FACTORALY - E8 CLEANING

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

No soft soaping on this one... Everything you never needed to know about getting rid of dirt, all in one half an hour of good clean fun. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, it's us again. Welcome to Factorily with me, Bruce Fielding, and... Me, Simon Wells. Hello, welcome back. And this week, we thought we'd talk dirty to you because we're very good at talking dirty. We'll get our deep, sexy voices out. We'll get those voices out. But then we thought, nope, we're going to be very clean this week. So cleaning is what we're going to discuss. And again, with all of these topics, it seems that we think we've got a very simple subject. And suddenly it turns into this. My God, cleaning is a huge thing.

The can is open and the worms are everywhere. I know. I guess ever since man, well, I suppose even animals kind of, you know, when your cat's lying on the mat with its back leg in the air and its tongue. Looking like it's playing the cello. I guess that's cleaning. But I mean, I think what we're probably going to be talking about today is more sort of like third party. Yes.

Where we're actually about sort of making something that was dirty clean deliberately. Using some form of product or system. Yes. And I suppose for many, many years, being clean was actually perceived as being a bad thing. People had a bath twice a year because it was the thing to do. Right, yes. And you stay dirty. I mean, you stay warmer.

You stay, you know. After a while, apparently, if you don't wash your hair, for example, with shampoo for some time, initially it goes all sort of greasy and smelly and horrible. But after some months, it actually starts to return to some sort of semblance of cleanliness. You just have to rinse it with water. You don't actually have to return to some sort of semblance of cleanliness. You just have to rinse it with water. You don't actually have to use shampoo.

So it sort of keeps itself in its own equilibrium of cleanness. Yes. Brilliant. But you would have to go through that nasty social pariah phase of smelling in order to get there. Well, exactly. I mean, personal hygiene was never really a thing up until, well, up until I guess, you know, the First World War. Is that that recent that people sort of didn't really bother too much about, you know, that's what perfume's for. Yes, to cover it up. Yes.

Yes. Rather than actually doing anything about it. Yes. Yeah. I suppose there are some, you are some exceptions to the rule. I found one of the earliest roots of a cleaning-based product. We don't know whether this was for personal hygiene or for cleaning the floor or whatever it was, but some archaeologists found that the Babylonians around 2800 BC were making

soap. abaloneans around 2800 bc were making soap they they found a clay cylinder with an inscription on it which translated as fat boiled with ash which to me doesn't sound like a great cleaning product but apparently that's what they established it was there you go i mean i guess you know there were roman baths but they were more kind of like a place to be sociable rather than actually a place to, you know, to do under your armpits. Yeah, a bit more like a spa. Yes. But yeah, I mean, even as, you know, as recent as, you know, the 40s and 50s, you know, people had a bath once a week, which is and that was seen as perfectly acceptable. When I was a very young child, having a bath twice a week was perfectly normal.

And because the whole family used the same bath regularly and the water was sort of getting murkier and murkier, that's what gave rise to the phrase, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Because you might potentially lose the baby in this filthy, dirty, murky water with everyone else's grime in it. Yes. The history of personal hygiene is absolutely vast. It used to be that there was like, you know, you had Wright's coal tar soap or you had Lux if you were rich.

And you had Vosine for shampoo and you had maybe there were a couple of other shampoos. And then suddenly marketing took off and brand and brand differentiation and you know oh what kind of hair do you have what kind of skin do you have yes what kind of you know and then the the supermarket shelves that used to have a very small area of of of facing for um for cleaning products suddenly an entire aisle is full of personal hygiene products yes yes because every single one has a different a different fragrance to it some are for sensitive skins some as you say that you've got particular anti-dandruff brands or anti-thin hair brands or or whatever yes the choices are endless i know i know and and

and i've and i think generally the choices are kind of a bit made up possibly when i when i was at uh when i was at art school um we had to do a project which was to invent invent a product and and then do a commercial for it the the product that i invented was at that time there were no believe it or not there were no shampoos specifically for men really really huh you had a women's shampoo and family shampoo and that was it right okay so i thought well okay let's have a shampoo for men we'll call it barbershop right it It came in a bottle that was like a barbershop stripe pole, red and white stripe pole. And I thought, all right, now I need to do a commercial for this thing.

So I had this script, which was a load of people disguise themselves by greasing back their hair really, really greasily. Yeah. And sort of wearing a mask over their faces. And then they they rob a bank. And they go away. And then they all wash their hair in barbershop shampoo, which makes it all bouffant and fancy. And then they go back and deposit the same money into their accounts at the bank and nobody recognizes them. Wonderful.

