on this sheet perfectly. I use it when maybe we're baking something that  

has a lot of grease, like chicken wings. Something  that has a lot of grease, and I don't want my  

food cooking in the grease. I'll put that up here,  and then the grease will fall down underneath onto  

the pan. It's a little bit healthier and also  tastes good for something to cook it like that.  

Some other baking items that are  under here are different pans for  

baking different items. This is a bread pan,  but we also have different casserole dishes. 

This is a casserole dish. It's pretty common  in the U.S. to eat casseroles. I don't know if  

I've ever actually made one myself. Maybe  that's more of my parents' generation,  

making a casserole. I don't know, maybe in  colder places in the U.S. they make casseroles.  

It's basically just throwing everything  in. Maybe some potatoes, maybe some pasta,  

some cheese, some broccoli, maybe some  meat, and you just kind of bake it together.  

It's kind of like a strange lasagna,  if you can imagine this kind of idea. 

It's kind of an easy thing to make. This is a  casserole dish, but I use it for other things,  

maybe for brownies or for baking vegetables. I use  it for a lot of different things. This one is a  

glass baking dish. Some people might actually call  it by the brand name. The brand name is Pyrex.  

That's a really common brand name for baking  items. And sometimes we use that to describe it.  

So instead of saying the glass dish, we might say  the Pyrex dish. Not everyone's going to use that. 

They might just say the glass dish,  but you might occasionally hear that,  

and that's just the brand name being used for  the item. Even if it's not that brand name,  

but it's that same idea. It's a glass dish. You  might hear that used. Something else that I dug  

out from the back of this shelf are two silicon  muffin tins. It's more likely to have metal  

muffin tins, but I like to make muffins.  It's really annoying to get them out of the  

metal muffin tin. This you can use less oil on it. It just comes out so easily. It's really great and  

it lasts for a long time. It's very easy to  clean. I have these silicon muffin tins. You  

might use that or just something to make muffins  with. And also in this drawer is a strainer.  

This is not a stranger. This is a steamer, a  steamer. We already saw the strainer, which  

was up in the cupboard, and we use that to wash  the vegetables. This steamer is going to fold up.  

It's supposed to fold up. You  can put that in a pan or a pot of  

steaming water and you can steam broccoli. You can steam green beans. You can steam  

vegetables in this really easily. Steam shrimp. I  use that for all of these things. You can use this  

steamer basket. I think these steamer baskets,  maybe they're pretty common around the world,  

but this folding metal type, I've had a  couple of them and they always fall apart.  

The little leaves on them always fall off, even if  it's like a pretty good brand name steamer basket.  

I'm curious in your country if you use this type  of thing and if you have better quality ones. 

It's cool that it can fold up, but sometimes  the little leaves get stuck. Okay, that worked  

pretty well. But maybe it's just because I have a  two year old. He likes to pull them off and then  

you find them around the house. Not very handy  when you have a two year old. Next, let's move  

on from this cabinet and go to these drawers. A  cabinet is going to open like this, like a door,  

and a drawer, which is a tricky word to say, is  going to open like this. Let's start at the top. 

At the top, we have silverware. Some people call  this flatware. It's kind of a restaurant word.  

When we're talking about forks, spoons,  butter knives, chopsticks, steak knives,  

children stuff, when we're talking about these  items that you put on the table when you eat,  

the most common word is silverware. It doesn't  need to be actually made of silver. Usually  

they're not, because that takes a lot of work  to keep up, but we usually call that silverware. 

At a restaurant, you might hear the restaurant  staff say flatware, or maybe if you work in  

a really fancy restaurant. I don't think I've  ever heard a family call it flatware at home.  

I just remember in my home ec class, home  ec is home economics where you learn about  

baking and sewing and all those  kinds of things in high school,  

in my home ec class, I remember our home ec  teacher said, "In this class, you will not  

call it silverware. You will call it flatware." And everyone kind of laughed a little bit like,  

who says that? That's so fancy. But in  her class we had to call it flatware,  

but I've never used that term since. So if you're  from the U.S. or you have American friends,  

I'm curious if you've ever heard flatware in that  kind of casual situation. In the next drawer,  

we have some other helpful items for baking  and cooking. This is kind of our random drawer.  

