Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Bad and Sad: Daniel’s Homeowner Maintenance Checklist | Ep. 306

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Daniel and Soren spiral from a question about fatherly virtue into the unglamorous rituals of homeownership: cleaning dishwasher filters, testing fire extinguishers, inspecting crawlspaces, and worrying about phantom basement leaks. Daniel confesses to following a Redditor’s “psychotic” home maintenance spreadsheet, while Soren admits he’s never once tested a smoke detector. Along the way they cover the delicate art of writing jokes for Last Week Tonight, a formative childhood fire incident, and the existential dread of discovering a wasp nest the size (but not shape) of a dog. Thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/qqFollow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts on what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When would I be?

What was it out? Word it all that. Oh, forget it. Saw and buried Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends And comedy writers If there's an answer They're going to find it

I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here So hello again And welcome to the episode of Quick Question with Sorin and Daniel our podcast We ask questions, we get answers I am one half of this podcast, senior writer for last week tonight with John Oliver, Daniel O'Brien,

joined as always by Soren Bowie. Soren say hello. Hello, everybody. I'm a writer for American Dad and a Dad in Real Life as well. And I'm the other half of this podcast. Soren, I got a quick question for you. Oh, right off the bat. Wait, wait, hold on.

Are you saying fires? What's going on over there? Thanks to Shopify for supporting quick question. Shopify is a platform. designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash QQ. I'm just lighting a candle. That's so cute.

I like to light a candle in here. Well, let's hold how cute that is. We were discussing today's record, and I said, I'm pretty free all day, but whatever we're doing, I need like, 25 minutes or so before we record some lead time and I was going to use that lead time to shower which I have not done

since a very sweaty workout. Okay. And I got that lead time and I still did not shower and so I've lit a candle. To do what? Cure you. Soren

Eric, go ahead. What's the most virtuous thing about fatherhood for you? Wow. Like, what makes me feel the most virtuous? Yeah. Jesus Christ. You know what, why don't you take this one first? This is one of those ones where you go first and I'll go second.

I heard it. I heard that question as like just tossed off hand on Beck and Kyle's new podcast. And they don't even address it. It's so casually funny that Beck was like asking Kyle what kind of questions he likes to be asked. And does he like personal questions? Like, for example, what about fatherhood makes you feel virtuous? I do enjoy coming across questions like that. Like questions that you can just pull out of your back pocket when a conversation lulls or something that are very funny.

Because you don't expect answers for them. Like we talked about this in the podcast. I've talked about, I have a neighbor who is German, Swedish. I've got to check in on where she's actually from. But she will say, we'll be at her house and everyone's from else. She'll go, does anyone have a wish? And what she means is like, can I get you anything? But what it sounds like is somebody tell me their wish.

I want to hear what you wish for. And I really love that. Or Nathan Fielder asking people when things get quiet, what are some of your secrets? Yeah. There's such an, I mean, those. Those are open-ended. There's such an art to coming up with very good questions. And it's like a trap that I find myself in at work everyone's snowing out

because like an example of a kind of joke bucket that I would go to at last week tonight is if I'm trying to get away from like a really sad clip that we just showed and into some kind of joke territory. And let's say it's a clip where someone is in prison and the heat has been turned off the prison or the air conditioning has been turned off in the prison. And so they're just like roasting alive and they're miserable. And the clip ends with the person,

teary-eyed saying something to be effective. How is a person supposed to find any peace or rehabilitate their lives if they're cooking from the inside? the whole time. Then we would cut to John, and now it's our turn to make John be funny off that. And I would do something like, that's awful. First of all, it's awful because it's terrible inhumane conditions. Second of all, no one should have to sit around thinking questions like,

how am I supposed to find peace when I'm roasting from the inside? People are supposed to spend their time thinking about questions like this. And then I would come up with, like, the joke bucket is, what are some really good questions that, like silly questions, like, does my dog know when I'm petting it with my foot that I'm using an inferior appendage to pet my dog? Or do lions like having their hair brushed? Just the kind of questions that are like, it's a, it's a thing that comes up a lot on this show because I'm often jumping away from really sad clips and trying to find absurd territory. Right. It's very difficult to think about questions that are like good, broad

philosophical questions like that. That is an opportunity for John to like riff with it and play with it for a while in the joke. And also something that the audience will think like, fuck, that is a good question. I'm going to think about that now. And I've never thought about that before in my life. It was this book I read a little while ago called Murder on Sex, Island by Joe Firestone there's a character I think is like close to death and is fading away and she's like but we'll never even get to I I wasted my life I never even got to do X or Y I never even got to explore questions like if a dog wears pants is it in two legs or on four legs and I'm just like fuck that's a good one oh such a specific art to find that kind of question yeah it is

so it is also a fine line because if it It's too good. You distract from the rest of the episode. If it's, you really have to, it has to be one. You're like, oh,

that's interesting. I'll think about that later and just like move on. Because if you're like, wait a second, why don't they make the crust of pizza dessert like so that you eat towards your dessert? Like, you know,

like, why that would be so much better. But yeah, I agree with you. I think that there's, and we don't talk about this enough on the show, but your show is. particularly tough because the content fights you on jokes the entire way there's at no point

