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Something You Should Know
How the Moon Transformed Earth & Fun and Easy Housecleaning Hacks - SYSK Choice
00:50:03
Why Earth has a moon, smarter and more fun ways to clean, plus tips for setting goals you’ll actually keep.
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- [00:01]
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- [01:18]
Mike Carruthers
Today on something you should know it's amazing how many people actually have different s and then the moon. It's up there in the sky every night. And there's a lot about the moon you may not know.
- [01:31]
Rebecca Boyle
One of my favorite things to tell people about the moon is that it's so far away you can fit almost all the other planets between us and the moon. And it's one reason why the moon looks pretty small in the sky, but it's actually huge. It's about as wide as the United States.
- [01:47]
Mike Carruthers
Also, why losing weight is a terrible New Year's resolution and a new approach to cleaning the house that is fun and different than a lot of the advice you've heard before.
- [01:58]
Patrick Richardson
I have a spray bottle of vodka in my kitchen and that's how I clean just about everything. Vodka is very antibacterial. It's actually a great cleaner, but it's actually a really good degreaser. And when you only have one cleaner, it's just so much simpler.
- [02:12]
Mike Carruthers
All this today on something you should know.
- [02:17]
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- [03:59]
Mike Carruthers
Something you Should Know fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you Should Know with Mike Carruthers hi, welcome to Something you Should Know. Hey, are you a a Spotify listener? I've been using Spotify for a long time and it's often the platform I use to listen to podcasts and certainly music and you know this podcast Something you should Know has like tens and tens of thousands of followers on Spotify and I invite you to become one of them. Try it. See if you don't like it. Just download the app if you don't have it already and start following this podcast. First up today did you know that 60% of the population have different size feet and out of those people 80% of the time it is the left foot that is larger. Why? Well, 80% of the population is right hand dominant and righties use their left foot for leverage. That foot gets more exercise thus the slight variance in size in length or width. The most common variance is half a shoe size, so it may not be necessary to mix and match your shoes to get a good fit. In most cases, just adding a small insert can do the trick with feet differing up to a full shoe size. And if your left foot is really big, you may need to be fitted with a mismatched pair of shoes. And hopefully the store would give you a deal on that second pair. And that is something you should know. How many times have you looked up at the moon and wondered, what the hell is that thing? Where did it come from? How come it just sits up there? What if it crashed into the Earth? What would it be like here if there was no moon up there? Well, if you've ever thought those things, you've come to the right place for some really solid answers, because my guest is Rebecca Boyle. She is a columnist at Atlas Obscura and a contributor to Scientific American, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Popular Science, and many other publications. And she is author of a book called Our How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us who We Are. Hey, Rebecca. Welcome to Something youg Should Know.
- [06:29]
Rebecca Boyle
Thanks so much for having me.
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Mike Carruthers
So there it is, up in the sky. We see it all the time. Big round circle. What is it? Where did it come from? How did it get there? Tell me the story.
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Rebecca Boyle
The Moon is a rock, basically. It's, you know, a very large planetary body. It's not a planet, you know, in that it doesn't orbit the sun directly, but it is a companion to our planet. It's part of our planet. It's a whole other world, another realm, but that's connected to this one. It's also a place for people to project ourselves, our ideas and our hopes and our dreams for what else might lie beyond Earth. It's also a place that we can be reflected. So when the Moon is in its crescent phases, sometimes you can see what's called Earthshine, which is the light of our planet reflecting onto the Moon. And it's sort of this dark sector next to what you usually see as a crescent in the night sky. So it's a place that we are both philosophically and optically reflected. The Moon is home, I think. I think of it as part of.
- [07:39]
Mike Carruthers
Earth, and it's part of Earth, literally.
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Rebecca Boyle
So we're still learning a little bit more about exactly what happened when the Moon formed. But we know that it happened on, you know, what was probably the worst day in the history of Earth, in which Earth was totally obliterated by some other planet, probably something the size of Mars, present day Mars, like, whacked into our planet, and both of these bodies were totally destroyed. And the remains of that collision gave us the Earth and the Moon. So they formed from the same material. They're geologically very similar. And literally the Moon is part of Earth.
- [08:22]
Mike Carruthers
So Then shouldn't there be some big hole on Earth or some big chunk missing or someplace where it's apparent the Moon came from?