Everyone has stuff like that. Here we have  teaspoons and tablespoons. So as I mentioned,  

ovens use, maybe I didn't mention this, but ovens  use Fahrenheit in the US and instead of using  

milliliters and liters and these kinds of easy  measurements, we decided to do things the hard way  

in the US and use tablespoons  which is this measurement, or  

this one here, this big circle,  or teaspoons which are these.  

And there's various increments, half a teaspoon,  a fourth of a teaspoon, and eighth of a teaspoon.  

Yeah. If you're using in spices, or salt, or  you're baking, that's really essential if you're  

cooking something, like you're making a soup, I  just throw stuff in. I don't usually measure it,  

but that's a personal preference. We also  have some tongs great for picking out  

hot things when you're cooking them, like corn,  when you're boiling corn, great to have this. 

We also have a thermometer, this is a meat  thermometer. I guess you could use it for  

water too or for soup, other things but we usually  use this for meat. On the back of the thermometer,  

it says C/F and that's Celsius or Fahrenheit.  So if you buy a meat thermometer in the US  

make sure that you have the right button clicked.  And if you're thinking about the temperature,  

what temperature should pork be in Celsius? Make  sure that you're showing the Celsius number.  

I've thought about that a lot, because sometimes  the wrong one is clicked. And in my head I'm  

thinking the Fahrenheit number, but it's showing  the Celsius number and it's just mixed up. So make  

sure that you don't get that wrong, especially  with meat. And we also have a meat pounder  

for pounding chicken, or steak, or whatever you  want to get to be more tender. You might see this  

also called a tenderizer. It has some knobs on  the top, a tenderizer, but it's for pounding meat. 

All right, let's go to the next door. And  this door, we have other random things.  

This is a box of drink accessories. So if you  want to make yourself a shot of some alcohol,  

if you want to open some wine, we  have a wine opener. There's also a  

corkscrew, that's this little device is a  corkscrew. So you need to put that into the cork,  

turn it, and then you can use the wine opener  for this. Or you could, this is a really old one,  

but you could use a bottle opener to open  

beer, or cider, or whatever you're drinking  out of a bottle. So this is a bottle opener,  

and this is a wine opener. We also have some  wine stoppers because we don't drink that much  

wine. And if we have a bottle of wine, we don't  finish it in one day. So it's nice to kind of  

pump the air out, our two year old likes to  play with this a lot, likes to pump the air out,  

and you put the stopper in and it keeps your  wine fresh for longer, pretty handy little thing. 

We also have a knife sharpener. This is for our  nice sharp knives, not the steak knives. The steak  

knives, they are serrated. Serrated means they  have a little, like U marks, little cuts in them.  

Serrated knives are great for cutting  tomatoes or steak. Things like this, but  

you cannot sharpen, at least as far as I know,  you can't sharpen serrated knives. So this is for,  

like our chopping knife or some other  knives that have a smooth blade.  

And I bought this fun little device recently,  do you know what this is? Can you guess?  

You put a hard boiled egg inside  this, and when you push it down,  

these little strings will cut the egg.  And I bought this because I saw a toddler  

using this to cut hard-boiled eggs. And I  thought, oh, my two year old is going to  

love this. So I made a bunch of hard boiled  eggs and I peeled them and he helped me cut  

them with this. It was a hit. It worked well. All right, in this final drawer, we have not,  

not many options that you can actually  see, but these are Tupperware. We have  

some glass Tupperware, again, these, you could  say Pyrex dishes. Technically you could bake,  

not with the lid. But you could bake something  in this because it's glass and it's meant for  

baking. Usually we have a full drawer of  these Tupperware dishes, but we don't have a  

full drawer of them right now because  we've recently been making a lot of soup.  

And as you saw in our freezer, we have a lot of  leftover soup containers. So when we make soup,  

maybe chili, we make a lot and then put some in  the freezer and we use those Tupperware containers  

to store it. And then the next week, when we  want soup, we don't have to make it. You just  

pull it out of the freezer and bam, you've got  dinner. All right, let's move on to the next door. 

These two cabinets are under our sink. So you can  see kind of the sink basins are here. And usually  

under the sink is where you keep extra soap,  maybe some cleaning supplies. We have trash bags,  

extra trash bags, extra little cleaning rags.  It's kind of like a cleaning section. I'm curious,  

what are some things that you put underneath  your kitchen sink? This is usually where in the  

US you'll find cleaning supplies. We also have a  couple appliances. This is the blender, and we can  

blend soups, we can blend smoothies, you can blend  apple sauce, whatever you're making in there. 

