Something You Should Know - Where Your Trash and Recycling Really Goes & A Fun and Effective Approach to Housework

Starting point is 00:00:00 The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?

Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know. Is taking your shoes off before you come into the house really a good idea? Then, trash and recycling. There is so much many of us don't really understand. The messaging on recycling is dreadful, and a lot of the time that's intentional. There are a lot of people out there who actually don't want us to know what happens to our recycling, because they're worried that if we know that a lot of this material isn't going to get recycled, it will stop bothering.

Starting point is 00:01:01 Also, is the honey that you buy at the store really honey? And some radical advice to make keeping your house clean so much easier. Get yourself a full-size trash can. Put it in every room. No more of these dinky little bathroom trashes that fill up in half a day and then you avoid it for a week taking out. Let's get some big trash cans. Let's put them in every room.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Put a laundry basket in every room. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather.

Starting point is 00:01:56 Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi there. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Do you take your shoes off before you come into your house and do you ask other people to do the same? It's estimated that about one-third of American households have some sort of no-shoe rule that people take off their shoes before they come in. Is it a good idea? Probably so. The fact is that your shoes

Starting point is 00:02:39 do drag in dirt that ends up on the floor that you then have to clean. And researchers have found some pretty gross things that come in from shoes that gets deposited on the floors of your home. In addition, your shoes might also pick up allergens, lawn chemicals, and asphalt toxins that can also be tracked into your house. And if you have kids crawling around the floor, that's certainly a concern. But for most healthy adults, the level of contamination on shoes is more of a ick factor than a health threat. It's unlikely that you're going to get ill from wearing your shoes inside your home. Your immune system, including your skin, is highly effective at keeping those bacteria

Starting point is 00:03:22 things from making you sick. But there's no real downside and it can make cleaning your home easier because less dirt is coming in. And that is something you should know. Most of us I think have gotten pretty good at separating our recyclables from our trash, from our yard waste, and generally trying to be conscientious and careful about how much waste we generate. But I'm certain you've probably wondered, as I have, does it really make a difference? Does all this separating of things matter? Doesn't it all end up in the landfill anyway, for the most part? Is what we as individuals do really making a

Starting point is 00:04:05 difference, or is it more about feeling good, thinking we're doing something? Well, here to explain and discuss this is Oliver Franklin Wallace. He's an award-winning magazine journalist and currently the features editor at British GQ. His writing has appeared in Wired, The Guardian, The New York Times, Men's Health, and many others. He's author of a book called Wasteland, the dirty truth about what we throw away, where it goes, and why it matters. Hey, Oliver, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you for having me. So let me start by asking what I was just talking about.

Starting point is 00:04:41 Is what we do when we're separating our trash and recyclables. Is it really making a difference? Because I always have this sense that there's kind of a do good ism factor to this, that it makes people feel like they're doing something, but that it doesn't do much. And in fact, you know, I've even seen trash trucks pick up recyclables. So I assuming it's just getting tossed in the landfill. So you just have to wonder, does it really matter? Absolutely. This is something that I get asked about a lot, actually. And one thing I would say is that absolutely everything you do when it comes to recycling is making a difference. There are some issues with some materials. We can probably

Starting point is 00:05:21 talk about plastics later on. But if you take something like an aluminum can, a recycled aluminum can has a 95% smaller carbon footprint than one that you have to make from virgin materials. So it's 95% better for the planet to recycle aluminum can. It's about 85% for copper, for example. It's great for paper, great for glass. So there's a bunch of materials that when you're sorting through your recycling, you're doing a great thing. But you're right, there is also a little bit of this, which is, you know, making us feel better, trying to do something that we think is good for the planet, when the truth is a little bit more complicated than that. You know, we put things in the bin and they kind of disappear, but we're really only the center point of that journey. You know, often the journey for where our things go is just as long as the journey for where it came. So it's a really fascinating,

Starting point is 00:06:15 it's been a really fascinating trip to kind of work out where it all is going. And often it's not what you think. So give me some, some facts, some numbers, some sense of the problem here. How much trash and recycle and how much is there? How much, where are we putting it? Just kind of give me some foundation if you could. Sure. So waste is a gigantic problem and the numbers quite often blow my mind. So according to the World Bank, there's about 2.1 billion tonnes of solid waste produced worldwide every year. By 2050, that's estimated to be about 3.3 billion tonnes. So it's growing really quickly. And the US, the average person throws away about 4.4 pounds worth of trash every single day,