Because their hair is just so much better. So that's exactly what we did. And I made this commercial for barbershop shampoo for men. Oh, and I actually made the shampoo. I went to Lever Brothers. And I asked to speak to somebody who was the chief scientist on the shampoo side. And I said, could we make one that was specifically for men? He said, oh, sure, we could do some now.

We'll just put the things together and I'll actually make you some shampoo. So it may be that because I went to see this guy. Are you actually suggesting that you may have accidentally invented shampoo for men? Yeah, well, possibly. Every time I chat to you i learn something new this is incredible i may be overreaching it a bit there but i i definitely talked to the guy who was in charge and definitely suggested to him which he hadn't thought of before well i think that's i think that's a claim to fame yeah of course there are lots of other types of cleaning.

We've talked about cleaning oneself, but pretty much everything else in our lives needs cleaning. So the dishes need cleaning, the clothes need cleaning, the house needs cleaning, the car needs cleaning. And there are loads of different types of products and methods of going about cleaning all of these different things so i went down the route of house cleaning and i was looking at alternative cleaning products because modern day cleaning products you know you have to wear rubber gloves you occasionally have

to wear a face mask if you're using something really really strong to do the floor with sensitive skin and all that sort of stuff so there were a whole raft of different homemade alternatives to these products and i started looking around thinking oh there are going to be loads and loads of examples of this and it's really boring because essentially they all just consist of vinegar water lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda in different proportions and different measures. But that is the basic cleaning product. You could take any one of those out and replace them with something else,

but that is essentially what a cleaning product is. Wow. So flash, jiff, all that stuff is basically the same stuff. Pretty much, with a few extra twists along the way. I'm sure a lot of it is purely down to the smell. If you took away the smell, it would basically be the same product. A couple of things I found about homemade cleaning alternatives.

I'd never heard of this before, but there's an item of food called a soap nut. Okay. Have you heard of soap nuts? I have not. So they're actually called the Indian soap berry. They're not a nut at all, but soap nuts sounds more fun.

Are you sure it's not a droop? Maybe a droop or even a pulse. Who knows? But these things, Indian soap berries, they're the fruit of a tree called the Sapindus mucoirose tree, which is native to the Himalayas. And you pick these berries. They do look a little bit nut- nut like they sort of have a husk

but then there's a berry inside that looks something like a black grape you pick these things dry them crush them and it produces this very odd sort of foaming soap like substance and for thousands of years people have been using this as a natural form of soap. And there's a bit of a resurgence in the modern days of organic stuff to sort of bring these things back. And they can be used for laundry detergent, dish and hand soap, shampoo, body wash, pet cleaning wash and mosquito repellent. Wow. So get yourself some soap nuts. Everything from soap to nuts. Indeed. And everything in between.

Another great thing that I've seen, I've actually seen someone using this for cleaning bare wooden floorboards is coffee grounds. You just sprinkle a load of coffee grounds all over your floorboards and then sweep them up again. And it acts as a sort of exfoliant for the wood. And it makes the wood nice and shiny. It gets rid of all the in-ground dirt and has the benefit of leaving your house smelling like fresh coffee. That's a brilliant idea. I shall definitely not try that given the cost of coffee i think that would be quite although uh that this scattering or dry stuff to clean is quite interesting because uh you they used to use full as earth you know the very that very very fine earth yes um to clean clothes did they and basically just rub rub the full as earth on the clothes and the full as earth

would pull out all the moisture that was attached to the smells and the germs and stuff in the material. Right. And then go away. Fantastic. I used to think Fuller's Earth was just the name of a particular brand of beer. From Chiswick. Yes, from Chiswick. Exactly.

Yeah, Fuller's Earth is very useful for all sorts of things, including cleaning. But the idea of cleaning without using water is quite interesting because dry cleaning as a thing has been around for quite a while with people using something that isn't water to clean clothes. I suppose water is just sort of the the easiest most obvious thing to think of isn't it you're going back to ancient times settlements naturally gathered around bodies of water usually rivers um as a source of you know drink and the ability to clean so it's just always been there you know you we we all know that you flush your toilet and it involves water. You do the dishes, it involves water.

I suppose as we get more and more into the territory of water shortages and trying to conserve what we use, maybe the idea of dry cleaning will become more prevalent. We talked about cars. You mentioned cars and cleaning cars there's a there's a couple of wonderful things about cleaning cars the first thing is with with dry cleaning you can dry clean a car can you um so there's a thing called snow cleaning and it's amazing if you if you get online go to youtube and look at some videos of CO2 snow cleaning. What they do is they reclaim CO2 from industry.