And also a rice cooker. Rice cookers are  not common kitchen appliances in the US  

but I don't know why not because they're so handy.  It's so convenient. We use ours for cooking rice.  

We use it for steaming some like  potatoes, things that take a long time,  

and it also doubles as a slow cooker. So this is a  special rice cooker that has a slow cooker button.  

And you can just put whatever you want to slow  cook. I'm not sure if this is a type of cuisine,  

that's common in other places, but in the US it's  really common to cook things in a slow cooker. 

So a lot of Americans will not have a rice  cooker, but they will have a slow cooker. And  

it looks pretty similar. Usually it has a glass  lid that you can take off, but it's this kind of  

heavy duty pot and it's electric. And  you can put usually soup ingredients,  

you can put vegetables and broth and you just push  the button. And after eight hours, usually you  

go to work and you come home and it's all finished  and you didn't have to do anything. It's so great.  

So you can use it as a slow cooker. If  you've never heard of a slow cooker,  

I recommend looking up some recipes with it. It's  really interesting because slow cookers have been  

around for a long time, but the idea of having a  good meal cooked without much time in the kitchen  

has always been popular. So a lot  of people use slow cookers, overall  

generations. It's a pretty cool device to have. In the next cabinet, it's pretty nifty. See how  

it works. This opens and whoa, this spins. When  we first saw this house, I thought, oh, this is  

so cool, I can't wait to use this. And the bottom  spins too. And this is just where we keep our dry  

goods. So you saw some of the dry goods up on the  shelf. Those are just kind of some pretty ones for  

display. We do eat those, but it just kind of  looks cool. And in here is where we keep beans,  

and vinegar, and tomato paste, and rice, and  all of those things that we use for cooking,  

but we don't need to keep them on the counter. A  lot of people in the US will have a pantry. And  

this is like a closet in your kitchen where  you can keep all of these types of things. 

In this house, we don't have a pantry. So we  have this Lazy Susan, is the term. It's a rolling  

cabinet. It could just be a circle that you put  a pot on. And that circle spins, that's called a  

Lazy Susan. You might see this at restaurants,  you might have it on your kitchen table,  

but this is also called a Lazy Susan. I  don't know why, poor Susan, I'm sorry,  

if your name is Susan, you're not lazy. It's just  the term for this type of cool spinning shelf. And  

it's really helpful for being able to access a  lot of stuff and make the most of your space. 

We're almost finished, horah. These  are the last drawers in my kitchen.  

In these drawers, we have our most used kitchen  utensils. So I'd like to go through these because  

they might be similar to what you have in your  house. First, we have a simple spoon. This is for  

stirring things that we're  cooking. This is a garlic press,  

put your garlic in here. And when you press it  down, the garlic comes out those holes, and it's  

nice and fine and juicy, it's really great. I hate  cleaning this, but it's a really handy device.  

Then we have a whisk, this is a plastic  whisk. If you can see it, say plastic whisk,  

but a lot of whisks are metal. They might have  a metal part here to it. This is a soup ladle,  

you can ladle, we can use it as a verb too. I'm  ladling the soup with the soup ladle. This is  

a soup ladle. You might call this too a soup  spoon, but most likely here it called a ladle. 

Next, this is just a little scraper for our rice  cooker. This came with it. And I like to scoop up  

the rice with it. This isn't so common in other  American households, but if you have a rice  

cooker, you probably have something like this.  We also have a can opener. This is a manual can  

opener. So you have to do this by hand. When I was  growing up, my parents had an electric can opener,  

and it was a little device that stuck on one  of our cupboards and they attached a can to it  

with a magnet and just pushed a button. And  it automatically opened the can pretty cool,  

actually, our cat, the cat that we don't have  any more. He's 18 years old. He passed away a  

couple years ago, but the cat that I grew up with,  he loved that electric can opener because my dad  

would often open cans of tuna with the can opener. So every time my cat heard the can opener,  

he would run downstairs and wait,  "Please, please, I want tuna, please."  

And usually my dad would give him some of  the juice or a little piece or something,  

but that sounds of the electric can opener  was linked in the cat's mind with yummy food.  