is like the content making it easier on you to tell a joke especially now as things get more and more dismal it's like the at every single turn the content is going to fight you and be like no we're not going to laugh about any of this it's sad it's bad and it's sad yeah and then you have to be yeah but what if what if i was able to ring a little bit more water out of the stone yeah it's it's sad and it's bad um in in two ways there's the obvious way that it's sad which is like how do i get away from a clip that is either someone uh crying because they're desperate or someone who is like self-righteously angry or someone who is um like a stephen miller type like a like an obvious bad actor saying something truly hateful how do i get off that into

something funny. That's the obvious way that it's bad. The less obvious way that it's bad is when you are five or six years into the job as I am or seven years, whatever it is, um, the question is also how do I get away from that joke in kind of a fresh way? How do I get away from this clip in a way that is not just that's awful and it's extra awful coming from Stephen Miller who looks like nosferatu fucked an egg or whatever it is that we're going to do where it's like that's a perfectly serviceable kind of looks like joke

that at this point in my career it's just like all right I want to get away from this but I also I don't want to do something that I feel like I've already done before or that the show or like that the audience is ahead of me you know the audience walking into a

taping of last week tonight has in their phone app a list of things that Stephen Miller looks like and they're just waiting for someone to call on them so they can say it. So I'm trying to beat that person too and get off sad, self-righteous or hateful in a way

that they don't know that they want to see just yet because we haven't done it before. So it's... So you're right, Soren, it's really hard. Just beating yourself at every turn. Yeah, it's like... And also that you have to maintain the severity

of what you're actually dealing with. Like, you can't just make jokes that undercut what you're talking about that make it seem like it's not as bad as it is. You have to establish the gravitas of the situation while also being lighthearted about it, which is like the very best eulogies could do this and nothing else.

And so it's really tough. It's tough work. I'm just going to give me that. I'll give me that. I first started here and we were ganging on a clip of someone telling something so horrible that had happened to them And they were, it was so bad that they, they had, like, concealed their identity.

They distorted their voice and blurred their face to conceal their identity while they're telling a terrible story about something that happened to them in immigration courts and something that happened to them in prison. One of the things that we talk about on the show and gangs are when we're all, all the writers in a room together pitching jokes off something. And I wrote some kind of desperate joke about the funny way the voice distortion sounded or the funny. thing about how when you blur someone's face to conceal their identity, it looks like whatever I thought it looked like. And Jill Twist, one of the senior writers, was like, just FYI, they would never do a joke like that on the show. And I'm like, oh, fuck, I can't even do a joke that's like, this is just tangentially

about the thing you, this is like on a superficial level, isn't it funny? Isn't voice distortion funny? It's like, no, your joke needs to on some level engage with the whole. horrible thing that's happening. I'm like, fuck. Okay, well, then shut that door

forever. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, you only got so many weapons every single time to like, to kill that joke.

And, you know, sometimes it's going to, the murders are going to look the same, man. They're going to, over time, they're going to

start being the same. Anyway, I'm not going to answer your virtuous question. Okay. That's fine. I was just killing time anyway.

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slash QQ. We're going to do Here's what we're going to do on episode of quick question today. We're going to do the show. We're going to do the home maintenance checklist. Okay.

Okay, great. Why don't you vamp while I find it? Yeah, sure. saved it um i there are certain things in your life that that take up so much of your time and you have no one to talk to about them i think that honestly this time a year it's particularly bad because there are so many men who play fantasy football but it's the dumbest dumbest sounding thing and so they're just like they they're sundays are spent ruined i mean they're mad the whole day even if they're not watching the games they're angry the whole time and they have no one to turn to

they have no one to like talk to because it sounds so fucking lame to talk about about how your fantasy guys aren't doing good. And I would put home maintenance and the gym in both those categories, where it's like, I'm spending a lot of time doing both of these things. But to talk about them, it just sounds shitty. It always sounds shitty. And so it's a real challenge to make it not sound like I'm complaining about something that's good. Okay.

Soren, I found it. And I'm ready to talk now. All right, great. I was only listening to you with half an ass and half an ear. and I feel like I heard what always happens whenever I give you any unsupervised space, I feel like fantasy football came up. There it was.

You give me a buck and breath in a conversation and I will take you through my team and we'll talk about why my team isn't good. Soren, I got a house last January. Let's hear it for Dan. Oh, motor. And there's a lot, I've lived in apartments since 2007. And before that was in dorm housing or like living in my parents' house.

And I had chores, but very little like I didn't have to manage a house. So a lot of this I felt pretty in the dark about. And I wanted to learn all the stuff that a person needed to do. and I was searching for lists of home maintenance, like checklist things. Like, what should I do? How often do I need to change this or check that, that kind of thing? Because there truly is no, like, standard resource guide for that kind of thing. And you can't trust the Internet, but I have decided to anyway.