- [08:31]
Rebecca Boyle
Yeah, this is actually a theory people had for a long time before Apollo, we didn't really have any idea what the Moon was or how to explain its presence. It sort of just has been there as the light that lights the sky, just like the sun is the light that lights the day. And people had a lot of theories for how it formed, and one of my favorites is that it was sheared off somehow. Some people had different theories for how it was sheared off, including that the Earth was spinning very quickly, and part of it sort of just flew apart and landed in space. And that's the Moon. And if that had happened, that would explain why the Pacific Ocean is so deep, which it is very deep, much deeper than the Atlantic. But that's not really why the Moon is there. That's not what happened. Yeah, the theory behind this formation story is still being hammered out. I mean, there's a lot of people working on this to figure out the particulars of the energy and the size of the impact or the speed it was going and what actually happened. Probably what happened is that both Earth 1.0 and whatever else hit Earth, which have called Theia, which is the Greek goddess that was the mother of the Moon, both of these things were just totally obliterated. So you're like, imagine a cloud of droplets, like fuzz in space. There's no recognizable planetary structure after this collision. And eventually over hundreds and then thousands, and then millions and tens of millions of years, they both kind of recombine and coalesce into these round bodies we have now. And that's why they look very similar, because they kind of were made at the same time from the same catastrophic collision.
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Mike Carruthers
And so when that collision happened and the Moon basically, I guess, broke off, why did it stick around and orbit? Why didn't it just fly off into Never Never Land as you would expect it to? Why did it stay?
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Rebecca Boyle
Well, the real answer is that it did, and it is flying away forever. It's receding from Earth at about the rate at which your fingernails. So, I mean, think about how often you have to, like, trim your nails. It's, you know, not a small amount for something the size of the Moon, which is gigantic and Earth is gigantic. I mean, it's hard for people to really visualize the scales of these things. These are like entire planets. But, yeah, the Moon is flying away, and that has a lot of influence on our Planet in terms of the tide, the strength of the tide, the length of our day. The day is getting longer because the Moon is flying away from us. And this has to do with some complicated tidal physics. But the upshot is that as the Moon leaves, Earth's day is getting longer because our planet's rotation is slowing down because of the exchange of angular momentum between these worlds. So eventually, in millions of years, so a long time from now, the day will be a lot longer. And we will no longer have total solar eclipses because the Moon will be so far away that will not be able to block out the Sun.
- [11:39]
Mike Carruthers
I imagine people ponder this. What would Earth be like if the Moon wasn't there?
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Rebecca Boyle
It would change our tides very fundamentally. So the sun still plays a role in the tide on Earth. And this is just the rise and fall, what we experience as the rise and fall of water on a coastline in the ocean. And the sun does play some kind of role there, but the Moon plays by far the primary role. So you would see a much weaker ocean tide, which seems like it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it's actually a huge deal in terms of the exchange of nutrients, the environments where animals live, a lot of diversity, biodiversity happens in these tidal areas. That would change dramatically. You would have some major effects on life on Earth. I mean, lots of organisms use the Moon to time their reproduction, to time their migration. They check when the Moon is full, they check when the Moon is a crescent. And they check this both the way that we do, by looking up at it and by sensing it in the form of gravity and its light and how that impacts their visual systems. And so a lot of animals would have to change the way that they time their reproductive cycles or their migration patterns.
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Mike Carruthers
And.
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Rebecca Boyle
And probably the most catastrophic change would be the tilt of our planet. And this would happen over a long time. Like if the Moon was just picked up and taken away, you wouldn't notice this tomorrow, but over a few hundred, a few thousand years, it would become very dramatic. Our planet, as, you know, if you've ever looked at a classroom globe, our planet is tilted, which is why we have seasons. And the stability of that tilt is thanks to the Moon. If we didn't have the Moon's gravity to sort of keep our planet still, I mean, it's not really still, but it doesn't wobble very much on its axis. If we didn't have the Moon doing that for us, the Earth's axis would tilt at really extreme angles, which is what happens on Mars actually. And this is one reason why Mars has such a strange and variable climate. So the upshot is that Earth's climate would have huge impacts if the Moon wasn't here to protect the way that our planet spins on its axis and to keep that stable over millennia, you'd have very dramatic climate shifts.
- [14:10]
Mike Carruthers
If the Moon is from the Earth and it's not that far away from the Earth, and yet you look at these two balls in the sky and our planet is very fertile and lots of water and all that, and the Moon is fairly barren and not much there. Why is that?