Starting point is 00:06:59 which is a really astonishing figure to when you when you start thinking about it, but I could name individual items, 480 billion plastic bottles, over 4 trillion cigarette butts, which are these days made of plastic, by the way, and tend not to biodegrade. And people say, well, okay, well, why is that something we should care about? It's kind of, we don't see where it goes. It must be going somewhere. We spend a lot of time, you know, thinking about where things come from, but not enough time about where they go. Well, one thing that I know I've always wondered about is, you know, for years, decades, we've heard about how the trash that we have somehow ends up killing seagulls or turtles or, you know, and I never really understood how

Starting point is 00:07:42 it gets there. Like, how is the plastic pieces that I throw in my trash getting to the beach and killing animals? Can you explain that? This is a huge problem, particularly in the global south. You know, the poorest countries in the world, we take for granted in countries like America and the UK that you can take your bin out at the end of the day and it will kind of take off and be sorted and disposed of relatively efficiently. But there's about 2 billion people in the world who don't have formalized formal waste collection. But at the same time, we are selling them the same kind of products. So, you know, they still buy cokes and they buy all the same luxuries that we do every day. And so the amount of trash produced is about the same. What else would people be surprised to hear about how trash ends up where it shouldn't end up and how perhaps we're contributing to a problem and may not even know it? You know, a lot of people, for example, don't realize you take your old clothes down to the thrift store and donate it, which is a lovely, generous thing to do, or so we think.

Starting point is 00:08:51 But in some cases, about 90% of the things that we give to thrift stores that we donate doesn't actually end up resold in those stores. In fact, most of the time, it doesn't end up sold even in the same country. It goes to big sorting facilities where it's graded and bagged up, and it goes to the developing world. So your clothes may end up in Afghanistan or Bangladesh or in Central America or South America. And there was some interesting photographs lately that came out of a lot of U.S. clothing waste in Chile, for example, in the desert. And supposedly you could see this landfill from space. So it's a huge issue that is a global one.

Starting point is 00:09:22 Like any part of our globalized economy it's a responsibility for all of us to get it right but there's not much i can do about the waste problem in afghanistan and i mean it may be a global problem but there's not much i can do well there's a story that really struck me which is you know i followed some donations from the UK, second hand clothing from the from the UK to Ghana in West Africa. Now Ghana, the capital city of Ghana is Accra. And I talked that with the head of the municipal waste department for the city. And the they had one sanitary landfill, and it had been paid for by a loan from the World

Starting point is 00:10:08 Bank. Now Ghana in the last decade or two has been flooded with donations, just like a lot of African countries. A lot of the stuff that they get is good, but a huge amount of it is also just trash. It's spoiled or it's ripped. It's things that should really be thrown away. And this guy said, well, you know, what happened was that we had this brand new landfill, which is better for the environment and better for the people. And it filled up with all of this secondhand clothing that was coming in. And then one day, it caught fire, the landfill burned to the ground. Now, the people of Ghana are still paying off the World Bank loan from that landfill that burned to the ground with donations because a lot of us were donating trash.

Starting point is 00:10:48 So that's an example of what you could do. Make sure that you're not donating things that other people are... If you wouldn't wear something here, then you shouldn't be donating it to the thrift store. Nate Hagenshaw, Isn't it true though, that even if you recycled everything you could recycle and not put it in a landfill, that the result of that would be hardly noticeable? That, in fact, the huge majority of things in landfill is construction and demolition debris, and that is what is filling up landfills, not people's household recyclables that they're throwing away instead of recycling. It's definitely true that the construction and demolition industries are responsible for a huge amount of waste, particularly by weight, when you think about when you knock

Starting point is 00:11:38 down a skyscraper and where all that goes. It's also true that, in my experience, those industries are tremendously successful at recycling because they count their pennies. And you see a lot of material, for example, that gets ground down and turned into your road aggregates or into new bricks and things like that. So building has historically been a quite sustainable industry when it comes to reusing waste and recycling. There's lots of other innovations going on in that space that are quite interesting. Obviously, when you pull down a bunch of drywall and it's full of asbestos and things,

Starting point is 00:12:11 that's going to go in a landfill, a toxic waste landfill. And that's the best thing for it. Let's not pretend that landfill isn't a practical solution for a lot of this waste. But even if we were to take away that side, we're still talking about huge amounts of the waste I mean you should see you go down to one of these material recovery facilities these places where they pick through the things that we throw in the trash and that companies

Starting point is 00:12:35 throw in the trash every day it is mind-blowing the number of you know the Amazon boxes that kind of streaming down down these gigantic conveyor belts. Or I went to an electronics recycling facility in Fresno in California, and you see the numbers of like brand new TVs sometimes being put into these gigantic blenders essentially to be separated for the raw materials. So I think it's a mistake to think that, you know, there's the industrial waste is in the entire problem and that demolition waste is the entire problem. We're talking about trash and recyclables and how much it helps. And my guest is Oliver Franklin Wallace. He's author of the book Wasteland, the dirty truth about what we throw away, where it goes and why it matters.