All right, next, we have some more tongs. These  are shorter tongs and a vegetable peeler. I like  

this kind of vegetable peeler that has this  U shape. And the peeler is across the top,  

but in a lot of houses in the US you're going to  see a flat vegetable peeler. And then the blade  

kind of comes out like a knife. I like this  kind better. I think it's easier to use, but  

maybe you have something different in your house. We have a spatula. Actually, we have two spatulas.  

This is a silicone spatula, and this is a metal  spatula. We have some more kitchen scissors,  

and this is another spatula, but you could use it  as for stirring or scraping. So you might call it  

a scraper, you might call it a spatula. I think  most people would probably call it a spatula.  

Even though technically this, this device  that's flat, it's a flatter, you can  

flip eggs, you can flip things with this spatula.  And this one is more for mixing, if you're mixing  

some bread dough, or if you're mixing  something you might be more likely to use this,  

but we'd still call this a spatula, if I think  of another name for this, I'll write it here,  

but I'm pretty sure we just call this as spatula. We also have a lighter, horah, great  

for lighting candles and whatnot. All right, let's  go to the next door. Here are all of our spices.  

So if you watched our other video with, from  our old apartment, 150 household items that I've  

mentioned a couple of times. In our old apartment,  we used to have all of our spices on a shelf.  

Personally, I prefer that because you can see the  name of all the spices and you don't have to...  

All of these, all I see is the black lid.  So I have to often pick up each one and see,  

what is this? What is this? What is  this? So I feel like in the future,  

we'll probably have a more useful way to store  our spices. Maybe we'll put them on a shelf,  

but for now they are in the store with some tea  and some other tea filters, other types of drink  

things. But this is where we store our spices. And then in the bottom drawer, this is kind of  

a weird angle to show you. But in the bottom  drawer are, all of our other things that we  

need in the kitchen. So there are small plastic  bags. Sometimes we use the brand name for this,  

this type of bag, and we'll call this a Ziploc  bag. This is not a brand name, Ziploc bag,  

but some people still call it that even though  it's, you might not actually use that brand.  

Ziploc is the brand, but you might just use a  generic or a store brand name type thing. So we  

have some plastic bags, I have some reusable cloth  bags, some reusable sealable plastic bags. I like  

to use these for cheese because it's just nice to  have something that you can use again and again.  

There's also some extra garbage bags in here. I'm curious, what do you think this is called  

in english? There are plenty of names, but  in the US we just call this a plastic wrap.  

Some people might say cling wrap. I'm sure there  are other names for this, but putting the plastic  

wrap on something, I've tried a lot of  different natural methods for using,  

instead of plastic wrap, but really plastic wrap  is so handy. It's so handy to use. We also have  

in here, aluminum foil. Aluminum foil,  and we use that whole name, aluminum foil.  

You might put this on a dish when you're baking  it, you might put it over the dish to keep it  

warm. It's a lot of different uses for that. And I also have some  

wax paper or parchment paper. So technically  this is not wax paper. You'll see in the store,  

a different item for wax paper, but some people  call it wax paper. It's technically parchment  

paper, but this is what you can put down on your  cookie sheet or on your baking sheet so that you  

don't have to clean it up that much. So usually  I like to put this paper on my baking sheet to  

just lessen the mess afterwards. And last but  not least, are the pots and pans, essential  

for cooking. Mine are hung up really high right  now, I'm standing on a chair, these are up here.  

But it's really nice to be able to have them hung  up in our kitchen. We don't have a specific place  

where we want to put these. As you  can see, all of our drawers are full  

of other things. So it's really handy  to have these little hooks up here.  

If somebody tall comes to our house, they  just have to watch out and not hit their head. 

So we hang up our pots, little pots.  These are stainless steel pots,  

stainless steel pans, and we also have a non-stick  pan. That's the coating that's on here is going  

to help it to not stick. On this side, this  type of, I'll take it off so you can see,  

this is called a wok. You're maybe familiar  with this type of item. This is an old wok,  

it's supposed to be non-stick, but it is quite  old. So it's not exactly non-stick anymore.  

But all of these are pots and pans. You might also  hear something like this, get called a sauce pan  

because it's small. Some people call that a  sauce pan. I just call it a pot, a small pot  

or a pan. So there's simple words, there's more  complex words, I'm sure there's regional words  

for these types of things, but I hope that it will  help give you kind of a base for your vocabulary. 