I've decided to trust one person on Reddit. who was just like, here, I'm going to just share a spreadsheet of my home maintenance checklist. And the spreadsheet is broken down into tabs of monthly, yearly, seasonal, biennial, five-year, 10-year. And it's stuff that he does every month. Oh, my God. And there are even other people on Reddit, just like where we've kept all of the world's maniacs on Reddit, just the internet's Australia, they're all gathered

together and even other Reddit commenters were like, this is fucking crazy. But I have taken it and I have done fucking crazy and I'm doing this checklist. I do it every single month and I know

that my parents did not do this every month. There are some things on here that I don't think my parents did ever in the but 25 or 30 years that they lived in my childhood home. Okay. Can I just guess what some other things are?

I was going to tell you the entire list of 22 items. There's 22. Okay. Anything I guess we'll be on there. So just go ahead and tell me them. HVAC vacuum out return grills. Wait. I don't know.

Wait a second. There's a couple that I don't do because I don't think I have them or I don't know or I can't read them. He wants to vacuum out the returns. He's not talking about a vacuum out return. He's saying that he vacuums out the returns for the HVAC system. So he's basically just cleaning dust out of his HVAC. Okay.

Another HVAC item, one quarter cup distilled white vinegar in drain pump tank. Okay. Do you do that every month? Of course not. No. He also doesn't, his terminology is weird. Drain pump tank. I think he's talking about the condensate.

really like valve and do you that's you don't need to clean that out every month by any I will do that once a year I will maybe not even that maybe not even that we had to do it when we turned our AC on for the first time because the previous owners were negligent but after that I feel like we're pretty we're going to be pretty good furnace inspect filter do you do that do you have furnace well so my HVAC has two filters but they're intakes like their intakes throughout the house, right? So there are filters there and I change those out every three months. Although this one, I was just looking at the one over my head.

And it is, I am woefully behind. I think I last changed it in July. Smoke CEO, do you test your smoke and carbon testers every month? I have not tested one my whole life. They're pretty annoying to test. They make that loud noise and your ears are right up there with them. I think the only thing that that would help me with is it would get me to know just by sound the difference between the carbon monoxide detector and the smoke detector because I don't know those differences. Have you put one of those detectors in somewhere in your house?

Have you ever installed one? Okay. This is not on the list. This is just me checking and asking. Yes. Because these are things that we as homeowners are paying extra close attention to. now that this is a scoop for the podcast, but not anyone who follows me on other social media

because we've got a baby coming. And we are now suddenly very conscious of the fact that, like, hey, we should get like a carbon whatever detector for the, fuck, carbon whatever. A carbon whatever detector. It doesn't matter what happens to us, but we should make sure we have one of these things for the- Honey, I got bad news. Our bodies are mostly carbon.

This isn't looking good. I'm riddled with the stuff. GFCI outlets. Do you test those every month? No. In fact, I'll never test those. The only time that those ever even come up for me, I know what it is. It's like any place where you have water source, you have to have that particular type of outlet because it immediately shuts off as soon as it gets wet. But they're the ones that have like a little like push and restart kind of buttons in the middle of them.

And the only time I ever fuck with those is if for whatever reason they've shorted it out. And I just got to like push one of those buttons to get it regoing again. But I'm not going to go test those. They have green lights on them. There's nothing to test. This is one that for our listeners at home who are possibly going to use this as their monthly checklist, this is on my sublist of things that I stopped checking. Because I was earnestly doing all these that I could, including the GFCIs. And it was so novel the first month where I'm going through when I'm like plugging things in.

It should also go without saying that January, February, when we bought the house. We are not producing episodes of the show last week tonight yet, so I've got some time on my hands. I've got some disposable time to walk around with a plug and test all these things and press all the buttons. And that novelty wears off in about two months. And then I'm just like, it's fine. I'll notice something's wrong when something looks wrong. Yes, that's the thing. You have a lot of things that if they break in your house, you have time even after it's broken to be like, oh, well, I guess I better fix that.

these are these things like there's some things that you can't do that with like foundation but there are things that within your house like if an outlet stopped working or shorted it's not like it shoots sparks out of it yeah you just now you don't have an outlet that works soren buoy once a month go ahead you inspecting your fire extinguishers never you know what in fact I've had the same fire extinguisher probably for 20 years and I should probably deal with that at some point there's there's a couple of inspecting We have three that one from that's traveled with me, one that's traveled with her, and one that was, is that the house birthed us. And I will go and my version of inspecting them is like looking at them and I'll turn them upside down and like none of the seals on them are broken. And I write on a piece of tape on the side of them the date to show that like this has been inspected. Like it's a porta potty at a concert. I've inspected it. And I put it back. and for some reason I decide that that's that counts as anything as if I had done anything is just

looking at this thing and checking to see that the things aren't broken I mean I guess there's a there's a like a gauge on it and if the gauge is pointed in the green space on a gauge pressure or whatever you believe that it works but I don't actually know I've inspected these things 10 months and I'm just like well like I guess that means they work find out if they actually do what I'll tell you what I wish it meant. I wish it meant I wish it meant that I could go spray that thing I would love that I but they don't want you to do that they don't want you to just like squirt it once a month even though that would be really fun that would be great and also like it's the one thing that I go by and then I can't play with at all no I have to go stick it under a sink or something I'd be like well I guess this just lives here now the other the thing about the the fire extinguisher that came with the house is that they have like a uh uh uh a button on the top of it that if you push down and it springs back up uh that means it's it's still working in accordance with how this thing was designed if it stays down then get rid of it that's a bad fire extinguisher and i press the button and it goes down and then comes right back up and i

