Short Stuff: Smelly Homes

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 I said that, everybody that means short stuff is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.