Before we get started. I want to explain some  words that I use, to talk about this room. Look at  

these three words, bathroom, restroom, washroom.  I'm from the US, and we use only two of these.  

Can you guess which two we use? You just heard me  say one of them. We use bathroom and restroom, but  

there is a difference between these, a bathroom  is generally in someone's house in some kind of  

comfortable location. And a restroom is usually  used for a public situation, maybe a restaurant or  

in your office. If you need to go to the bathroom,  you might use this because it feels a little bit  

more formal. It's a little more indirect, it's  a restroom. You don't know what's happening  

in the restroom, I'm just resting. So we use  restroom generally to be a little more polite or  

to talk about bathrooms in a more formal setting. As for the word washroom, in the US I don't think  

I've ever heard anyone use this. I could be wrong.  It's generally more associated with Canadians. So  

in Canada, they often say washroom, but anytime  that I say, this is what they say in Canada, this  

is what they say in the UK. Please just understand  that I am not an expert in other types of English,  

I only know what I've experienced here in  the US. What about these words? Toilet, loo,  

John and water closet. Well, we do use  the word toilet, but we don't use it to  

talk about this room. We never say I'm going to  the toilet, it seems gross or just too direct.  

And loo, we never say loo in the US. Also John,  we don't really say the word John, either. 

But this expression water closet, if you saw this  sign, what would you think that means? Let's say  

you're at a restaurant and you're looking for the  bathroom and you see this sign on a door. Would  

you know that, that's the bathroom? You might be  able to guess, but water closet or WC is sometimes  

on a bathroom door and it just means that's the  bathroom. Now, sometimes we use a kind of silly  

words to talk about the bathroom. For example,  you might hear lavatory, powder room, girls room.  

And these are always, usually said with that  same tone of voice that I just used. Lavatory,  

this is a very high class way to say bathroom.  So if you are wanting to be a little bit silly,  

you might say, excuse me, where's your lavatory?  If you're in your friend's house, you might say,  

that'd be kind of funny. Or you might say, I  need to go to the powder room to freshen up. 

And I think this is something that we don't  ever say seriously. It's usually just kind of as  

a little joke, oh, I need to go make sure that  there's no food in my teeth, I'm going to go to  

the powder room, or you might hear the girls  room. And this is not just for little girls,  

this is talking about the bathroom. If you  go to your friend's house and you need to go  

to the bathroom, you might ask where's the  girls room. But only if you're a girl, oh,  

we don't really say where's the boys room. I think  that maybe this is just because sometimes women  

are more indirect about these types of things.  I'm not sure, but occasionally you will hear these  

silly expressions used with the bathroom. Now we have two more. What about these two words?  

Port-a-Potty and port-a-John. Do you  have a port-a-Potty in your house?  

I would be very shocked. These are a port-a-Potty  or a port-a-John, usually that's what  

you would see it at a park, or maybe if you go  to an outdoor concert or somewhere that doesn't  

have an actual bathroom structure or some  kind of restroom outside. So you might see  

these types of facilities. All right, now that we  have cleared all that up. When you come to the US  

you can use bathroom or restroom, and let's get  on to talking about the items in my bathroom.  

Let's start off by talking about this. Here, we  have the sink. Sometimes it's called a sink basin,  

but generally that's kind of a more formal word.  If you're purchasing a sink, you might see it  

called a sink basin. Also, we have the faucet and  the hot water handle, or the cold water handle. I  

only have one, but you might see some bathrooms  that have two, that's also pretty common. 

At the bottom, this thing inside here, down  there is the drain. If you need to fill the sink,  

you might say, plug the drain. I need  to push that down, push the drain down  

so that I can plug the drain and fill up the  sink with water. And usually under the sink,  

you're going to find some plumbing. Plumbing are  the pipes that bring the water to your faucet,  

and then away from your drain. Notice that the  B here is silent, plumb-ing, plumbing. We're  

going to be talking about these items a little bit  later in this lesson. So let's move on to the next  

place in the bathroom. All right, here we are by  the toilet. One of the features of the bathroom,  

in the US, we always call this the toilet. We  don't call the room, the toilet, as I mentioned. 

So on the toilet, we have two lids, this  is in the US. We have the lid and we have  

the seat, which can also go up. And this is  always a point of contention in marriages, right?  

Put the seat down. And this is what a lot of wives  say, put the seat down, don't leave the seat up.  