So there's no extra CO2 generated to go to the atmosphere. So it's neutral. Chill it down until it becomes a liquid. And then blast it at cars to clean them. Right. So what happens is that the frozen CO2 becomes a snow as it comes out of the nozzle of the cleaning. Yeah. The CO2 freezes the dirt, which makes it crack and crumble.

So there are holes in it. Then the gas gets into the holes, expands, and explodes the dirt. So if you watch these things,'s like a a car that's been you know completely covered in mold or or dust or mess or oil and you just do this and it gets straight back very very very gently because it only affects the dirt it doesn't affect the the material below it yeah affect the material below it to the way it left the factory. That's awesome. I want that. And you can actually have it done to your car. You can find people who do snow cleaning. Right. That's one to put in the search engine after the show.

The other thing that's quite interesting is one of the most expensive ways that you can polish your car is with carnauba wax. Right. And carnauba wax is flakes from the leaf of a plant. You basically dry the leaves and the wax cracks off the leaves. And then you distill it down and you have pure carnauba wax. And then to make it into a good car wax, you mix it with various things like beeswax, for example, to make it softer and more malleable. And then if you're doing your car properly, you take a little bit of the carnauba wax in your hand, roll it between your hands so it goes liquid because of the heat of your body. And then you sort of rub your hands over the car to apply oh you just give your car a little massage yes exactly it's like a bit of smoothing

for the car lovely let's say you wanted like a couple of hundred grams of this stuff and you and you did have 570 pounds to spend really on a 200 gram tub of the, yes. Oh, my goodness. Ouch. But the other thing they use carnauba wax for, I mean, apart from cleaning cars, is to put a shine on suites. So things like M&Ms and all that stuff, it's shiny basically because of car wax, because of carnauba.

But there's another thing about cleaning which is uh crime scene cleaning okay that's not where i thought you were going to go which is something that you can actually get qualified for you you can get a certificate in in crime scene cleaning you know like you know mr wolf in pulp fiction who cleans the car out is it harvey harvey cartel i can't remember who it is harvey cartel yeah winston and mr wolf and you can actually do that for a living wow so uh if if there's been some kind of crime and then the after the police are finished and just before the tape comes down they send in the crime scene cleaners brilliant and they they're all trained in how to deal with everything from blood and guts and bone and what have you to needles.

Some of these crimes happen in very sort of mucky areas. So they're trained on how to deal with pigeon shit and all the other stuff that you would imagine. Fantastic. That's a very niche piece of work, isn't it? Well, yes you can you imagine going to a party and saying i'm a cleaner and people go oh yeah fine yeah and you go well i actually like i clean up after crimes oh far cooler and then immediately the entire dining

table is like listening just hanging on your every word yeah so as part of as part of my research here talking about cleaning we're going down the house cleaning route. I decided to have a quick look at vacuum cleaners. And the Hoover brand of vacuum cleaners was so synonymous with the item itself that people say, I'm going to Hoover the lounge. Or I'm going to do something. With their Dyson. Yes, I'm going to Hoover with my Dyson. Yeah, it doesn't work at all does it um but that sort of got me thinking to to you know how did the vacuum cleaner come about and i found that the first vacuum cleaner was a british invention hooray

hooray go us uh it was created by a gentleman called hubert cecil booth you can't get much more of a brit British name than that. In 1901. There was already a machine at the time that was used for cleaning the house, but it was more like a leaf blower. So it blew air at the carpets, it raised all the dust up,

and then you sort of pushed the dust towards a collecting bag. Now that was okay for a while, but Hubert Cecil Booth decided to make it go the other way around. And he set up the British Vacuum Cleaner Company in 1901. And that was the first vacuum cleaner. So how big was this vacuum cleaner? No idea. I didn't actually look up any pictures of it. Oh, well, I happen to know this because I once did a thing called Very British Facts. And one of the facts was about vacuum cleaners. Oh, perfect. And so the original ones were horse-drawn. They were actually a carriage that turned up outside your house with tubes.

And the tubes would run into the house from the horse-drawn carriage. Oh, wonderful. And they'd sort of start up some sort of motor inside it. Yeah. And that would be the way that they sucked the dirt out of your home and you'd have to book it. Yes. And this chap Booth would turn up, Booth's vacuum cleaner is on the side of this cart

and would come and vacuum your house. Oh, that's great. And then only a handful of years after that, we have to give credit to the Americans, the first upright vacuum cleaner, the first thing that you and I would recognise as a household vacuum cleaner these days, was invented by an American gentleman called Jamesames murray spangler who was

