Short Stuff: Smelly Homes

Does your house smell? No? What if we told you it’s impossible for you to know whether  it does or not?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. This is Josh,
there's Chuck, Jerry's here, Dave's here. His heart is at
least we carved it out of him like it was
the temple of doom. And this is short stuff about
one of my deepest fears. Your house smelling. Yeah, I'm worried.
It's a general concern of mine that my house smells.

(00:26):
And I don't know it, but everyone who comes over
knows it. Well. Can I start this off with a
very quick little story. Sure, When I lived in l
A many years ago, my friends Breton Stacy lived in
a house in Pasadena that had a very distinct smell.
It was a good smell. It wasn't like a bad smell,
but you know all houses have an odor. Uh. Many

(00:47):
years later, I went to the house of our mutual
friend and e Crra, writer of the hit movie Palm Springs,
and his wonderful wife Amanda and their two kids, and
their house they lived in near past it Na smelled
the same way. And then last year I went to
l A and I went and dropped by our mutual
friend Ben Harrison's house. Ben and his lovely wife Rachel

(01:11):
been of the greatest Generation podcast and their house smelled
the same way, and they live in Highland Park, not
too far from Pasadena. I don't know if it's a
Pasadena thing or that part of the valley, but all
of these houses smelled exactly the same, and it was
so evocative. When I walked in, I was like, Ben,
your house smells like my other two friends houses. It
may be an l a thing and maybe part of

(01:32):
the products out there. I have no idea what it was,
but it was identical and very very strange to witness
with my notes. Can you describe the smell? No, not
at all. It's a house smell. How do you It's
not like it smells like cigarettes or or dog poop
or anything. It's it's just it's a it's a house smell.
It smells like right on, Yeah, I mean it's a

(01:53):
it's a good smell. Like their houses all smelled fine,
but it was the same fine smell. So chuck um.
I'm little disappointed that story because of two things. One,
I thought it was going to be apropos of my fear.
Two I thought that it ultimately is going to squash
my fear. It didn't do either of those things. Everyone's
house has a smell, you just don't know it if

(02:14):
you live there. This is just getting worse and worse
for me. All Right, let's talk about how smells, because
if someone's house smells, it is really possible, and more
than that, entirely likely that that person really genuinely has
no idea that it smells. Even in some of the
worst cases where like it stinks and reeks of like

(02:37):
set impet odor, like years and years of pet odor
that has just not been cleaned up and is in
the ductwork and is on the baseboards and is everywhere,
that person genuinely probably doesn't know that their house smells
like that. And the reason why is because we become
a sensory adapted two things like smells. We've talked a

(02:57):
lot about this, remember latent inhibition when we first rain
into that one. Sure, I think that was in our
schizophreny episode. Maybe, Yeah, It's basically that it's there is
a point where your your senses no longer need to
tell your brain what they're encountering. Your brains like, okay,
got it, I've already determined the house smells like cap
heat doesn't matter. Let's be on the lookout for threats

(03:20):
or enticing things, and we become desensitizing. Apparently we become desensitized.
It smells particularly quick. Yeah. I think out of all
the senses, smell is the first one that you get
used to. Uh. There are experts that say just a
few and I think this came from our our old
colleagues how stuff works, uh, and they, to their credit,

(03:42):
like with do interviews and stuff with experts, and one
of the experts said, it just takes a few breaths
sometimes even to get used to a smell. Um And
you know it takes They say about if you're gone
for about a week, you can become desensitized and then
when you come back to your house you could re
smell that smell. And this horrifies me because when we

(04:05):
used to go on long trips, I would come back
and be and think it was our house sitter would
have this sort of funky musky smell. And now I
think it's just our house smell, which it has to be. Man,
We've always had at least four pets, always two dogs,
and at least two cats, sometimes three dogs, and our
house has to smell. It's it just it has to.

(04:26):
There's no way around it. Okay, I am going to
demonstrate what a friend does. Okay, Chuck, I've been to
your house multi times with your dogs there, and I
can tell you that your house is not smell in
any kind of offensive way or any way that people
are talking about how your house smells behind your back.