I'm curious if you have ever had this discussion  in your house, that we have the lid. And we  

have here, this is the toilet bowl, you can  imagine a bowl. And back here is the flusher  

or the toilet handle, because we can push this  to flush the toilet. Don't forget to flush the  

toilet, when you're finished. To flush the toilet,  our bathroom, we have installed an extra feature  

on our toilet, it is this thing, it is a bidet.  This is becoming a little more common in the US,  

but it is certainly not a well-known feature of  a toilet in the US but because my husband and  

I have lived abroad, we know about bidets.  So we have a bidet installed in our toilet. 

Also around the toilet, you will see there is  a plunger here for helping the toilet to flow  

freely. And we have a toilet brush, for cleaning  the toilet. Some extra toilet paper, but here, if  

you can see on this side, we have our toilet paper  holder and our toilet paper. I have a question for  

you. Do you have your toilet paper coming over  the top or do you have it coming from behind?  

For me, I prefer it like this coming from the top,  but I know everyone has different opinions about  

this. Sometimes on the back of the toilet, you  will see a box of tissues. In the US, we almost  

always call these Kleenex. This is the brand, but  it's also just what we generally call this type  

of item. Or for us, we have a baby, so we have  some baby wipes also on the back of the toilet. 

We have one more thing, this. Do you  know what this is? Can you guess?  

It is called a Squatty potty. I  actually got this online. I got this  

from somebody in my city, online. Somebody online  said, I'm selling a Squatty potty thing that you  

put under your toilet. Does anyone want to  buy it? And I said, me, I want to buy it.  

So I met her at a gas station, kind of felt like  a drug deal because she hopped out of her car.  

She said, are you here for the Squatty potty?  And I said, yes, I am. And I gave her my 10 bucks  

and she gave me the Squatty potty. And we left.  But this is a kind of a device that helps your  

body supposedly to be in a better position so that  your bowels can move freely. So I'm not sure if it  

actually works or not, but it's something that I  thought was pretty cool. And it was worth the try. 

Next, let's talk about the shower or the tub. Now  in my bathroom here, we have two bathrooms in my  

house. In this bathroom, we do not have a tub.  I didn't feel like cleaning our other bathroom.  

Otherwise, I would show you a tub,  but this is what it looks like.  

Most bathrooms have a tub and then there is also  a shower. This bathroom does not have a shower  

curtain. A shower curtain is a kind of cloth that  comes over. Instead, we have these glass shower  

doors. You can barely see them in the video, but  there are glass doors that block the water from  

spraying everywhere in our bathroom. In our shower, we have a shower head,  

and sometimes the shower head is detachable, or  sometimes it's just fixed on the wall. There's  

also a shower handle where you can turn on the  hot and cold water. I'm not going to turn that  

on right now. So I don't get too wet. In  our shower, we have a squeegee because we  

have these glass doors. When they get wet, it's  good to take care of them and not let the water  

accumulate on the sides. So we will squeegee them  after taking a shower. And this is a verb and a  

noun. This is a squeegee, and I need to squeegee  the doors. Sometimes I squeegee the walls too.  

This is my three-year-old son's favorite activity  to squeegee everything. It is pretty fun,  

but we do this to take care of our shower. On  this end of our shower, we have our shower goods.  

There is shampoo, conditioner. There's also liquid  soap and bar soap. You might have both in your  

shower or you might have some kind of shower  scrub. This is a liquid that has some kind of  

little abrasive pieces in it to scrub your skin.  A lot of people will use maybe a loofa or a sponge  

or a wash cloth to wash their body. We have this  little, it's the thing that we got in Korea. Well,  

it's not the same one from Korea, but it's this  little rag. You can put your hand in it and  

it's a little bit scratchy and you can kind  of just wash yourself with this. I like it. 

On the wall of our shower, we have tiles.  These are the shower tiles. A lot of people  

like this look, but they don't like taking care  of it because in between here is called grout and  

you have to occasionally clean the grout in your  shower. Maybe you need to get an old toothbrush  

and scrape it. You need to do something. We have  this spray that somebody gave us, cleans without  

having to rinse, spray it on your shower once  a day. I don't do that. I spray it maybe once a  

week, if I remember, but you can spray it on the  tiles and maybe it makes it so you don't have to  

scrub them. I don't know. We'll see what happens,  but there's different products like that too. 