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Rebecca Boyle
Well, we're lucky to have an atmosphere that is the right pressure and the right temperature and the right thickness, which is related to both pressure and temperature for water to remain liquid. And as far as we know, this is the only place where that is true, at least in this solar system and potentially other places. The Moon doesn't have as much to do with the presence of the atmosphere, but it does, as I was saying, stabilize our climate and the way that the atmosphere changes over time. If it was gone, then you would have these big shifts in the poles of Earth would be tilted in different directions. So in maybe 20,000 years of time you'd have the north pole, the magnetic north pole of Earth would be kind of tipped toward where the equator is now, like facing the sun. And so you can imagine the effect that would have on the climate and melting the ice caps at both poles and how that would change the temperatures and the sea levels of the oceans and all these things. And that's the way the Moon affects the atmosphere. If it were to be gone, those would be very different things. But yeah, we're very lucky to have this temperate rocky air covered planet. The Moon is probably more common, or things like the Moon are more common in that it's a rocky body, it's big enough to make itself round through its own gravity, but it doesn't have an atmosphere. It doesn't have anything resembling what we'd consider plate tectonics, which Earth has. It doesn't have a geologic cycle in the way that Earth does. And it doesn't really have a way to maintain any organisms that would live. And by living I mean, you know, would like rebreathing or metabolizing or reproducing all the things that sort of define what we think of as life.
- [16:27]
Mike Carruthers
We're talking about just how fascinating our Moon is. And my guest is Rebecca Boyle, author of the book Our How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution and Made Us who we are. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But Lifelock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelok. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. This is pro linebacker TJ Watt and I'm back with YPB by Abercrombie for another activewear drop. My second co design collection has new shorts and tanks that keep up with all my in season workouts. And their new Restore collection is a.
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Patrick Richardson
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- [17:27]
Mike Carruthers
Even pro athletes like me need rest days.
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Patrick Richardson
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- [17:32]
Mike Carruthers
Online and in stores because your personal best is greater than anything. So Rebecca, what do you think is the potential here? I mean, we've been to the moon, we're talking about going back to the moon. What is it about the moon that is so appealing?
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Rebecca Boyle
I think we went there because of politics. The first time it was, you know, we wanted to beat the Russians, we wanted to prove the power of capitalism and the American, you know, ingenuity to get us off this planet and onto another. And it happened, you know, we did it. And Apollo still is this like unbelievable achievement that I think people still think about and still talk about. We're doing it again in part for the same reasons. You know, the US wants to get up there again before China gets up there. China would like to get up there for its own self. India would like to be up there, Russia would like to be up there. Japan, a lot of the space faring countries have moon exploration programs in one way or another. And I think the future of the moon is probably, if you want to think about economic reasons as a motivator, that's probably the future. The moon has a lot of resources that could be mined and maybe it's better to do that on the moon than it is to do it on Earth. Maybe not. The moon also has a lot of water, and it's not water in the way that we think of on Earth. It's not like liquid lakes, but there is a lot of hydrated mineral deposits on the moon and those can be extracted and potentially refined into something like rocket fuel. So if you're a space faring country or company, and that's increasingly who's going up there Is these private companies looking at the moon? It'd be really nice to go to the moon, harvest some lunar HO and make that into H2O and refine that into HO. Again, that can be used as rocket fuel to go off further, maybe to Mars, maybe to an asteroid, and maybe to an asteroid that has lots of platinum group metals, for instance, or rare earth metals that are used in things like our phones and computer chips. So the moon is sort of a resource base, I think, and that's how a lot of countries and private companies are thinking about it. I think it's important for us to think about what we want to happen before it just starts to happen. And this time, you know, is an inflection point for that. I think there's a lot happening up there. I think people are probably not totally aware of how much is happening up there and how much is going to be happening in the next couple of years.
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Mike Carruthers
Well, when you say we're not aware of what's happening, what's happening?
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Rebecca Boyle
Well, NASA is funding a bunch of missions through its Artemis program, which Artemis is the sister of Apollo in Greece, Greek mythology. And the mission is intended to land the first female astronaut on the moon and the first person of color and to sort of go back and prove that, you know, the US has still got it. As part of Artemis, they're also funding a commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which people call CLPs. And this is a really big deal. And it's a lot of money going to private companies that have spent years developing things like lunar landers, lunar rovers, lunar platforms, you know, little lander devices that just sort of sit there and have solar panels. And these are happening, like right now. Some of them are carrying small instrument packages for NASA and other space agencies. Some of them are carrying things like small amounts of human cremated remains that are going to be on the moon forever. Some are carrying things like computer chips that contain all of the contents of Wikipedia, you know, or some poetry, sort of some of the. The light of consciousness of humanity. And these things are happening, you know, in real time. In the next coming year especially, there's a high cadence of missions starting. And I think it's sort of been underway for the last, probably 10 years almost. But now is the time that this is really going to be happening. And I think people are going to wake up and realize, wait, what? There's, like, private companies on the moon and they're landing human remains? Like, what?
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Mike Carruthers
No, I guess I don't understand. Why are cremated human remains going to the moon? I Mean, there's plenty of room here.