from ohio and he created this thing in 1908 uh he was asthmatic and he was convinced that the dust in his carpet was was giving him a hard time and um at the time everyone was using carpet sweepers which which did a certain amount of good but it did leave an awful lot of dust kicked up into the air and and was effective. So the carpet sweeper's like, when I was growing up, we had a thing called a U-bank. A U-bank? Did you have to talk with a lisp as you were using it? It came in a box. No, it was, it's like the wheels drive a beater that's got four wheels on it. And the four wheels drive a beater that's got four wheels on it and the four wheels drive a beater that pushes the

dirt into collectors it's like a small tin collector either side of the wheels. And then just attached to a long handle you push it backwards and forwards. Yeah it's a bit like the carpet equivalent of the old-fashioned lawnmower. Yes oh you're right that's exactly what it looks like. So James Murray Spangler was using one of these carpet sweepers, coughing a lot, and he decided to take the previous idea of the vacuum cleaner and make it smaller and more manageable and household friendly. And he created this item, which he then started to produce in small numbers. He gave one to his cousin called Susan Troxell Hoover. She was married to a fellow called William Henry Hoover, and he sort of took the idea with Mr. Spangler's permission and ran with it.

William Henry Hoover was a leather goods producer along along with his son. And so they sort of had the idea of using their leather goods to make a bag to collect the dirt that was sucked up. And the rest is history. That's how we had Hoovers. Is that why it's called Henry? The Hoover that we have in the UK, we have a little sort of strange tug about thing. Why not? They're called Henry Hooversovers aren't they let's say yes there's a whole family of henry hoovers aren't they so for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about it's a little cylindrical squat usually red vacuum cleaner um sits about two foot off the ground perhaps um and it has a black hose coming out of of the side of it with a pair of eyes drawn onto the onto the side of the machine to make it look like he's sort of sucking up the

dirt through its through its nose um and that's the henry hoover but then uh other variations have been created in in various different colors uh the most recent one i think is a pink one called henrietta hoover just to keep things equal. Oh, how sweet. Isn't that nice? One of the biggest jobs in cleaning any household up to quite recently was chimney sweeping. Oh, yes, of course.

And chimney cleaning was a proper art of um how to you know to get to get that brush up there and not to make the room that the brush was going in from covered in soot when the when the soot was coming down after the guy after the chimney sweep yeah uh would would bring the bring the brush down and bring all the soot down. And they originally used these very large cotton sacks and actually sort of taped them around the fireplace. And the chimney sweep would have to be in there to actually put the brush up. So they're obviously inhaling carcinogens

and all sorts of horrible things. But that's why the classic look of the chimney sweep is covered in soot because they would be inside the bag doing the cleaning. Oh, wonderful. Well, not wonderful for them, obviously. These days they use a vacuum cleaner. Do they? Yes.

Fine. And also they have a bag with a slit in it so they can actually get the brush and assemble it through a slit and then push it up and then everything's vacuumed. It's all nice and neat and clean and chimney sweeps don't look like chimney sweeps anymore. When I was living in Tufnel Park, we had fireplaces in every room, which was amazing. So we had to have them cleaned from time to time. And we found a guy who was the first one in the telephone directory called A.A. Chimney Sweep.

He knew what he was doing. His name was probably Jeff Johnson. You see, we thought that that was the reason why he called himself A.A. Chimney Sweep. When he turned up, he was deaf. So we would say things to him and he'd go, Eh? Eh? Fantastic. Now, the other element of cleaning around the house,

which I personally hate doing, is cleaning the windows. I thought you were going to say toilet, but fair enough, windows. I'd rather clean a toilet than the windows, actually. Really? There's less of it. There are just too many windows. And I was having a think about window cleaning and the way that's changed since the days of,

what's the man with the ukulele called? I knew you were going to ask me that. George? Formby. Formby. When I'm cleaning windows. Him. Yes, we've sort of gone from the idea of a person shimmying up a ladder with a sponge and a squeegee,

which obviously does still happen largely around residential areas. But more and more, I'm beginning to see people in inner cities cleaning industrial or commercial buildings with an incredibly long pole. And these poles are sort of put together in stages. They have a brush on the end and they are attached to a tank of water and a pump, usually inside a van. And the person stands on the ground floor with this incredibly long pole cleaning the windows on these office blocks and i found that there was a guinness world record for the the longest window cleaning pole ever and this was a company called harvard window cleaning based in in bournemouth and they managed to put together a window cleaning pole that was 35 meters long wow Wow. Or 115 feet. And this thing managed to reach the 10th floor

on an office block. So you had this chap standing on the ground floor with this ridiculously long pole, which I think that the stats said was about the length of three double-decker buses or, interestingly, 33 Windsor Davises. That's a unit of measure. Isn't that great? One Windsor Davieses That's a unit of measure Isn't that great? One Windsor Davis

So yes, this cleaning company has the world record for the longest window cleaning pole I just have an image in my head of this guy You know when you're holding something quite tall which is heavier at the top and it starts to overbalance and you have to run

to the left to kind of catch it. I really hope that's how it looked. Because, I mean, you used to see guys in those, like, cradles, cleaning cradles. Oh, suspended off the side of the building. Yeah. Yeah. Do we still get those? We must do.