Starting point is 00:13:23 At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building. Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets. And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. So take a moment and think about what you're building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen. Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. This is an ad for better help.

Starting point is 00:13:56 Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat.

Starting point is 00:14:18 Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. So, Oliver, when it comes to recycling, there has to be an end user to that. And as I recall, China used to buy a lot of our recyclables and they stopped. And so I've also heard that a lot of the stuff that we put in our recycle bin, thinking we're recycling, it ends up in a landfill anyway, because there's no buyer. Between 1988 and 2018, when they shut its doors, China imported about 50% of all the exported plastic waste worldwide. So when they shut, I mean, that was the impetus for me going on this journey was hearing about that and the absolute chaos it caused through the global

Starting point is 00:15:02 materials markets, because all of a sudden, you know, all of the waste had somewhere to go. So you're right, like a lot of the materials that we separate, but particularly when it comes to plastics, a lot of those things will not be recycled. It depends a lot of the time on where you are, the kind of collection and sorting and those kind of things. But yeah, you're right. There are a lot of plastics that aren't recyclable or are much less recyclable and sorting and those kind of things. But yeah, you're right. There are a lot of

Starting point is 00:15:25 plastics that aren't recyclable or are much less recyclable than we've been led to believe. There are a lot of materials that you know, that there just isn't the demand for or the demand is halfway across the world somewhere. A bigger issue for me that that I think is not realised by most people is that, you know, plastic is not infinitely recyclable plastic to grades. And every time you recycle it, it goes through the system, it picks up these little imperfections and chemical contaminants and things. And so you get what's called downcycling.

Starting point is 00:15:55 So you know, your Pepsi bottle is not going to be turned into a Pepsi bottle most of the time, it may be that gets turned into yarn, and that turned into a t-shirt and or a soccer shirt. And then maybe that soccer shirt gets turned into, you know, whatever. And then eventually it ends up as some drain pipe because they get darker and darker and more brittle as it goes along. So you're right to say that recycling plastics in a lot of cases is not happening. And we need to, I think, reckon with the realities there. There is a, at the same time, there's been a huge explosion in demand for recycled plastic all around the world. You know, big companies, your Nikes and your Adidas and your, you know, Coca-Colas now, because of the pressure by consumers, are desperately looking for recycled material to put

Starting point is 00:16:46 into their products. And it's really interesting to me talking to people in the trade who said that a few years ago, they had to sell recycled plastics at a loss. They kind of saw it as something they wrote off, they did it. Sometimes it's for tax benefits, but largely, it was just to kind of use up the capacity in the system. These days, recycled Coke bottles sells at a huge markup. And in a lot of ways, there's not enough in the system. There is more demand now than we can meet. By calling out these issues and by becoming aware of it, it's really helped us drive growth. And a lot of that is driven by changes in consumer behavior and people demanding more recyclable material in their products. I was surprised to learn, because I think people are anxious to do whatever it is they can do to help this problem.

Starting point is 00:17:35 But there's a lot of things that people don't know. For example, and I learned this from, I guess, from another interview about this. But for example, you know, people recycle cardboard, like pizza boxes and stuff. Well, if there's grease on it, it can't be recycled. So, and if the cardboard gets wet, even if it's dried out after it's been wet, it can't be recycled. There's a lot of things like that, that, like when you put recyclables in an opaque bag, no one's going to open it. It just goes to the landfill, even though it could be full of recycles, recyclables, that people don't know that. And if they knew that, they would do a better job of it. But nobody ever tells anybody, here's how we need you to do this. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. The messaging on recycling is dreadful. And a lot of the time that's intentional. You know, if you look at a lot of materials, and this is certainly true in the UK and Europe, but I'm pretty sure is equally

Starting point is 00:18:37 true in the US, we have all sorts of conflicting labels and messagings. And you see these little dots and people say to me, well, oh, I thought that meant it was recycled. Well, it doesn't. I thought that meant it's recyclable. Well, it doesn't. A lot of the time, these logos don't mean anything to do with that. They mean, oh, the company's paid some money into a recycling scheme somewhere in Germany or these completely opaque systems. And the packaging industry has known, by the way, for years that many of these labels confuse people. But they also make people feel good about buying stuff. So they tend to leave the labels on there. And I think there are a lot of people out there who actually probably don't want us to know what happens to our recycling, because they're worried that if we know that a lot of this