- [22:03]
Rebecca Boyle
I mean, it's one of these sort of, you know, it's kind of a, interesting thing to think about. If space or the moon means a lot to you and, you know, your final plans, this is something that you can actually pay to do. And it's, this is like a tiny amount, like a capsule, you know, maybe like I'm saying a capsule like you would imagine a capsule that you would swallow of Advil, you know, or some other like painkiller. Like a little, a little tiny pill sized amount. It's not very much, but it's maybe something that people would find really fascinating or powerful or spiritually meaningful to place themselves off Earth forever.
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Mike Carruthers
What about this idea you hear from time to time of trying to colonize the moon, make it so people could live there? Seems far fetched. Is it?
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Rebecca Boyle
I think yes and no. I think it's far fetched in that it's still very, very difficult. It's time and resource intensive. It's very dangerous. The Moon does not want us there. It is not hospitable. It is not a safe place to go. So I think in that sense it's maybe further afield than people like to talk about. But that said, we do have rockets and landers and orbital trajectory determinations now that are really sophisticated and it is very possible. And I think it's going to happen. And it's a matter of time. I think it may take longer than people think it will, or people who talk about this stuff would like it to. But I do think that at some point in the near term there will be some sort of permanent lunar settlement that includes science as its main goal. Probably some science base and potentially a jumping off point for other places in the solar system and potentially a place for people to extract resources. I don't think that's far fetched. I think it's probably pretty likely. It just might take 20 years as.
- [24:07]
Mike Carruthers
Opposed to five in case. And I have forgotten my science class information. How inhospitable is the moon? Like, what's the temperature? What would it be like if I were to just step off onto the moon?
- [24:25]
Rebecca Boyle
It depends on the time of day as far as the temperature. And a lunar day lasts about two Earth weeks. Um, it's pretty horrible. Like there's no atmosphere. There's no atmosphere to speak of. There's some, you know, very tenuous molecular exosphere that sort of exists, but it would immediately be a vacuum if you didn't have a spacesuit. You would be dead in you know, a couple of really horrible minutes. There are huge temperature swings between the lunar day and the lunar night. During the day it's boiling hot, like 200 plus degrees Fahrenheit in direct sun. And at night it's freezing, freezing cold, like absolute zero. Not quite absolute zero, but much colder than anywhere on Earth. This is one reason why there is so much water on the Moon, actually, because there's probably frozen water in permanently shadowed craters that never see the sun just because of where they're located on the poles. The angle of sunlight doesn't fall all the way to the floors of these craters. So there could be ice, even primordial ice just sitting there that has never melted.
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Mike Carruthers
So when you look up at the Moon at night on a full Moon, you see those craters, and one would assume that something smashed into the Moon to create that crater. Is that a safe assumption?
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Rebecca Boyle
Yeah. The Moon has been battered to within an inch of its life since it formed, really. And so has Earth. And we don't see that here because Earth has plate tectonics which transform and wrinkle and warp the surface of our planet. And we have our atmosphere and we have water, and all of those are very erosive forces. And so Earth has sort of erased its history in the solar system. We can't see the scars of this primordial drubbing, but it happened everywhere.
- [26:19]
Mike Carruthers
Since you know all this stuff about the Moon, what's one of your favorite things to tell people that we haven't discussed so far about the Moon that they probably don't realize?
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Rebecca Boyle
One of my favorite things to tell people about the Moon is that it's so far away that you can fit almost all the other planets between us and the Moon. And I think that's kind of mind blowing. If you try to imagine how large Jupiter is and how large Saturn is, it's hard to fathom because we're tiny humans on this one little rock. But that's a very large distance. And it's one reason why the Moon looks pretty small in the sky, but it's actually huge. It's about a fourth of the width of Earth. It's about as wide as the United States or the entire continent of Europe, which is a big thing. And it doesn't look like it's that big because it's so far away. And I like that sort of contrast between its really large size and it's really great distance from us.
- [27:23]
Mike Carruthers
Well, anyone who has spent the last 20 minutes listening to us, myself included, has learned a lot about the moon, why it's there, what it does, and it's pretty fascinating. My guest has been Rebecca Boyle. She's a columnist at Atlas Obscura, a contributor to Scientific American, the New York Times, Popular Science, Smithsonian's Air and Space Magazine, and others. And she's author of a book called Our How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us who We Are. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for spending the time with us, Rebecca.
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Rebecca Boyle
Thanks Mike. This has been such a great time.
- [28:02]
Mike Carruthers
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Rebecca Boyle
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- [29:07]
Mike Carruthers
So here we are at the beginning of the year. New beginnings, Fresh start. And perhaps one idea for the coming year might be to clean your house up, really clean it, and then keep it tidy. And I have just the person to explain how to do that and actually make it fun, easy, and not the chore you think it is. Meet Patrick Richardson. Patrick is a cleaning expert, star of the Laundry Guy on HGTV and Discovery plus, and author of the book House A Joyful Guide to Cleaning, Organizing, and Loving the home you're in. Hi Patrick, welcome to something you should know.