(04:46):
Your house smells fine. Well, I will say this to you,
my friend. I know you, and I know you me,
and I know that you guys are very clean, like uh,
I wouldn't say clean freaks, but or obsessive, but you
really are into like having things clean and tidy. I
guarantee you your house does not smell in some uh
some funky terrible way, I hope. So. I appreciate that

(05:09):
it feels like I had to pull your teeth out
to get it, but I appreciate it. But I guarantee
you it does have a smell. Yeah, I just hope
it's it's a good smell, because it's true. Some people's
houses just smell good. They smell like a mumu or something. Yeah.
I mean we we are pretty good about cleaning, but
there's just only so much you can do. Like the

(05:29):
front couch in our sunroom is the dog couch and
that thing stinks. Yeah, I'm telling you about it. Your
house is not it's not your house doesn't smell. You
don't have a smelly house. Okay, all right, so so
but yes, I I know that fear because I've come
home and after like a week and been like, does
is this where house smells? Like? This is weird? I

(05:49):
don't I don't like this. What can we do about this?
You know, well, just stay and stay around for about
an hour and then it's like, oh, it doesn't smell.
Thank goodness, because I forget. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And other
than up two is don't make any friends, don't have
anyone over. Then you don't have to worry about it.
So the reason you become so desensitized to your house
smells because you're not only being like exposed like, um,

(06:12):
you know pretty quickly after just a few breaths, you're
constantly being exposed to your house smells. So it's impossible
for you to smell your own house. But if you
are like, Okay, um, there's some things that I want
to do. I want to make sure that my house
doesn't smell. There's steps you can take, and I think
we should take a break and then we'll come back
and talk about them after this. If you want to know,

(06:43):
then you're in luck. Just so if you're like, guys,
I'm not convinced, I'm worried that my house still smells.
We're here, actually are in the house. To forks are
here to suggest some things you can do. And the
first thing is is just look for low hanging fruit,

(07:06):
Like do you have towels bunched up in the corner
that have mildrew growing on them? If the answers yes,
you might want to get rid of those because they
might be making your house smell. Yeah. Keep your ducks clean,
keep your litter box emptied. Uh. You know if you
have mold and mildew, that's gonna make your house smell.
So get your sort of filtration system checked. Uh. That

(07:28):
kind of thing like that is the lowest of the
low hanging fruit. Is clean your litter box more regularly, definitely. UM.
And then some people step it up and say, okay,
I've done all those things. Not only do I want
to get rid of bad smells, I want to make
my house smell good. Well, there's an entire industry that's
dedicated to that. UM. I would recommend something natural like

(07:49):
a nice bouquet of dried lavender or a bouquet of
dried eucalyptus. Those are two of the greatest smells in nature.
Those will certainly help. You can even go step further
and put them in your return air duct, which is
pretty great because then it gets that sent throughout your house. Yeah,
it's a nice I don't want to say hack. Don't
say hack. I didn't certainly don't say life hack, but that,

(08:14):
but that also demonstrates smells get around your house through
your h v A C system just f y I
good or bad your house is h VAC system doesn't care.
It's going to send them around your house. Yeah. I
like a citrus smell. So sometimes I'll do a little
lemon squeeze on a on a filter or something, and
you know, that's it's a pretty short lived experience. It's
not like that filter just smells like lemon for months

(08:36):
and months or anything like that. But it's a nice,
like citrusy blast throughout the house. Do you when you
squeeze the lemon, do you say simple fimple? I do, actually,
simple fimple lemon squeezy. That's right, So you can also
use one of the most one of the best selling
products of the like beginning of the twentieth century, something

(08:59):
called Fabrize. And we don't normally do buzz marketing, and
we don't mean to do it here, but Fabreeze actually
has one of the most interesting stories of all times.
It's actually taught in marketing classes in business school, because
when Fabreeze first came out, it was a total fullop. Yeah,
I think and I remember this. When Fabrize first came out,

(09:19):
it was marketed as, Hey, if you've been to a
smokey bar or something, um, or if your you have
a couch like Chuck Bryant does, uh, you can get
rid of these these foul odors uh and make your
your corduroy coat that was in that bar not smell
like cigarettes anymore. And those were sort of the basis

(09:41):
of the early commercials, and they didn't work out very
well at all. So they they shifted very successfully to
a campaign that was more like, Hey, after you've cleaned
your house and you're done, just let this product be
sort of the final cherry on top, right um. And
the reason why it didn't work at first is be
because they realized that people become desensitized to their houses smell,