Starting point is 00:19:24 material isn't going to get recycled, that we bothering now that's the wrong answer to this this question you know what i don't think we need to give up on recycling at all i actually think the opposite i think we need more recycling we need better recycling you know you gave the example of cardboard boxes pizza boxes now it is true that in cases, if your cardboard pizza box is incredibly soiled and greasy, you know, they don't want to take that. That's not going to recycle well. The grease comes out in the vats when it goes to the recycling plant. But in a lot of cases, you know, you just need to tear a little bit out and you can still stick in the recycling and it's fine. It doesn't need to be the same shape or what have you. The

Starting point is 00:20:01 thing about it getting wet, well, this depends on where you are. In the UK, which is a relatively small country compared to the US, we have, in some cases, I think they call it box to box in 14 days. And when I went to a huge, probably the biggest card and paper recycling factory in the UK, well, they said, well, we don't really care if it's a little bit degraded, it's a little bit dirty, because it doesn't have time to sit in the sun and go moldy and degrade. So that you know, over here, they're not that bothered about that stuff. Now, if it's soaking wet, and

Starting point is 00:20:34 it's sitting out in the California sunshine for a month in some yard somewhere, that might be a different thing. A lot of this system is really dependent on where you live. So it's really about kind of working out what's right for you, what your system is like, whether it's actually any good, it requires a little bit of digging some cases into your local system, and quite often demanding better because, you know, as I said, there's a tremendous demand for this stuff

Starting point is 00:21:01 out there, you know, these companies, there are billion dollar companies out there, hoovering up our waste and selling it it on and they can't get enough of it so uh i don't think the solution is to to kind of be defeatist i think the solution is to kind of demand better uh from our from our waste what's an example of something going on in the the waste or the the recycling business that confuses people or that people think is a good thing maybe that isn't so great or anything like that? There's been this trend recently for companies marketing recycled out of ocean plastic, for example. Now, ocean plastic or recovered ocean plastic as they sometimes brand it, you know, you tell people it's made

Starting point is 00:21:44 from ocean plastic, it must have been fished out of the ocean. That's not true at all. Actually, if you look at the fine print, what what the industry defines as ocean plastic is any plastic collected in a developing country within 50 kilometers of an ocean or major river, which is a gigantic part of the world, you know, billions of people live within that definition. And so when you actually look a little bit closer, what that means often is that these are some of the very poorest people in the world picking up trash off beaches and off riversides in the Philippines or Thailand or wherever that may be and selling them for a tiny fraction.

Starting point is 00:22:22 You know, we're talking about cents. And then they get hoovered up into this giant system and and as as a result you know a big sportswear company can sell you a a football shirt uh made out of ocean plastic or whatever that might be so i think it's important you know again i don't i don't want to uh put people off uh because i think it's tremendously important that we clean up the oceans from all the stuff we put in it. But it's really important that we see the reality behind a lot of these systems. Well, this has been very enlightening and informative about, you know, about what happens to what we throw away or recycle or if it gets recycled.

Starting point is 00:22:58 And it's interesting to hear the intricacies of all this because most of us just don't know. I've been talking to Oliver Franklin Wallace. He is an award-winning journalist and author of the book Wasteland, The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Oliver. Thanks, Mike. This has been great. Thanks for having me. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives.

Starting point is 00:23:29 So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker, John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly

Starting point is 00:24:09 about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS

Starting point is 00:24:52 and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Starting point is 00:25:26 There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So here's something I know about you. You have a job, this particular job, and you work at it at least a little bit every day. And it seems like it's never done. And it's likely not one of your favorite things to do.

Starting point is 00:25:52 And yet, there it is. And what is it? It's keeping your house clean and organized. Now, you might be thinking, well, wait, do I really want to listen to a segment about house cleaning? Well, actually, yeah, this one you do. See, you haven't met my guest yet. Well, actually, yeah, this one you do. So you haven't met my guest yet. So let's meet her.

Starting point is 00:26:09 Casey Davis. She is author of a book called how to keep house while drowning. She is a therapist and very visible on social media. In fact, across the various social media platforms, she has more than one and a half million followers. She's been featured in the Washington post, Oprah Daily, Slate, and she is here today. Hi, Casey. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi. Thank you for having me.