- [29:45]
Patrick Richardson
Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here, so I.
- [29:49]
Mike Carruthers
Imagine that few people listening find as much joy in housework as you do. So maybe part of the problem is that we approach it wrong. What do you see as the big issue? What makes this job of cleaning the house this dreaded task?
- [30:07]
Patrick Richardson
Honestly, I think the biggest thing is everybody makes these projects into too big of a chore if people would just stop and realize doing something is better than doing nothing, ultimately your whole house is clean. Or, you know, if you just do one load of laundry, ultimately all of your laundry is done. People turn it into like this gigantic thing when it's really just a series of little things. And if you break it down, it's really kind of simple and it's kind of fun because you can get that sense of satisfaction of knowing that, you know, today I cleaned off the dining room table, and sometimes that's the victory.
- [30:43]
Mike Carruthers
So I've talked to cleaning experts over the years, interviewed them, and I find that every one of them, and you do too, probably has one thing that nobody has probably heard of before that would make cleaning easier. So what's your thing? What's the magic thing that you do that other people don't do?
- [31:04]
Patrick Richardson
I clean my kitchen with vodka. I have a spray bottle of vodka in my kitchen, and that's how I clean just about everything. And when you only have one cleaner, it's just so much simpler.
- [31:15]
Mike Carruthers
And you use vodka because vodka does what?
- [31:20]
Patrick Richardson
Well, vodka is very antibacterial. It's actually a great cleaner. But the reason I use vodka is I have stone countertops, and you cannot use vinegar on them. So I didn't want to have to use more than one thing. And, you know, vodka is great to clean your stone countertops, but it's actually a really good degreaser. I mean, vodka will do lots of things. It's really sort of funny, I mean, that we drink it and that, you know, it's also great to clean your cutting boards, but it's a really good degreaser. And in the kitchen, usually, you know, the grime or whatever that's in the kitchen is because you cooked and sort of that greasy steam has kind of settled and, you know, you just clean it off. And it's really nice because it is antibacterial, so you don't have to worry about anything being germy. And then finally, it's food grade, so you don't have to spray it on and then worry about making sure that you got it off.
- [32:14]
Mike Carruthers
You know, you can also make cocktails with that.
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Patrick Richardson
Well, my theory is I clean with college vodka. I drink adult vodka.
- [32:23]
Mike Carruthers
Good plan. That's a good plan. What other little tricks like that? Because I don't think most people. I had not heard the clean with vodka. But as you describe it, it makes perfect sense. And I like the fact that, yeah, it's food grade, so you don't have to worry about chemically, cleaners that are still lingering on your countertop or wherever. But what other kind of little things have you developed or found or invented that maybe like that that people could try?
- [32:53]
Patrick Richardson
Well, another one sticking with the kitchen, something that vexes so many people is everybody bought stainless steel appliances as soon as they became fashionable, and nobody thought about the fact that they show fingerprints. If you wipe down your stainless steel appliances with vod, you completely wipe them down. You can put a few drops of olive oil on a towel and buff it into your stainless, and it will never show fingerprints again. And you only have to repeat it when you have to clean it. So if once a week, you know, you spray the vodka on your refrigerator, you wipe it down, and then you buff in some olive oil, your refrigerator looks great all week. That's really kind of a fun one, because that's something that so many people have challenges with. The other thing, which is a little more spendy, is to buy a cordless vacuum cleaner. A cordless vacuum cleaner. If you could only buy one appliance, that's the one to buy. Because when you can just grab it and, you know, sweep up the cereal, you'll find yourself just doing it so often that it doesn't become this big project that once a week, you know, you drag out this behemoth and carry it through your house. You'll just find that you just start reaching for it and do it, and it becomes really pretty simple. Yeah, if you buy one. I mean, at first, I wouldn't have given this tip a few years ago because there was only one company that made them and they were about $800. But now, I mean, I saw them everywhere for $100 or less. So they've become pretty affordable. But if you buy one, you'll find that you just grab it, you know, it just becomes like, oh, I need to vacuum that up. And it will completely change the way that you take care of your house because you'll just start there again. It's having the right tool. You just sort of grab it and use it, and then, you know, things don't really build up.
- [34:45]
Mike Carruthers
So my theory is that, you know, if you're going to be good at anything, you need a plan. You need a plan of attack here. So what's the plan of attack? If you're going to clean your house.