conclude ah good this is working instead of instead of concluding like doesn't it mean something that we don't make fire extinguishers like this anymore doesn't it mean wouldn't it be better if i just a new one. Yeah. I mean, I think back to my house, I lived in a log cabin in the middle of a pinion forest. So it was like, it was a tinderbox. We had the same fire extinguisher as my entire life there. And even after as a child, when I was like, well, there's plastics in the way. Let's cut that off. My dad was like, well, don't cut that off. Next time, just don't cut that off. But we still left that fire extinguisher. Yeah. We had one fire extinguisher growing up and it worked. And I know it worked. Because when my parents were out, my brother

and I lit a house plant on fire that was attached via rope to the ceiling. And we had to put that out somehow. And the fire extinguisher came in great handy to that effect. Oh, nice. You got to use one. I know. I know. Well, David did.

My brother did. That's so cool. Was it a powder? Was it a foam? Do you remember? I don't remember. I remember that this was done in the kitchen. And I ran to the bathroom to fill up.

a cup of water to come back to throw the water on the thing, neglecting the fact that a towel would have been better, a fire extinguisher would have been better, a pot would have been better than a cup, and that the kitchen sink was closer than the bathroom sink. All those things. All my brother sprung into action. And he knew where the fire extinguisher was.

That's good. I think I'd have to sit there for a minute during a grease fire and be like, well, just give me a minute. I'll remember. I'm pretty sure it's under. the pantry? It's really crazy. Just a brief tangent.

And then we'll get back to the podcast to action that people are expecting where I list things. The hot HGTV action. But a brief tangent about how it was very rare that my parents would leave us alone unsupervised when we were perhaps too young for that, or not even too young for that. But it did seem like,

every single time they did we destroyed something in the strangest way in a way that was like inconsistent with how we behaved every other minute of our lives we were not lighting fires normally we weren't waiting for them to leave

so we could light fires we were not pyromaniacs we were we they left us alone at our young age because we were so well behaved and as soon as they are gone It's like, you know what would be funny is if I stood on the countertop with a barbatchew lighter and threatened you with it. And then, oh my, the plant's on fire. Just like a completely unpredictable disaster as if we were two different kids or three different kids, including the time that we put my brother's ass through a wall.

Oh, nice. Congratulations. Continuing on, so on how many times once a month, once every year, once every year. two months do you vacuum your fridge coils? Never. I'm not doing any of these things. I have to pull the fridge out to do that shit. I know, yeah. That's another one that there's no way. It really seemed that seems like a good idea. That when I read that on the list, I was like, yeah,

I bet they get so fucking dusty back there at those fridge coils. And I bet if I vacuumed the dust off of them, then that would extend the life of the fridge. But I cannot get there. Because I think when the flippers worked on their They put the fridge in first and then built everything real tight around it. And so that thing's not moving anywhere. And that's one where I feel like I have never in my life seen my parents or anyone do this kind of work. So I think it's okay to skip that.

Yeah. It's meant to get dusty back there. Like they're aware of the way that we treat our houses when they make a fridge. All right, go on. And when this fridge dies in eight years and if someone is like, you know, it could have lived, lasted nine years. I'm like, wow. Yeah, so?

Probably, yeah. I'm going to die younger than I could have, too. What are we talking about? I had a lot more fun. I wasn't vacuuming fridges for all that life. This one,

some of us, do more often than once a month. Okay, some of us. Good. So this is a neurotic thing for you. Go ahead. Inspecting basement plumbing, parentheses,

leaks. That one does seem super valuable. Water is my, big the biggest threat in my house the thing i'm scared most scared of yeah is water damage getting anywhere because water doesn't just like doesn't you don't just fix it and that's the end of the problem there's then it's closed off now you're going to get mold and it's always in your walls or it's like in it's somewhere it's not supposed to be so like water is so scary to me yeah um so this would be a thing i do regularly this was the part of this that was a bummer because when

I first found this list. It was so overwhelming. It was like, there's a lot of stuff on here that I have to learn how to do and what it is. And I was really nervous about it. This was one that made me nervous in a different way where I'm like, this guy's only checking his basement for leaks once a month. But he's crazy. Why am I doing it so much more often? Because your leaks aren't going away. You're not in a situation where like you've handled the problem. And now you don't have to check anymore. I'll do it probably as often as you, which is ever. rainstorm where I'm like well I got to go check now I got to go make sure that the house isn't going to fall apart or I'm wrong not going to get a lung disease it's definitely tied to rainstorms and other tangible factors it's certainly not just when something inside my brain tells me to do it oh oh I see that would be nuts plumbing clear drain screens wait I don't know either man you've got to have a drain screen in order to be able to do that. I don't think I have those.

Yeah, that one's dumb. This one I know you don't do. Or have you done it since the last podcast, clean and check the dishwasher filter? I did check my jet. Yes, I checked my dishwasher filter. It was fucking fine. It was fine.