Starting point is 00:26:34 So no one escapes housework, and everybody worries about, you know, keeping their house clean. And you have this unique approach. Maybe it's a philosophy. So let's start there. Explain your view on cleaning and organizing. Well, the shift really starts with this perspective shift where we stop looking at housework as external tasks that measure whether we're doing good enough or whether we are good enough as people and kind of looking at them instead as just these morally neutral tasks which means that doing good at them doesn't make you a good person and bad at them doesn't make you a failure and there's no such thing as laziness there they're literally just

Starting point is 00:27:18 tasks that we engage in to care for ourselves and that helps us sort of get out of this mindset of shame, where we feel like we're failing if we're not on top of everything. And really just breaking it down to, it doesn't matter what the invisible audience in my head would think, it matters whether my space is functional.

Starting point is 00:27:38 Yeah, but also there is that years and years of conditioning perhaps that many of us got, that you should be organized, you should be tidy, there is that years and years of conditioning perhaps that many of us got that, you know, you should be organized, you should be tidy, things should be clean, everything should be in its place. And you can try to mitigate that a little bit in your head. But at the end of the day, when you walk into a room that isn't neat and tidy, you notice that.

Starting point is 00:28:01 Yeah, that's why I always say that the first skill we have to work on or embrace before we talk about the skills of cleaning or the skills of organizing is really the skill of self-compassion. You know, these messages don't go away overnight, but it's helpful when we walk into that room and we see that mess and we hear those messages to first just kind of stop and recognize that we are hearing those. They're coming from somewhere. That's not just truth being imparted to you. And sometimes it's even helpful to kind of stop and say, whose voice is that? Really, whose voice is that? Because we can often trace it back to a specific person in our lives that was really critical. And when we realize that mess doesn't have inherent

Starting point is 00:28:43 meaning, it doesn't mean that we automatically feel great about everything. But we can start that process of sort of stopping, becoming aware of the messages, and then making a conscious choice to just get curious. Like, what else could my mess mean? Could it mean that I was spending time with loved ones today and I'm prioritizing that? Could it mean that I'm just having a hard time and people that are having a hard time deserve compassion? There is a perception, I think, that people are either neat or messy.

Starting point is 00:29:14 And I don't see it that way. To me, it's more of a scale. I'm not on either end of those. I'm not overly neat. I'm not overly messy. I'm somewhere in the middle. And I think a lot of I'm somewhere in the middle. And I think a lot of people are somewhere in the middle. But it is interesting to me anyway, that people who are

Starting point is 00:29:31 really neat get so upset when they see a mess, when like it really bothers them. Yeah. And it kind of depends on even in that moment, like different people could be hating that for different reasons, right? Because sometimes you walk in and there's a difference between if there's any visual clutter, I have anxiety versus when you walk in and you see a mess and what is overwhelming about it is, okay, I'm going to have to clean that. Part of it, and I think a lot of mothers and wives resonate with that. It's like, okay, the thing about the mess that can be frustrating to come into is this idea that I'm going to be the one to have to clean this up later. And you're right, there is a scale. And I also think that we tend to think that things like clean, tidy, and organized

Starting point is 00:30:19 are all the same thing. And they're actually very different. So cleaning is like removing dirt and grime and debris from your home. Whereas organizing means that everything in your home has a place and you remember where those places are and it's functionally, you know, pretty easy for you to get things when you need them. But tidy is putting things back quickly. So you can actually be a person who is organized. Everything in your home has a place, but you're messy. Meaning you don't return things back to that place quickly. You kind of leave it out and then maybe you come back a couple of days later

Starting point is 00:30:57 and do a full scale swoop of your whole house putting things back to where they are. And so sometimes people are messy because they're unorganized. They're struggling to find places for their things. your whole house, putting things back to where they are. And so sometimes people are messy because they're unorganized. They're struggling to find places for their things, but sometimes they just messy. Maybe they have ADHD. Maybe they're a creative person. Maybe they're overwhelmed. Maybe that's just their personality. And so I think sometimes when you are a messy person, you assume that means that you're not a clean person. You're not an organized person. And it

Starting point is 00:31:24 can be helpful to distinguish those things because becoming organized is the best thing you can do for yourself as a messy person. You don't have to stop being messy, but your life will get so much easier if you can get some organization. Okay, so now let's assume that people do want to get a handle on things better. What is your approach to organizing and cleaning the house that's different than perhaps we've heard before? What is your philosophy here? The first thing we do is give ourselves radical permission to get curious. What is it about the dishes that feels like such a block?