- [34:55]
Patrick Richardson
The first thing is put together a kit. You know, get yourself a spray bottle of vinegar and water, some really absorbent cloths, you know, a feather duster. Just a very simple basic Kit so that you have your tools next to you. Part of what makes cleaning a house or taking care of things so hard is you have to go looking for everything. You know, if you just gather everything up and carry it with you, that makes it simpler. If you go into the den and the kids toys are everywhere, and there's glasses and there's bowls from cereal and whatever, you don't have to put everything away. You just have to gather everything together. Don't keep running back and forth. Gather everything together, get your toolkit and go to it. And it's really not that big of a challenge. And if you want to make it fun, you know, play some music, turn on a movie, and it really is kind of an enjoyable way to spend a couple hours.
- [35:51]
Mike Carruthers
Okay, and so when you say go to it, tell me how to go to it.
- [35:56]
Patrick Richardson
Well, start at the ceiling and start dusting and dust your way down the walls and, you know, dust off the knickknacks if you have time, pick them all up, clean the furniture and put them back. That's really the best way to do it. Gather everything that doesn't go in the room and put it, you know, somewhere that you can take it out when you leave and then vacuum.
- [36:15]
Mike Carruthers
Well, you said get a feather duster, but I thought I had heard someone say once that, you know, that's not a great tool because it just spreads the dust, the dust around.
- [36:25]
Patrick Richardson
It knocks the dust off is what it does. So the trick to making a feather duster work is you start at the top and you work through weight. You work your way down, and the feather duster keeps knocking the dust off, and it keeps dropping lower and lower and lower. And then once it gets to the floor and you vacuum, it's gone.
- [36:42]
Mike Carruthers
And I also remember hearing, because this stuck with me too, is that, you know, we spend a lot of time cleaning clutter, that if we got the clutter out, we would cut our cleaning time down because we spend a lot of time cleaning junk.
- [36:59]
Patrick Richardson
That's a hundred percent true. I am a maximalist. I mean, I am the maximalist maximalist. You know, I can find room for another thing everywhere. But even that being said, you know, sometimes people set things down. Like, I remember a friend of mine telling me they had a candle on their entryway table neither of them liked, but no one just decided to get rid of it. So they kept picking it up and dusting under it, picking it up and dusting under it, dusting off the candle. And it just sat there. And that really is clutter. If you don't love it. If you love it and you have 40 candles, that's fine because that's what you love. And then it's not clutter. But when you don't like it, you know, you're right. It just needs to be donated or thrown away or whatever needs to happen to it or used up and you make room. It's amazing how many people have seven bottles of hair gel and you know, that becomes clutter because they're just everywhere and they're in the way and you have to clean them and you have to clean the table under them. It's just a huge project for nothing.
- [38:03]
Mike Carruthers
Something else that I remember that I found really interesting is that we have. And I think it runs in families and it just, it kind of is in the culture of, you know, we have certain things in the bathroom, we have certain things in the kitchen, because that's what people do. But maybe nobody likes it. And the best example I remember hearing was everybody has in their bathroom those little tiny wastebaskets and they fill up in no time and you have to go empty. Why? Why do we have little tiny wastebaskets in the bathroom? Why not put a real wastebasket in the bathroom that you don't have to empty out every two days? But, but because nobody thinks I don't like that.
- [38:46]
Patrick Richardson
That's a great example. It's funny, I actually have a very large one in my bathroom. But what's funny about it is that it's also because when you go buy a wastebasket for the bathroom, that's what the store sells you, you know, and you have to stop and think, I don't have to buy that for my bathroom. You know, I have a vip. It's the original garbage can that has the foot pedal and they're really good looking and you can get them in lots of colors. But that's what I have in my bathroom and it's actually quite tall and I have the exact same one in my kitchen, which is really funny. But they weren't sold for that. They were actually sold to go in the garage. And they're really sharp, you know, they're really good looking. And so that's what I bought. I think part of the problem is you have to think of the use that you need, not just what the store wants to sell you.
- [39:32]
Mike Carruthers
So nobody likes cleaning the bathroom and nobody likes really cleaning the kitchen. Well, maybe you do, but I don't, I don't think most people.
- [39:38]
Patrick Richardson
I love it.
- [39:39]
Mike Carruthers
Well, come on over. Yeah, but probably there's a way to tackle those rooms, the bathroom, the kitchen. That makes it a little less horrible.
- [39:51]
Patrick Richardson
There's a couple of things. I mean, number one, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but it's the right tools. Nobody likes. I don't even like scrubbing the bathtub, but I found a brush that attaches to the end of a cordless drill that will scrub the bathtub and the shower for me. So all I have to do is put on some cleaning solution, let it sit, and then scrub. And so that's kind of a funny tool, but it works great. Another great tool in the bathroom is a steamer, because then, you know, it's sort of sterile and it's clean and it's just water, so you're not spraying on a chemical that you then have to rinse off. And I love that.