You might notice here in the bottom of our  shower is a little turtle. It's a secret that all  

Americans keep a little toy turtle in the bottom  of their shower. Don't tell our secret. Just  

kidding. It's my son's toy. One more thing is you  might hear the term shower stall. A shower stall  

is generally in a more public place like in a gym  or in a dormitory where there's multiple people  

showering at the same time. A shower stall  are going to be those individual shower spots.  

There might be a shower curtain. There  might be nothing. It might just be open,  

but this is kind of a more public thing. So  we don't really use the term shower stall to  

talk about the bath shower area in your house.  That's more in a public place. In our bathroom,  

we have several types of towels. One type of towel  is simply a bath towel and we hang that bath towel  

on a hook, or you might have a towel rack or  a towel bar where you hang your towel. We only  

have these little hooks to hang our towels on. You also might use a washcloth. I mentioned  

this previously that you might use this in the  shower. For me, I use this to wash off my face  

in the morning or in the evening and I hang it on  this little rack to dry. Another type of towel you  

might have is simply a hand towel. All of these  are pretty self-explanatory, right? Bath towel,  

washcloth, I guess you could wash anything with  that, and hand towel. Can you guess what you  

wash with a hand towel? You use it to dry your  hands and it's hanging on this ring to let it  

air out in between washings. Next, let's talk about some of the  

items which might be in your bathroom. On our  counter, we have a comb. This is not a brush.  

I have some hair ties, my glasses, some deodorant,  and a contact lens case. You might just say also a  

contact case. I have my jewelry. There  is an outlet for plugging things in.  

On the other side, we have a soap dispenser  here. Then we have our toothbrush holder.  

Inside that toothbrush holder is a toothbrush  and toothpaste. Beside it is an electric  

toothbrush. There is some floss, some more  deodorant and underneath here is a glasses  

lens cleaner and another glasses lens cloth. A lot of bathrooms in the US will have a little  

closet or some shelves for linens. If this is  a separate area, or if it is in your closet,  

we still call this a linen closet. Linens are our  sheets, towels, blankets. Mine is a little bit  

messy, a little bit disorganized, but it's okay.  So here, these are where I keep my linens. On the  

other side of that linen closet is another shelf  where we keep some band-aids, extra shampoo, these  

types of things and we could call this a medicine  cabinet, but it's not necessarily a cabinet.  

You're going to see that in just a moment.  Instead, we'll still say that this is in the  

closet and these are some extra bathroom items. Some other items that you might have in your  

bathroom is some contact solution. This goes  with my contact lenses that I wear occasionally,  

some contact lens solution. You might also have  some Q-tips. I don't really use these, but for  

some reason, we have them. Instead of Q-tips,  you might have cotton balls that look like this  

or cotton rounds. Sometimes people use these to  take off makeup or for other things, I guess,  

but you might have other kinds of cotton in  your bathroom. In the bathroom, you have some  

tweezers and fingernail clippers. These are  giant fingernail clippers and sometimes on  

the fingernail clippers, or you might have a  separate piece as well, there is a nail file for  

filing your nails. Occasionally, this is called  an emery board. I haven't really heard this  

an awful lot in my life, but if someone said,  "Oh, I need to buy an emery board," I would know  

what they were talking about, but it's not as  common as a nail file, which is pretty clear,  

right? It's a nail file for filing your nails. For shaving, you need a razor. Sometimes it  

comes with some extra razorblades. I think  Dan has already finished using all of those.  

This is his razor. We also have some shaving  cream and maybe you use some aftershave. I  

don't know if this is true in your house, but my  side of the bathroom counter has way more things  

than Dan's side of the counter. I think in his  drawer, oh, there's nothing but an empty box.  

But on my side, there are quite a few  things. For example, I have some makeup,  

some different bottles of potions, like makeup  remover. I have a, this is just some witch hazel,  

but it can be used as like a toner for your  skin. I have some other hair supplies like  

clips and some things for my hair like  bobby pins. I'm not sure why we say bobby,  

but these are called bobby pins and you can  put them in your hair to keep your hair back. 

In the bathroom, there's also a curling iron  for curling your hair. You might also have a  

straightener or you might have a hairdryer. Do  you know what? This hairdryer, I got two weeks  

ago because the hairdryer I had before that I have  had since high school. This hairdryer was 15 years  

old, is amazing. No, I guess older than that,  maybe like 16, 17 years old and finally it died,  

but I can't believe it lasted that long. It was  just a cheap hairdryer from the grocery store, but  

it lasted a long, long, long time and finally it  just stopped working. So I have a new hairdryer.  