Starting point is 00:32:02 Is it that I'm the one that does dishes every day and I'm tired? Is it that I walk away and I forget the dish? Is it that when I look at a pile of dishes in the sink, I feel like it's going to take me so long? Is it a sensory issue? I don't like when my clothes get wet. I don't like putting my hands into food that's kind of soggy. You have to kind of give yourself permission to really ask yourself what the barrier is without worrying about someone going, well, that's just stupid. Just do it anyways. Because when you identify what the barrier is, you can find ways to adapt your environment to make that task more accessible to you. So let me give you some examples. I realized that having dishes all around my house was not functional. And the first thing I

Starting point is 00:32:47 did was say, okay, I want a one step change. And I finally got myself a dish rack. And I put a dish rack up and I said, this is my dirty dish rack. Because what I did know is that when I look at a sink full of dishes, it's overwhelming. But when I organized those dishes on the counter, all of a sudden, it didn't feel as overwhelming anymore. And so I thought, well, what if when I got done with the dish, I just stuck it, I just rinsed it and stuck it right onto a dish rack. And then at the end of the day, I could load my dishwasher and things would be rinsed and they'd be organized and it wouldn't feel overwhelming. I wouldn't feel like I wanted to avoid it. So that's one example. Yeah. See, I think most people think the reason they don't want to do the dishes is they just don't want to do the dishes. And maybe that is the reason. I

Starting point is 00:33:36 mean, I think that is the reason often why I don't do the dishes because I don't mind getting wet. I don't mind touching gooey food. I just don't want to do the dishes. Yeah. So as people, let's say we take laundry, for example, for the longest time, like I would get it into the washer, I would get it into the dryer, and then it would just sort of like lay on a pile because folding clothes. And I kind of woke up one day and realized like, why am I folding baby onesies? Like truly, I don't need to fold athletic shorts or fleece pajamas or like all of these clothes that I had been folding just because I thought,

Starting point is 00:34:09 well, that's what you do. And what I ended up doing was creating a family closet because that was the other part. It's like, why am I going to three different closets to dress three different people? I'm the one dressing. I'm dressing myself. I'm dressing my one-year-old.

Starting point is 00:34:21 I'm dressing my three-year-old. So I really should just put all of their clothes in my closet so that we can all go to one place. All the clothes that come off go into one basket right there. I can get everybody dressed and then we can go. And then I also decided, okay, instead of making myself fold, because I've been trying to do that for months and I just avoid it, what if I just didn't fold? What if I just put it away, organized? What if I had a basket for all of the underwear and a basket for all of the shorts and a basket for all the shirts? And everyone goes, well, but your clothes will be wrinkled. And I always say, well, yes,

Starting point is 00:34:54 Jessica, but they were wrinkled before. They were wrinkled on the floor before. And now at least they're wrinkled and organized, and I can get to them easily. And it's all about these like small degrees of functional improvements. And it feels like, well, why would you do this? Why wouldn't you just make yourself do it? And I like to remind people that there are people that get paid like six figures to shave two seconds off of like Amazon's production time. Like these people exist, right? And they're shaving two seconds here and two seconds here.

Starting point is 00:35:27 And if we move this to the left side instead of the right side, it'll be this perfect system. It's okay to do that in your home. It's okay to say, actually, if I don't fold, that saves me five minutes. I listen to you talk

Starting point is 00:35:40 and it makes all the sense in the world. Like why are you folding onesies? But I know people that wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing the drawer was full of unfolded onesies. Sure. And what I always say to that is like, if you like it, if you prefer it, do it. But if you find yourself in a place where you're not able emotionally, mentally to prioritize the things that matter more than laundry because you can't sleep at night about the onesies, what I would say to somebody is that it sounds like you're experiencing some anxiety and you deserve better coping skills than having to keep a perfect house.

Starting point is 00:36:22 So what are some other, I mean, I like these ideas of like, you know, why do you have to fold things that don't need folding and all that? But so what else, let's walk around the house and other ways we can shortcut and stop overdoing it and maybe ease up. Yeah, it's my favorite subject, as you can tell. So one thing that I tell people that might be struggling a little bit is get yourself a full- size trash can, put it in every room. No more of these dinky little bathroom trashes that fill up in half a day. And then you, you know, you avoid it for a week taking out. Let's get some big trash cans. Let's put them in every room. Let's get yourself a laundry basket, put a laundry basket in every room.