Oh, man. Yes. No. We did that podcast. I was like, well, how do I even access this thing? And I was like, well, there's the filter on the very top. Like, if you just pull the racks out, there's that filter. And then I think there's another little.

filter and I was like well I'll check that one too and it was fine there should be a filter where the arm spins on the bottom of your of your dishwasher yeah but you don't have to disassemble anything right oh you take that arm out and then uh in my ancient garbage dishwasher you can take the screen off there and there's a filter down there that you can clean okay it's where the dunk lives okay my whole filter the whole bottom of my dishwasher basically there's like a frisbee size screen that is like the whole bottom of it and it was completely fine fuck maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Washing machine, clean and check the filters on the washing machine.

There are three on mine. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it once. I did mine this morning. There's a little bit of sand in there, but not anymore. The only thing I will do consistently on my dishwasher, I mean, not a dishwasher, on my clothes washing machine. And when I say I, my wife generally does this because she thinks of it more often than

I do. And she's good about this kind of thing. she will that the drum the rubber gasket on the very inside that keeps the door shut has a lot of like it's accordionish like it has a lot of folds to it yeah and you have to she will clean that out so that doesn't collect water and like just whatever that hairball muck is that comes off of clothes and then create mold down in there yeah that's really smart that's I'll put that on this list call soren's wife yes there to come over and take care of mine please how often are you inspecting your microwave filters dude never never once what there are those like so underneath

the microwave there are filter things that get really greasy and oily if your stove is directly underneath your microwave and I will soak those once a month for sure because I can like see this is greasy and this is discolored from what it was before. There is also a charcoal filter inside of the microwave that you need to

like unscrew the door to get to and replace that. That I replace every six months. Not every month because I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. Have you had to change out one of those microwave, the metal plates that sits, that's like bolted to the side inside the microwave and creates the microwaves, I assume? No, should I? Is it fun? It's pretty cool. You get to like cut it into size and everything. It's just aluminum, I think. But it's, you have to, if your microwave stops working, sometimes that's the issue, is that that plate has, something's happened to that plate. So you just go in there and you just like unscrew it and you put it in a new metal plate.

It feels very electronic and cool, like you're fixing electronic. But that's the only thing I've done with my microwave other than clean it, you know, like clean the roof of it because that's where it gets the worst. Where you can see the red sauce, of course. That's right. That's what you got to clean the sauce that you can see. Yeah. But what this checklist presupposes.

is that there's a lot of sauce that you can't see, and you've got to get that, too. Does he have dryer stuff on there? He's just putting in a different spot. I thought it would be right next to the clothes washer. It's not on here yet. That's shocking. I know.

Because there is the out for the dryer that you do need to clean because so frequently it can start fires. That's the real serious business. That's the thing that's not on this list, but that when I bought this house all of the husbands in the group chat immediately were like

make sure you clean your dryer filters because that's how fires start. Not just the filter itself. Like where the filter sits, like you have to get down in there and clean out. And then also there's like a tube and out to the outside of your house. Just like getting in there

with like a big dry vac and just sucking all everything out of that because like that stuff collects. Do you want to find, do you want the next time I don't know if this even happens in your life but if you want a good old time for yourself the next time your wife and kids are gone

and it's just you watch some YouTube videos of people like cleaning out long neglected filters like the whole tubes oh it's such a blast there's so much fucking shit in there that gets cleared out it's really really satisfying I think I would really enjoy that right now we have basically a screen that you slot into this little spot in the dryer

it has to like slide down in and occasionally it sits up and it catches clothes as they're tumbling around in there and it's only because there's so much compacted lint down at the bottom of that thing and a real treat for me it's like a thing i will save for myself as i have some my own tool that i built out of um out of a coat hanger that i it's just right for me like sliding down in there and just collecting all that lint and pulling it up oh it's so great it's like cleaning toenails so satisfying yeah There's a tool that I want to buy, but I also, I don't think it would be good for me to go down this rabbit hole, but I saw an Instagram video today that is very catered to the kinds of things that I like on Instagram, where there was this couple in a room of a house, and she was laying on the floor, and she was like, it's here. And she pulled out this device that looked like, just like a small screen. Like basically you're holding your phone up to something. And it just showed like heat color signatures, a big rectangle beneath the floorboards. And I was like, what's this going to be? And they pulled up the carpet.

And then she cut a rectangle, the shape of the heat signature, into the floor. And then she put this big metal ring installed in the center of it. so she could lift up this thing and secured beneath this three foot by two foot rectangle of floorboard was a giant bee-filled hive of honey and live bees

that she just took out. And it was like over half the floor was was beehive at this point. And I was like, man. Fuck. Because it's not, it didn't seem like someone was walking around in there and heard a bunch of bees and it's not like bees are flying in the room and no one knows where they were coming from this is just like a peaceful colony of bees have been living in the floorboards of this house for who knows how long which could be true of our house yeah and i i don't think it would be good for me to have a device that tells me if there are bees or no bees in every floor and wall but i i kind of want it i want to check i the the

previous house that I owned the first time I got up in the attic I was very excited to explore everything and I got up in the attic and there was a vent at the far end so there was some light coming in and something was silhouetted in the light that at first looked to me like a big animal it was bigger than a dog it was pretty big and it looked squat at the end of the attic I was like startled at first went back down got a flashlight and came back up it was now at this point abandoned wasp nest but it was a wasp nest that had been Daniel this thing was so big because it's round too so dog doesn't quite feel right but like it was it was huge and I had to take it down in chunks just to get it out like I had to put it in a bag and like break it up up there but there are all these dead wasps and at some point this thing had been abandoned but also at some point this thing was thriving yeah certainly moved out of the electronics home goods okay I'm ready how often do you clean your vacuum itself the filters and brush oh it tells me when I need to with an alert or or or or

