How the Moon Transformed Earth & Fun and Easy Housecleaning Hacks - SYSK Choice

Today on Something You Should Know, it's amazing how many people actually have different size feet. Then the moon. It's up there in the sky every night and there's a lot about the moon you may not know. 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. Also, while 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. 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. All this today on Something You Should Know. Of the Regency Era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place. Where's the time when Jane Austen wrote her books? The Regency Era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency Era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency Era, wherever you get podcasts. 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 Moon, How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are. Hey, Rebecca, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me. 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. The moon is a rock, basically. It's a very large planetary body. It's not a planet 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 Earth. And it's part of Earth, literally? So we're still learning a little bit more about exactly what happened when the moon formed, but we know that it happened on 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, 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. So then shouldn't there be some big hole on Earth or some big chunk missing or some place where it's apparent the moon came from? Yeah, this is actually a theory people have 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's sort of just been there as the light that nights 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. I mean, 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 impactor, the speed it was going and what actually happened. Probably what happened is that both Earth 1.0 and whatever else hit Earth, which we've called Thea, 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. 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? 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 grow. So, I mean, think about how often you have to trim your nails. It's 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 like 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 it will not be able to block out the sun. I imagine people ponder this. What would Earth be like if the moon wasn't there? 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. 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 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. 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. 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? 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 in the way that the atmosphere changes over time. If it was gone, then you would have these big shifts in the poles. The poles of Earth would be tilted in different directions. So in maybe 20,000 years of time, you'd have 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 would 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. 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. We're talking about just how fascinating our moon is. And my guest is Rebecca Boyle, author of the book Our Moon, how Earth's celestial companion transformed the planet, guided evolution, and made us who we are. If Bravo Drama, Pop Culture, Chaos, and Honest Takes are your love language, you'll want all about TRH podcast in your feed. Hosted by Roxanne and Chantel, this show breaks down Real Housewives Reality TV and the moments everyone's group chat is arguing about. Roxanne's been spilling Bravo tea since 2010, and yes, we've interviewed Housewives Royalty like Countess Luanne and Teresa Judice. Smart recaps, Insider Energy, and Zero Fluff. Listen to all about TRH podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, new episodes weekly. 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? I think we went there because of politics the first time. We wanted to beat the Russians, we wanted to prove the power of capitalism and the American ingenuity to get us off this planet and onto another. And it happened, we did it, and Apollo still is this 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 spacefaring 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 spacefaring 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 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. Well, when you say we're not aware of what's happening, what's happening? Well, NASA is funding a bunch of missions through its Artemis program, which Artemis is the sister of Apollo in 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 the US has still got it. As part of Artemis, they're also funding a commercial lunar payload services program, which people call CLIPS, 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, little lander devices that just sort of sit there and have solar panels, and these are happening 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 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? No, I guess I don't understand. Why are cremated human remains going to the moon? I mean, there's plenty of room here. Yeah, I mean, it's one of these sort of, you know, it's kind of an 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 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 at Advil, you know, or some other like a painkiller, like 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. What about this idea you hear from time to time of trying to colonize the moon, make it so people could live there? It seems far-fetched, is it? 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 opposed to five. In case, and I have forgotten my science class information, how inhospitable is the moon? Like, what's the temperature? What's the, what would it be like if I were to just, you know, step off onto the moon? It depends on the time of day as far as the temperature, and a lunar day lasts about two Earth weeks. 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 space suit, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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. 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? 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. 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? 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 its really great distance from us. 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 Moon, 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. Thanks, Mike. This has been such a great time. Whether you're off to the big match, get in! Enjoying a trip to the coast to catch up with friends. Or exploring some incredible history with your family. What is it? With up to a third off most rail travel, a rail card can help you save on train journeys all around Great Britain. Find the one for you at railcard.co.uk. Teas and seas apply. 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 Love. A joyful guide to cleaning, organizing, and loving the home you're in. Hi Patrick, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. So I 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? 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. 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? 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. And you use vodka because vodka does what? 