- [40:31]
Mike Carruthers
So there is probably no one on the planet who knows more about laundry than you do. So when you do a load of laundry, what do. What do you use?
- [40:42]
Patrick Richardson
I use laundry soap, which is not something you can buy at the grocery store. Most people have laundry detergent. I actually use laundry soap. It's actually soap. And it rinses completely clean. I like it just because it rinses so clean. But if I was going to use detergent, you know, from the grocery, the key there is to use a tiny bit. Only use about 2 tablespoons, at which point you're probably only going to buy, like, one jug a year. And what's fun is when you use less, your clothes are cleaner, so that's awesome. And you use less, so you save a lot of money, but you also don't spill it. So you don't really have those, you know, drips running down the side of your washing machine either.
- [41:25]
Mike Carruthers
A lot of people, though, use those pods now. So it's either use it or you don't. But you don't get to measure it out.
- [41:31]
Patrick Richardson
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of those for a couple reasons. Number one, they're way too much detergent for your clothes. But I find that they're. I found they're very expensive. And then you also have to keep them, and they're bulky. I like things that are a little more minimal, I guess.
- [41:45]
Mike Carruthers
Yes.
- [41:46]
Patrick Richardson
In that regard.
- [41:48]
Mike Carruthers
So talk about. Since we're in the laundry room here, in fact, we just had this problem with our dining room tablecloth stains. How do you get those stains that won't come out? How do you get them out?
- [42:00]
Patrick Richardson
Most stains will come out with either a spray of 50 vinegar, 50 water, or a horsehair brush and a bar of laundry soap that is 90% of all stains will come out with one of those two things. With the brush, you wet the brush and you rub it on the bar, and then you. You apply the brush to the stain. The reason you don't rub the bar directly on the stain is it pushes it in. If neither of those things work, what you use is oxygen bleach. Oxygen bleach is the answer for, like, wine, cranberries, blueberries, blood. I don't know what was on your dining table, but it's for those sort of organic or natural stains. You know, you put the oxygen bleach in a bowl, dip the stain in it, and toss it in the washing machine, and that will take it out. And oxygen bleach, unlike chlorine bleach, is completely color safe. So if your dining room tablecloth had an embroidered edge, you're still totally fine.
- [43:03]
Mike Carruthers
And oxygen bleach is like in the supermarket. Is that like Oxiclean or something?
- [43:08]
Patrick Richardson
Yes, like that. There's a lot of them out there.
- [43:12]
Mike Carruthers
Let's talk about the bedroom. And I don't know what, what big challenge is in there, but. But there must be something that people complain about. So what is it?
- [43:21]
Patrick Richardson
The biggest one is oily sheets from, like, somebody's oily head or from the dog. Oxygen bleach takes that out. The other thing that comes up in the bedroom a lot, this is the perfect example of clutter. You know, we throw things on our bedside table, and the bedside table just tends to accumulate. You know, more books, more glasses of water, three pairs of eyeglasses, those sorts of things. And a great trick for that is to put a chest by your bedside and use one of the drawers as a table. So in the morning when you're ready to leave, you just push the drawer shut and everything's out of sight, out of mind.
- [44:01]
Mike Carruthers
Perfect.
- [44:02]
Patrick Richardson
Those are the big things about the bedroom. The other thing, of course, to the bedroom, if you're going to. If you're only going to dust and vacuum one room in your house, make it the bedroom, because you don't want to breathe that in while you sleep.
- [44:13]
Mike Carruthers
So in the last few moments here, let's maybe mentally run through the house and some of your favorite suggestions.
- [44:21]
Patrick Richardson
A great one in the entryway is to get like a little. A flat tray, it can even be a cookie sheet, and fill it with pebbles so then it looks good and you can throw shoes on it. And, you know, the snow will melt and the water will go into the pebbles. And so then your shoes are dry when you're ready to leave again. Another one that's kind of with the entryway is one that I would tell you to use everywhere in your house is to set a basket there and throw everything in the basket, and then once a week, go through it. So things don't just sort of accumulate throughout your house. My biggest one for your living room or your den is inside a cabinet or something. Stash a roll of paper towels or stash a couple of cloths so when you get a spill, you can attack it right then and it doesn't become something that you have to come back to later. Because most spills and that sort of thing, if you can get them in the moment, they're really easy to deal with. And then my other one for the bathroom is to clean your bathtub and your sink with dish soap. And the reason dish soap works so great is because it's meant to cut oil. And your bathtub has, you know, the oil from your skin and the oil from lotion and, you know, body oils or bath oils and those sorts of things, and dish soap will cut it immediately. It works much better than, like, those sort of foamy tub cleaners.