No, it has a little, it just turned, the bag turns, where the bag sits, there's like a little, when they turn it on, that area turns red on the top of the vacuum so that I know if the vacuum bag needs to be pulled out. But wait a second, I'm supposed to be cleaning out the hoses and stuff of my vacuum. I do. With what? You don't have anything left. That's the cleaner. I dump out all the stuff that can be dumped out and then I clean. There's some parts of the vacuum when you disassemble it, like the foam filter.

and some like the plastic holder of that that is fine for just water. You can just like wash that in your sink and let that dry. And there are some parts like inner screens that are that when that gets like dusty, when there's stuff in like the corner of the inside screen of the vacuum, that that won't actually hurt your vacuum at all if it lives there forever. But I don't like the look of it. And so you can spray that with Windex and like and clean it out with a tooth with your cleaning toothbrush. You're cleaning toothbrush.

Uh-huh. And then you'll be good, good to go. Where else does that toothbrush get used? What other cleaning solutions do you have for that toothbrush? I used to use it a lot more in my apartment, but now there are fewer nukes and crannies. Oh, I'm so sorry, dude. That the toothbrush gets in there. It's okay. All right.

I think these are the same as the GFCIs checking your surge protectors to make sure they're functioning. I don't do that. I'm going to find out if the surge protector is functioning. when the podcast stops recording I think that's in your electrical panel the surge protectors are in the electrical panel

I think no I mean like the home search protectors the ones that like you plug it into the wall and there's like four outlets within it it's not quite an extension

cord it's like the power oh those things okay okay yeah pressure dust electronics once a month never in my fucking life I live on a computer

and my computer is humiliating I can't show another human being my keyboard. And if these keys start sticking, the solution isn't going to be pressure dusted. The solution is new keyboard. It's time for a new keyboard. Start fresh and hope that I'm a different kind of guy.

Also, like, the technology moves so fast that, like, this keyboard, I'm not going to have this keyboard for more than 10 years. And in that amount of time, that's exactly the right amount of gunk for me to have built up on it. Soren, once a month, do you inspect the filter on your air purifier? Well, no, because you don't need to. These things have alarms on them. Yeah.

And I hardly ever use an air purifier. Sometimes I'll use it in my kids' room if I feel like they're sick and it will somehow help. I get a little obsessive about that. We're like, I'll put a humidifier in there and an air purifier, which are probably counteracting each other. Yeah. But I, that thing also has a little, like, light on it that goes off when it's like, hey, your filter needs to be changed. Like, there's no reason for me to be opening that up and looking at the filter other than just like spilling. whatever the fuck is in there all over the floor.

Yeah. We screwed the pooch on this next one the last time we took a trip. Your home monitoring system, like any of your security cameras, we have a bunch of cameras around the house, some that are, all of which are motion sensitive, but also you can remotely just turn on when you're away to turn on the live feed of my ring camera to see what's going on. And the last time we were in L.A. for a little over a week, I just went to check to see what's going on in our front yard, probably to look at the grass from 3,000 miles away.

And I got a little alert that said, like, hey, your battery is dead. You can only use the live function where your battery is charged. And we're just both like, whoops. Cameras I take pretty seriously around my house. This house came with cameras on it, and I was so excited about it. I take really good care of those and make sure that they're always working properly to the point where I would say I get maybe 28 alerts a day from stuff just passing my cameras on my phone

that I've just learned to live with. There's that's the end of the like generic monthly list. There's also it's broken down for spring, summer, fall, winter if we need to get into that. But I don't think we need to. I feel like the... Hold on. I think there's stuff missing from that list.

that's that's the stuff that he's like yeah this is all you got to do it you'll be fine this is what I do every month yeah yeah and then he's got so he's got um some of his stuff on seasonal he's got uh clean gutters for example which is something I do I couldn't possibly only do that once a month just because we have a tree in our front yard and the leaves get in the gutters and if I just the rain is not going to wait for my schedule so I clean that on an as needed basis and he has the same stuff for like Rake and Mo all this stuff that Okay

Yeah All right That stuff is like If you want to It's not your house isn't going to fall apart without it Like what I'm really scared of is the stuff Where my house could potentially fall apart If I don't do this thing

That's all I care about I was I was an M still like big and And confused and in the weeds about like it's going to be winter soon is there anything I need to do specifically about that

yeah you'll need to change over your so you have an HVAC I assume which is like a unit that does both your cooling and your heating in the house or do you just have a furnace separate they're separate okay well then you should get all of the ducts for your furnace looked at you don't have to do that every year but since

this is your first year in the house people recommend doing it basically every season like they're like if you've talked to these guys who own the companies they're like you've got to do it in the spring you got to do it in the fall because you're switching over to a new you're like going from air conditioning to heating or whatever and you want to make sure everything's working properly

you should at least get your ducks cleaned because this is the first time in the house and you don't know how the previous owner treated it and also just make get your furnace inspected but then after that in the I don't know if you already did it for air conditioning you do it with air conditioning once And then I feel like you're good for like three years.