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 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. You know, you can also make cocktails with that. Well, my theory is I clean with college vodka. I drink adult vodka. Good, good, good plan. Yeah. 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 it, yeah, it's food grade. So you don't have to worry about chemically cleaners that are still lingering in 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? 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 vodka, 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 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. 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? 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. Okay. And so when you say go to it, tell me how to go to it. 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. 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 around. Well, 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 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. 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. That's 100% 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, not a lot 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. Something else that I remember that I found really interesting is that we have and I think it runs in families and it just 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 waste baskets and they fill up in no time and you have to go empty. Why? Why do we have little tiny waste baskets in the bathroom? Why not put a real waste basket in the bathroom that you don't have to empty out every two days? But because nobody thinks I don't like that. 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 waste basket 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. 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 will. Come on over. But probably there's a way to tackle those rooms, the bathroom, the kitchen that makes it a little less horrible. 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 at 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. 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 you use? 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 two 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. 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. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of those for a couple of reasons. Number one, they're way too much detergent for your clothes. But I find that 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, in that regard. 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? 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 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 wine, cranberries, blueberries, blood. I don't know how it was on your dining room table, but it's for those sort of organic or natural stains. 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. Oxygen bleach, unlike chlorine bleach, is completely color safe. If your dining room tablecloth had an embroidered edge, you're still totally fine. Oxygen bleach is like in the supermarket, is that like OxyClean or something? Yes, like that. There's a lot of them out there. Let's talk about the bedroom. I don't know what big challenge is in there, but there must be something that people complain about. The biggest one is oily sheets from 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. We throw things on our bedside table and the bedside table just tends to accumulate more books, more glasses of water, three pairs of eyeglasses, those sorts of things. A great trick for that is to put a chest by your bedside and use one of the drawers as a table. In the morning, when you're ready to leave, you just push the door shut and everything's out of sight out of mind. Perfect. Those are the big things about the bedroom. The other thing, of course, to the bedroom, 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. In the last few moments here, let's maybe mentally run through the house and some of your favorite suggestions. A great one in the entryway is to get a flat tray. It can even be a cookie sheet and fill it with pebbles. Then it looks good and you can throw shoes on it. The snow will melt and the water will go into the pebbles. Then your shoes are dry when you're ready to leave again. Another one that's 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. Then once a week, go through it so things don't just 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. If you get a spill, you can attack it right then and it doesn't become something that you have to come back to later. Most spills and that sort of thing, if you can get them in the moment, they're really easy to deal with. Then my other one for the bathroom is to clean your bathtub and your sink with dish soap. The reason dish soap works so great is because it's meant to cut oil. Your bathtub has the oil from your skin and the oil from lotion and bath oils and those sorts of things. Dish soap will cut it immediately. It works much better than those foamy tub cleaners. Let me ask you real quick, because we've talked about 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 counterproductive? 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, our grandparents and our great grandparents had the right idea. Just a few simple things work everywhere. When we started buying all of these specialty cleaners, to use countertops as an example, first everybody had granite, then they had marble, then they had quartz. There really were different cleaners for each of those. Now there's soapstone. There's so many different things just for countertops. 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. 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, 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. And when you use vodka straight up or with a twist? It's just straight up. 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 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. It was too bad. I wanted it to work so bad just because I thought it was funny. I've never heard anybody tout the cleaning benefits of vodka like you do. You're kind of the poster boy for vodka as a cleaner. It's a great cleaner. As I said, it is food grade. I wouldn't serve you a martini with the vodka that I clean with. You'll just be amazed. It'll clean like your stovetop. It's just fantastic. It's just so easy and it's pretty affordable. It's cheaper than a cleaner for sure. It's just so easy. And vodka also removes odor. 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 is 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. 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 Love, 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. Oh, thanks. Have a great day. 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 Doctors Orders, a resolution has to be specific. So lose weight is too vague, but lose two pounds a week for ten 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 going to 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 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 Rothers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. If you're new to the show, check out an episode called The Staircase. It's a personal story of mine about trying to get my kids' school to teach sex ed. Spoiler, I get it to happen, but not at all in the way that I wanted. We also talk to plenty of non-parents, so you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, the longest, shortest time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longashortestime.com.