I guess. I guess they have to happen. Although, apparently, a lot of glass these days is self-cleaning. Is it? Yes. How? It's actually got a material within the glass that repels water. Really?

Yes. I suppose that's probably cheaper and safer. Yes. Yeah, and easier. Wow. Are there any other Guinness records for cleaning? There are actually a couple, yes. People tend to uh

find any way of getting a guinness world record have you have you got one no have you no i haven't maybe we should get one shall we try and get one what should we get one in i don't know hopefully voiceover be a nice idea wouldn't it most most number of words spoken in a minute or oh that no that's speed reading, speed talking. I don't know how to do that. Well, if anyone has any ideas of a vacant Guinness World Record that Bruce and I could have a crack at, please do let us know. But yes, I found a couple of other Guinness World Records

relating to cleaning. There is a Guinness World Record for the quickest window cleaner, which has been held for the last 20 years by a gentleman called Terry Turbo Burrows. And he managed to clean three office windows,

which were 45 by 45 inches, and he managed to clean these three windows in 9.14 seconds. Wow. And he did this at an event which I really want to go to, the National Window Cleaning Competition in Blackpool. Isn't that great?

Goodness me. Are there judges also to see whether it's streaky? I don't know whether the quality of the cleaning is in question. You'd like to think so because otherwise it wouldn't be clean, would it? But there's one record. Another record for cleaning was the most number of cars washed in an eight-hour period. And this record is held by a company in USA called Napa Auto Parts. And this record was set in April 2019.

They managed to get the community together. They sort of involved some charities and some local kids as well. They managed to clean 7,197 vehicles in eight hours. So that's just under 1,000 an hour? Just under 1,000 vehicles an hour wow isn't that incredible uh so yes that's a few little a few little world records around cleaning goodness me well i i take my time when i'm cleaning a car do you i do i i i find it a very sort of relaxing thing to do you know i, I'm a two-sponge guy.

I've always thought that about you. Wax on, wax off. Exactly. We are very opposite people in this respect. I drive my car to a local petrol station and go through one of those automated things that scratches the daylights out of your vehicle. Yeah, yeah. it's fun even

i sit there with with um at the car wash playing on my stereo it takes all of three minutes and then you can get on with your life office office cleaning is um is a whole different. There's a whole industry based on what they call contract cleaning, where basically the cleaner will go into an office every single day and clean up after the staff have left or before they arrive in the morning and go through the bins and actually make sure that the environment is healthy for the employees. There used to be a company called Phonotas. Right.

This is when there were proper landlines on everybody's desks in their office. And Phonotas would come in every two or three months. And there would be a man or a woman in a uniform a phonotax uniform who would come with a spray and and a kind of like a microfiber cloth and clean all of the handsets of all of the phones in the office which back in the day would have been thousands upon thousands of handsets wow i mean you should technically i mean if you think about it with mobile phones, you're breathing and coughing into your phone all the time. It's a breeding ground for germs.

Absolutely, yeah. I sort of give my phone a cursory wipe every now and then, but only because the screen has become smudged and I can't see properly. It's never really occurred to me that I should properly clean it for hygiene's sake. But that does make sense. I mean, if you think about it, one of the reasons why Florence Nightingale was the nurse that she was and why she saved so many lives was actually because of her cleanliness regimes.

Yes. And the fact that she actually ran a clean hospital. It's just a question of working out that people actually got sick because they were dirty. Some people credit her with inventing the pie chart. Really? Yes, because she actually kept stats and records of who was getting sick where

and could then prove that the cleaner places were actually, people were recovering better in cleaner hospitals than other places. Well done, Florence. So I guess we've pretty much cleaned up on cleaning products. Oh, I see what you did there. That was good. So thank you very much to our listener, Gary. Thank you for your loyalty. We appreciate it. Tell some of your friends. Yes, that would be nice.

And if you have any comments or stories about cleaning, put them in the chat. Indeed. Please do all the things you're supposed to do. Like, subscribe, share. Shout about it in the street. Yes. And if you enjoy this sort of thing,

we do this sort of thing every week. There's an endless repository of useless, useful facts for you. Absolutely. Right at your fingertips. Thank you very much. And we'll see you next time. Cheerio. Bye now.