We're good for a while. I think on both because our, the heating machine that we, that was here when we bought the house famously died five and a half minutes after we bought it. And so that's brand new boiler. Is that? I think that's, I think we have a boiler. And that's brand new. And I'm pretty sure I don't need to do anything about it because it's brand new. and I remember asking the guy who installed it

if there's something I needed to do and he was like no it's just going to turn on when you need it to turn on and it's going to work the only thing you need to do is this which is information that I wrote down in a notes app and that you will maybe find someday

a bunch of jokes you thought of it lunch yeah it's I'm sure it's titled whatever that day's date was so it's impossible to search. And I imagine I was taking the notes quickly and was getting self-conscious about how long it was taking me to type on my phone that I was just like,

I'm just going to short-hand it. And like, I'll figure, I'll remember this later. I'll know what I mean. Charge, fill up later. Right. Good. Yep. Yeah, that's pretty much everything in my house.

house. It's basically like the things that I have to take care of my house and relearn over and over again is like I can only equate it to doing taxes every year where I get to around that time again. And I'm like, I don't, I don't remember how to do any of this. The person is like, we did it last year. And I'm like, yeah, but oh, that was so long ago. And I know in that moment, I knew a lot. Yeah. Like I figured it all out. But now I've forgotten everything and you're going to have to teach me all over. Is there anything that you do monthly for your house? that is not on this list that you were surprised to not see. Yeah, I was just thinking about that.

I do think, I needed a minute, second to think about it, but I'm pretty sure there are some things that I do around the house that I, I mean, the dryer thing was one of them. Like the, um, let's, oh, I know one. You got to get into your, you got to get in your crawl space. You've got to get down in there And you've got to look around for a couple different things You have to look around for upturned dirt Because it means that something else has gotten in there And you have to close off

You have to find out where your your openings are To the outside of the house You also have to look for any moisture down there at all Like any wet spots in the dirt Because that's an indication that pipe above it is leaking Or that water is getting in somehow And that's not good to have under your house The other thing is insects

because you will get ants especially in L.A. You know this. In L.A. there's a certain time of year where the ants are just like they uproot and they're like

and now we're going to move to this new location there will be millions of us because there's water that's closer to here and so you've got to go down and you've got to take care of those ant colonies

but getting under your house and just like having a little peek around at everything and seeing what's changed knowing first of all the layout knowing down there what it's supposed to look like

and then you can know what's changed after that because nobody else is doing that. That's not, you're not getting alarms. You're not getting any indications. This is this area is not seen by anybody but you. And stuff can slowly go wrong over time. I don't think it would be good for me. Do you know, do you have a crawl space? Yeah. And we had it when we got a lot of our basement work done when we first got the house. We also had them go through and clean out and, and

insulate the crawl space so it looks right now like like a Dexter style kill room with black garbage bag material all over the floor walls and ceiling it looks but for some spider webs it looks pretty clean and pristine but you're not going to be able to see anything down there then if that's all covered in like a plastic then there you wouldn't be able to take a look at the wood or anything no um that might don't be for you then also the thing that I really enjoy about getting in my crawl space is that I get to put on basically a Dexter-style suit. I get to put on a big

white beekeeper suit and then get on my hands and knees in the middle of the night because that's when I choose to do it with a flashlight on my head, like a headlamp on. And I just go down there and I'll like crawl a little

a few feet and it's a lot of work. It's tough going. And then I'll stop for a minute. Just sort of look around and then keep going. And it's so bad down there. It's like hellish. It's so bad that you kind of turn a corner on it a little bit. It's like

you're even amazed you're surviving there. You're kind of like proud of yourself. You're down there and it's you can't even breathe because this floor is so close to you and it's tight and you can't move. There's no way you could turn around. There's all around you there's dust in the air so you can barely see five feet ahead of you and

there's spider webs, insects fucking forever. I know that my little kid instincts would would kick in yeah like they've done in and when i've gone in the attic because the attic is is like clean and clear but it's also it's just like a like it's only a bad news place it's sometimes no news but mostly it's bad news like i go up there to to find out why something doesn't work and i find something wrong up there that is beyond my ability to fix it's always

like either confusing or expensive every time I go in the attic and when we had a little bit of issue with some water in our ceiling in our bedroom I went up in the attic and I like was looking around very quickly and I couldn't find the source and my little kid instincts were like okay well I looked and time to go down and I left the attic and then put it around for a little bit And I was like, it's, dude, it's, who else can we get? It's only, it's only you. You can't do a half-ass job on this because you know eventually dad's going to do it. Your dad, how you have to go.

And I like, climb back in the attic and I was like, uh, yep, okay, I found it. I found where the water's getting in. Yeah. I'm not happier having found it. And I know things are worth like this must be like, what a detective feels like. You're like, well, I finally found the fucking body. Yeah.