Starting point is 00:37:01 You know, if you find a place where you tend to pile up clothes, maybe that one chair in your living room, instead of coming up with this big, huge, from now on, I will walk every piece of laundry down to the laundry room and put it direct. No, just see what you're already doing and see if there are small changes we can make. Put a basket next to that chair. I have it in my home so that anytime someone creates a piece of trash or takes off a piece of clothing, they can get those items into a waste basket or a laundry basket within three steps. And that is going to eliminate a lot of clutter, a lot of mess right there, just your trash and your laundry. I think also giving yourself

Starting point is 00:37:41 permission to make some shortcuts when you're really going through a difficult time. I am a big fan of telling people that are sick or postpartum or disabled or in grief that they need to be using paper plates. If you feel bad about the environment, you can spend a little more for the compostable ones. But the truth is that sometimes you need to be using paper plates. Like if you have wept about your dishes in the past two months, you need to be going to paper plates, at least until you are to a functioning place where you can switch back to your regular plates. So those are kind of some things I do around the house. I also create routines that are a little more adaptable to the way that my brain works. So I have ADHD. It's difficult for me to clean as I go because I can't shift attention

Starting point is 00:38:30 like that. It's difficult for me to just like look at a big messy room and just start because of time management issues and task initiation issues. But I find that if I look at a big messy room and I tell myself, you know, it seems like there are thousands of things in this room, but actually there's only five, right? There's trash, dishes, laundry, things with a place and things without a place. And I just go from the top. Like I can carry around a trash bag and pick up all the trash. And I can carry around a laundry basket and get all the laundry. And I can get all of the dishes and cups that might've been left out throughout the day. And then I can go counterclockwise and put things away that have an easy place.

Starting point is 00:39:06 And at the end of the day, the part that can be really difficult about picking up is the decision fatigue about like, oh, here's this thing. And I don't know where it goes. And I have to figure out where it goes. And I have to walk to another room to put it away. And on the way, I'm going to realize three tasks that I should be doing. And I'm going to get distracted. And I'm going to get sidetracked.

Starting point is 00:39:23 And creating these little systems and these little rituals where, you know what, I just go from top to bottom. I go trash dishes, laundry, and maybe you do that every night in your kitchen and it takes you 15 minutes. You know, we don't have to make everything perfect all the time, but we can make these little shortcuts to make things functional. If you have a sink full of dishes and you've just had a day, your options are not just do them or don't. Because there is an option where you pull out your coffee cup and your plate and your silverware and you wash that and you go, you know what? I may not have it in me to do the dishes tonight, but I deserve a clean plate and a clean coffee cup tomorrow

Starting point is 00:39:59 morning. Well, I love your solutions because there's like so obvious, like who doesn't have one of those little tiny trash cans in the bathroom that you just hate it because it's so tiny. Well, get rid of it and get a big one. Why not? What other things like that that like are really like you giving permission to people to try something different that works? Yeah, and I think sometimes we have physical things going on as we get older or if we're struggling. And so like some things that I've done for myself, even though for the most part, I'm pretty able-bodied, I bought myself like a grabber. So I mean, I have two little kids.

Starting point is 00:40:35 They're always stuff all over the floor. And I realized when I got curious and I gave myself that radical permission to what is my resistance to picking up at the end of the night. And I realized it's the bending over. It's just so miserable to bend over, over and over and over and pick every little thing off the floor. And when I finally admitted that to myself, I went, well, you know, they have grabbers for $10 and now I have a little grabber. And I just walk around, don't have to bend over. I pick up everything off the floor with my little grabber. Same thing within my laundry area. Like I bought myself a rolling stool so that I could put things away without standing up and bending over

Starting point is 00:41:13 and standing up and kneeling down and sitting on the floor and just making little things like that easier for myself. I find myself less resistant to doing the task when it comes time to do it. And that leads to the task being done more often. That leads to a more functional house. That leads to more motivation. It's kind of, it is that kind of, motivation is a compounding thing. And it leads to just an overall better system for my home. You know, it's funny. We, I was just thinking the other day in our bathroom,

Starting point is 00:41:43 in all of our bathrooms, we have these little tiny trash cans and they fill up like in no time. And then you have to, you push the stuff down or you have to empty it. And it's like, why do we have little tiny trash cans? Yeah. But nobody ever questions that. It's just that, well, that's what you do in the bath. You have little ones. You don't have big ones.

Starting point is 00:42:07 Well, it says who. That's exactly what it's about. It's just questioning it. We have a two-story house. We don't have any clothes upstairs. All the clothes are in the downstairs closet because I have little kids right now. So that's where everyone goes. They go in there.

Starting point is 00:42:20 They take their clothes off. It goes into a hamper. They put their clothes on. So I don't have, they don't need their closets. They're three and five. They don't dress, you know, like I'm still doing their laundry for them. So now we have all these closets. Now I have a bunch of extra closet space to put things to get more organized.

Starting point is 00:42:40 I think often people put off doing things because of the perceived time it's going to take. It's going to take too much time to do this, so I'd rather not do it at all. You know, we've all experienced this. We avoid something and then we do it and we're like, well, I feel silly. That took three minutes or that took five minutes. And so utilizing timers is really helpful for you regardless of what end of the spectrum you are, right? If you're somebody who looks at a big room, or you look at a pile of dishes, and you go, oh, it's so hard to make myself get up. If we think to ourselves, okay, but what if I got up for five minutes?