(10:05):
and so the people who needed fabreeze to get the
smelly noss out of their house were the ones who
weren't aware that they actually needed it, which means you're
not gonna sell a lot of fabrieze. So they changed
it like you said to saying, no, this is the
this is the punctuation mark on your cleaning. It's the
last part you do. It lets you know the job's done.
It's a little kiss of cleanliness. And fabreeze just took

(10:26):
off like a rocket from there, that's right, and they have, uh,
it's a very big piece of the market because they
realized they could expand to all kinds of quote unquote
air freshening products that I was looking into it. I
found a little thought co Um article on how fabreze works,
and basically it's a it's a carbohydrate called beta cyclodextrin,

(10:50):
and it's like a donut shape and it actually it
attracts odor molecules into the donut and basically wraps around them,
which means those the molecules can't come in contact or
when they do come in contact with their noses, they
can't bind to our our odor receptors. So they're still there,
but they literally can't we can't smell them. It's impossible

(11:13):
for us to smell them, that's right. Uh. And if
you look up stuff like our products like this toxic online,
you're gonna find a lot of opinions. UM. One thing
we should say is that the US law allows companies
to um basically hide things under the label fragrance. Uh.

(11:34):
There's like four thousand different chemicals that can be included
as in a product as fragrance. Uh. Some are safe,
some are are great. Uh, some are very much carcinogenic. Uh.
The Environmental Working Group, which we talked about before, did
a very famous study uh and I think two thousand
nine where they found that Fabriz had eighty seven more

(11:57):
chemicals in their product than they listed, some of which
were highly toxic. I think they have changed things since then,
but this was a big shocking report. Uh in the
in the mid I guess, yeah, mid Odds, is that right? Yeah? Yeah,
I think I think things have changed since then. But
in order to not get served divorce papers, you know

(12:19):
what I have to talk about for a second. Yes,
my wife's company, Uh, Mama Bath and Body because Emily
makes room spray and she makes soy candles and I
told her about this and I was like, well, what's
in your room spray? Name all the ingredients. She said, water, alcohol,
and essential oils. That's it. That's when her gets in
her room spray and in her soil. Candles are soy wax,

(12:44):
essential oils. And then here's the key, um, well two keys.
Soy wax is a key because most candles that you
get in the store paraffin wax, which is a petroleum
byproduct gross gross gross uh and cotton wicks, so the
wicks are made out of cotton and most of the
wicks and paraffin candles are not, so they're actually the

(13:04):
smoke that is coming up, that black smoke from a
candle is no good to be in your house. So
you know, if you're interested in you go to love
your Mama dot com to check out her room sprace.
See I told you guys, we don't do buzz marketing.
I have to, man, this is her passion and like
stuff like when I mentioned mass marketed uh smell good

(13:24):
products in your home, she just, uh, that's a big
as you know, trigger for our house and our family
these fragrances that people think, oh, it just makes your
house smell great, and uh, to us, it makes a
sneeze and allergies and stuff like that. Yeah, or like
the clip on air fresheners that like give you a
migraine even though you've never had a migraine before in

(13:45):
your life. That kind of you put on a cars
air event. Yeah. Part of the study from the Environmental
Working Group studied a bunch of stuff like that. Uh,
And they did tackle for breeze a little bit, but
the real offenders were some of those nasty like gelatin
toilet you know, things you'll drop in a toilet or
plug into a wall. Yeah. I don't know if they've

(14:07):
cleaned up their act or not, honestly, but we don't
use that stuff either. I mean you could spell them.
They smell like chemicals. It doesn't smell like an actual smell.
Like they have to make up new names for these things.
They're not, like we're not legally allowed to call the citrus. Yeah,
I know it's a problem. I really think that when
historians look back, or even average people look back at

(14:27):
hundred hundred and fifty years, this is going to be
one of those periods where like, Wow, the federal government
really did not protect uh the American people and in
fact sold them out pretty hard every which way. It's
a shameful time to be alive. Agreed, and I get
to be married another day. Good job Chuck uh, and
good job Emily. With love your Mama dot com. Since

(14:51):
I said that, everybody that means short stuff is out.
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