I guess that's good. I know I'm going to get in that crawl space and like I'll fight. I'll hit one corner and be like, okay, this one looks good. Safe to assume they're all good. I would also check irrigation more regularly than that. I probably once a month because irrigation breaks all the fucking time. It's just PVC pipe buried in dirt. And it's like.

How do you check it though? Well, so you got a. run your system. Depending on what you've got, you either have a drip line or you have actual sprinklers that come up. But you can do, on the side of your house, you've got a little box that you can choose like a manual override and you just run it. And while you're running it, you can see what's going on. You can figure out kind of like if there's leaks somewhere, if there's one that's like fountening up in the air or with my case, we have a drip system. So what I need to know is that all the drip lines are working and that the end is shut. Because on every single one,

there's like a clean out. There's like you can clear out all that water. And so a lot of times it'll end up happening It's just like one area Get like a ton of water And I'm like Okay well now I got to figure out What happened here

And it's like oh the drip system was open Or like there's a split in the hose Or whatever it is Or like one system just stops working And they're a nightmare They're a nightmare because it is plastic That's deteriorating every single day Fuck

Yeah We don't have a sprinkler system Which I think helps us Oh We do have a shit load of pipes and stuff. That's no good. That's just like pipes, you know.

But they're not doing anything? I don't know. They're not leaking. All right. Well, then you're safe to assume they're fine. I'm dealing with that with wires, by the way. You're not alone. I have at some point there were three different alarm systems, I assume, in this house.

But if I go up in my attic, it looks like I'm running a server farm. Like, there are wires everywhere going all. all over the house and sneaking down to the walls. And I'm like, I don't feel confident cutting any of these. I don't know what any of them do. So I'm just going to leave them. There's a lot of stuff in my basement and attic that I would love to get. I would love to have the house re-inspected the way that we got it inspected when we were buying the house.

And we didn't know anything about houses. I would love to actually have questions now for someone who knows stuff about houses. So I can have someone in the attic and I'd be like, hey, this huge fucking tube is really inconvenient. Can I get rid of it? So I can see more of my attic. Can I cut some of these wires? Because I don't know. And like, if I don't know, no one's ever going to know because I'm the person who's going to die in this house.

All right. Well, thank you for talking to me about this, Dan. You don't know how much it means to me to talk about homeownership because there's, it's not a topic that you can just fuck. and bring up in conversation, and it's all I think about. It's like, I worry about my house. Last night, it rained, and I just sat here in the rain. Just like, oh, God. Yeah.

Oh, God. We had a Nor'Easter this week. We had like a pretty serious storm that shut down a lot of stuff. And it's the where I'm at in my life now is just like, like a real cliche of this is going to be good for the grass and good for the garden. It's going to be bad for the basement and bad for the attic. And that's all I think about. And like, I'm not, storms only exist vis-a-vis what they do to my home now. There's nothing that is just like, oh, I love a good rainstorm.

No, I can't love a good rainstorm. Because that's going to destroy the shop vac somehow. There are consequences to every change in the weather. All right, everybody. Well, thank you for listening to the Swabstcast. Do you know that it's a quick question with Soren and Daniel? You chose it. If you like the video format, you can watch that on YouTube.

If you want more of this than you're currently getting, you can go to Patreon. Subscribe to our Patreon. You get extra episodes from us. If you liked our theme song, that's by me, Rex. And if you like the podcast in general, it's not us. That's Gabe Harder. Gabe Harder does it all. Thank you very much.

Goodbye. Wait. I have another plug. Before we go, bye. A friend of the show. And if you know us from the cracked.com, days, the star of ROM. Caitlin Large, she and her partner in Crime, Natalie Frost, are making a movie that they're writing and producing and starring.

And there's an Indiegogo for it that you can support. The movie is The Understudy, and you can find it by searching Indiegogo, The Understudy of Feature Film. They have a video that's telling you all about what they're doing, why they're doing it, and where your money is going to go. We love these people and we support them. And if you donate, there are perks.

one of the tiers of perks if you donate at the $99 level, I think your perk is I, me, this guy, seven time Emmy Award winning New York Times bestselling author. We'll read

your script or your sketch or your pilot or your not poetry or your play and I will give you meaningful feedback on it. Donate for some professional feedback from someone in the industry

and donate because you want to see art get made by independent creators like our friends Caitlin and Natalie. That is such a fucking big ass. I can't believe it. That's amazing. I'm amazed that you're doing that.

The biggest worry is when Caitlin reached out was like, would you be willing to offer this as a perk? I'm like, yeah, totally. if i i i won't like be able to read a whole book if someone has like a novel manuscript so that's all i'm going to say because at the time that was the only thing i was worried about now my worry is that no one will take them up on this perk and that there's it doesn't you're right to get it out there

in the podcast surely someone on the podcast will want that all right thank you bye bye Quick question for you all right I want to hear your thoughts I want to know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you all right the answer's not important I'm just glad that we could talk tonight

So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When would I be in remember? What's it out? Where'd it all? Why do we know? Oh, forget it. I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien.

Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here. Thank you.