Hopefully, this one will also last for 15 years.  If you choose not to use a hairdryer, you can do  

what's called air drying. So you might say, I  often say this, I need to air dry my hair and  

this is the opposite of using a hairdryer. I need  to use the hairdryer or I need to air dry my hair. 

Generally, they say that air drying your hair is  better for your hair so usually I air dry my hair  

for a while and then if I'm going to go to bed and  it's still a little wet, I'll use the hairdryer  

a little bit, just to kind of make it so that  I'm not sleeping in a wet mop. The final thing  

I'd like to talk about in the bathroom is laundry  and the trash can with the trash bag. Your laundry  

might be in a laundry basket. You might call this  a laundry hamper. I personally don't use the word  

hamper. It feels a little bit old fashioned, but  it might just be a regional difference in the US  

where some places say hamper, some places  say basket. This is a laundry basket. This  

is kind of soft, but you might have a hard  plastic laundry basket too. In the laundry  

is dirty laundry and this just means dirty  clothes. There's dirty laundry. I need to  

put it in the washing machine and then after that,  I'll fold it and I'll put it away in the closet. 

Oh, 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,  so 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. I got to put  some new sheets on the bed after that. Next,  

I got to scrub down the tub and the shower  so 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 use 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  

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 and 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  in to the washing machine. So you put the soap  

into the washing machine, and 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 but here in  the US, 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 US, it's often used. It's used almost  

every single time and 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 US, they're pretty big. So 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 US,  

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 other items that some people  use when they're drying things in the dryer.  

You might use dryer sheets. These are just  little sheets, and 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 and then we can take that to the  

bedroom or wherever you're going to put them away.  So 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 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.  

So I'm curious, do you make a meal plan and 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 and 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 and 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.  

So 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. So 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  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 and maybe you put it in a dumpster. Maybe  you put it 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 of 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, but you might  find some food that 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 clean means 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and usually there's a little cloth  

that is the Swiffer brand cloth and you  put it over top. It's a disposable thing.  

It might be dry and it kind of picks  up some cat hair or dust, or it might  

be wet and you can kind of easily mop the floor. But if you don't have one of these, you might need  

a mop or maybe two maps. My mother-in-law has two  maps. 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.  

Then 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 use 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 the 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 knick-knacks  

around your house, you might want to use a duster  to dust around the knick-knacks. So 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 her tea kettle, but I couldn't find my  

mother-in-law's watering can, but 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 and then it has  a little thing here, a little strip at the top,  

that's usually rubberized and 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 and this  is great for your vocabulary. You learn one word,  

you can use it in two ways so 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, but you'll probably be tidying  up at least once a day. It's a good rule of  

thumb. So here I am, 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 moulding. Moulding  is this similar type of wood, but maybe it's  

around a doorframe or it's on the wall somewhere,  maybe around the windows. Is there some moulding?  

So you might just wipe down the moulding. 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 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. So 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 there, but they might  have some boxes of Christmas supplies or  

things that they don't use that often so at some  point, you might just want to clean up the garage. 

Congratulations on finishing this long two  hour English vocabulary lesson but I hope  

that you were able to learn about how to talk  about the world around you. This can really  

empower you to have the right words to say at  the right time. So don't forget to download the  

free PDF worksheet for this lesson. You can click  on the link in the description to download that,  

review everything that you've learned  and use it. Whenever you need to use it,  

you can reference that worksheet. I hope it  will be useful. Now I have a question for you.  

Can you let me know in the comments, which one of  these expressions or words was new for you? Maybe  

some of them were a review. You were familiar with  them, and then it just kind of reminded you of the  

word again. But which one of these words did you  not know before this lesson and you learned today? 

Let me know in the comments, will be very  interesting to see where the gaps were  

in your vocabulary. Let's learn about it  in the description. Share with me. I can't  

wait to see what you have to say and I'll  see you again next Friday for a new lesson  

here on my YouTube channel. Bye. The next step is to download the free  

PDF worksheet for this lesson. With this  free PDF, you will master today's lesson  

and never forget what you have learned. You  can be a confident English speaker. Don't  

forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel  for a free English lesson every Friday. Bye.