- [45:47]
Mike Carruthers
Let me ask you real quick, because we've talked about some. Some really interesting things that will work. Do you find that people do things that are pretty common, that really they shouldn't, that don't work, or that are, you know, counterproductive?
- [46:03]
Patrick Richardson
I think so many things that people do are counterproductive and don't work, like having all the specialty cleaners. I think it makes it hard because then you reach for something and there's 20 things in your way. The other thing, you know, our grandparents and our great grandparents had the right idea. Just a few simple things work everywhere. And when we started buying all of these sort of specialty cleaners to use countertops as an example, first everybody had granite, then they had marble, then they had quartz. And there really were different cleaners for each of those. Now there's soapstone. There's so many different things just for countertops. And if you start trying to buy all of those cleaners for all of them, it becomes really hard. If you go to something like vodka, that's universal, it's easy, and it works. Because a lot of times, if you use the wrong cleaner, you actually make the stain worse or you make it harder to clean. You know, if you put wax on your laminate floors, it's almost impossible to take off, and you've Wrecked the finish. But if you use something simple, you know, vinegar and water, it's completely reversible. I think we have an idea that we need all of these really special things. When the truth is simple things will work. And if they don't work, at least they don't do any damage.
- [47:25]
Mike Carruthers
And when you use vodka straight up or do you.
- [47:28]
Patrick Richardson
Or with a twist, it's just straight up. Yeah. It's funny. What's really funny, and I tried it because I wanted it to work so bad. I wanted to infuse the vodka with lemon so that I would get the lemon scent. And I thought it was really funny that, you know, it was vodka with twist. The reality is there's so much citric acid and lemon peel that you can't use it because it will etch the countertops.
- [47:54]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, right.
- [47:54]
Patrick Richardson
It was too bad. I wanted it to work. I wanted it to work so bad just because I thought it was funny.
- [47:59]
Mike Carruthers
Well, I've never heard anybody tout the benefits of the cleaning benefits of vodka like you do. I mean, you're kind of the poster boy for vodka as a cleaner.
- [48:09]
Patrick Richardson
It's a great cleaner. And it's, you know, as I said, I mean, it is food grade. You know, I wouldn't serve you a martini with the vodka that I clean with, but, you know, you'll just be amazed. Like, it'll clean like your stovetop. It's just fantastic. And it's just so easy. And, you know, it's pretty affordable. It's cheaper than a cleaner, for sure. And, you know, it's just so easy. And, you know, vodka also removes odor. So here's another fun fact. If your dog lays on your sofa and your sofa smells like the dog, you can spray the sofa with vodka and the odor's completely gone. You can spray it in sneakers. You can spray it in your winter coat in January. Vodka removes odors. And the unique thing about vodka is it's completely odorless and colorless. So when it dries, it's completely gone.
- [48:57]
Mike Carruthers
Well, you're the miracle vodka cleaning guy. I don't know that I'll ever enjoy house cleaning as much as you do, but I have enjoyed the tips. I've been speaking with Patrick Richardson. He is author of the book House A joyful guide to cleaning, organizing, and loving the home you're in. There's a link to that book in the show notes and a couple of other links. I put in the show notes about some of the products that he talked about. Thanks for being here, Patrick.
- [49:23]
Patrick Richardson
Oh, thanks. Have a great day.
- [49:28]
Mike Carruthers
If your New Year's resolution is to lose weight, you'll probably fail. You see, experts say a resolution to lose weight is just too vague to work. For a New Year's resolution to have any chance, you need to understand a few things. According to Dr. Kent Sassy, author of the book Doctor's Orders, a resolution has to be specific. So lose weight is too vague. But lose £2 a week for 10 weeks. That's specific. Be reasonable. If you resolve to lose 15 pounds by next Tuesday, you will fail. In terms of weight loss, two pounds a week is considered doable. You have to want it. A New Year's resolution that you make because someone else wants you to usually doesn't work. And support really helps. And it's not always easy to get your friends and family have an investment in you to stay the way you are. For instance, if you stop smoking, who's your smoking buddy gonna smoke with? But asking people to support you and telling them that you're counting on them to do so can help. And that is something you should know. As I've said before, the best way to support this podcast to show your support is is to recruit some other listeners for us. Tell people you know about it, help us grow our audience. That's really how this podcast keeps going. So your help would be greatly appreciated. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.
- [51:02]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [51:58]
Mike Carruthers
When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Kratarakian Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxy's inhabited planets. The Wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small bit of peace amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression. Four decades decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living. But a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. The Stone wolves is season 11 of the Galactic Football League science fiction series by author Scott Sigler. Enjoy it as a standalone story, or listen to the entire GFL series, beginning with season one. The Rookie Search for Scott Sigler S I G L E R Wherever you get your podcasts.