Starting point is 00:43:16 And all of a sudden, it's like, okay, I could handle that. Like our brain is trained to avoid pain and to push back on things we think are going to be distressing or painful. And so if we sort of negotiate with our brain on, well, let's do it for five minutes. And our brain goes, well, that doesn't seem all that painful. And we go do it. And the key is you really do give yourself permission to stop after five minutes. And I think most of the time I find that once I've started, it's easier to keep going. And I often just do it all. And then occasionally there are times where I go, no, I really am tired tonight. I really am stressed. And I am going to stop after five. And so that helps people that feel overwhelmed by that. It also helps people that are struggling with perfection. If every time you go into your kitchen, you know, you can't stop until the whole

Starting point is 00:43:59 thing sparkles, saying, I'm going to make it a habit to go into my kitchen for 15 minutes. And when the timer goes off, I'll be done. And I habit to go into my kitchen for 15 minutes. And when the timer goes off, I'll be done. And I'll just prioritize the things that matter tonight. And then I'll go spend time with my family. There's another piece of this puzzle we haven't really talked about. And that is you often hear the criticism of, you know, people have too much stuff. And one of the reasons things are messy and cluttered is there's just too much stuff to keep neat and uncluttered and that you know the minimalist approach is a better approach use use what have what you need and use that but you don't need all this other stuff to which you say what for some people that is

Starting point is 00:44:38 definitely the case and i think that where we kind of get into an area that is problematic with minimalism is that I think that we failed to realize how much privilege it takes to be able to own only a few things. Because what people will say when you listen to people who are minimalists, you'll say, well, how do I decide what to get rid of? And there's often this sort of old adage that says, well, if you can replace it for $20 or in 20 minutes, get rid of it. But not everybody has $20 to go out and repurchase something just because they didn't use it for a

Starting point is 00:45:09 year. You have people who maybe are on certain medications or have certain health issues where their weight is constantly fluctuating. So they have to keep small sizes of clothes and large sizes of clothes and medium sizes of clothes. So there's this kind of idea that, well, if we could just get rid of all of it, it would be easier. And for some people, that may be the case. But it's also just not realistic for a lot of people. I like to call myself a functional maximalist. I like owning a kitchen appliance that does one thing because the one time a year that I make that thing, it makes me happy. I like my things. I like having a home that looks like there are things there. I like that feeling of, oh, look at a lifetime's worth of living. I like that. And it's okay to like that. And so I

Starting point is 00:45:57 think you can be true to your own temperament and your own preferences and not feel as though minimalism is somehow morally superior. That's kind of the big deal. Do it if you like it. And if you don't like it or it's not realistic, then you can still find ways to have a really functional home even if you don't go minimalist. No, I think so many people clean their house because that's the way they were taught to clean the house or that's the way they were taught to clean the house, or that's the way they observed their parents clean the house, without ever questioning it. And I love how you've made it possible for people to say,

Starting point is 00:46:33 well, wait a minute, maybe there's a better way. Maybe there's a shortcut. Maybe there's a different way to approach the whole thing. I've been speaking with Casey Davis. She's author of a book called How to Keep House While Drowning. And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for coming on, Casey. This was a lot of fun.

Starting point is 00:46:53 Thank you. You're a great interviewer. Did you know that a lot of the honey sold in grocery stores and big box stores isn't actually honey. In order for honey to be honey, it has to have pollen in there. And manufacturers go to great lengths to remove the healthy pollen because it makes the honey look prettier and also makes it impossible to detect the country of origin. According to Dr. Ronald Fessenden, who's a honey expert and author of a book called The Honey Revolution,

Starting point is 00:47:29 honey without pollen is pointless. It's missing all the good stuff. Amino acids, antioxidants, and other healthy compounds. To be sure you're getting real honey, look for honey that is labeled raw and unfiltered. It will probably look cloudy and start to crystallize. And that's okay because real honey lasts

Starting point is 00:47:50 forever. Store it in a glass container at room temperature, soak it in warm water to dissolve the crystals and everything should be fine. And you probably don't want a microwave honey that will compromise the quality. And that is something you should know. It would help us if you would help spread the word about this podcast. Tell someone you know, maybe a couple of people, and ask them to listen. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide

Starting point is 00:48:27 when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Lauro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer,

Starting point is 00:48:51 unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce

Starting point is 00:49:23 a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt,

Starting point is 00:49:52 Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - Where Your Trash and Recycling Really Goes & A Fun and Effective Approach to Housework

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.