How to Make Your Clothes Last Longer & Why It Pays to Be Quiet - SYSK Choice

You have seen a dollar bill hundreds of times, but have you ever really studied it? It’s fascinating. And the number 13 plays a prominent role. This episode begins with a short tour of a U. S. $1 bill. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/kids/games/riddles/jokes/dollar-bill-trivia You spend a lot of time with clothes – wearing them, buying them, and washing them. How you care for your clothes is important. If you care for them the right way, they will last a lot longer and look a lot better. You will also probably save yourself a lot of time and money. Joining me to explain the right and wrong ways to care for clothes is Zach Pozniak. He is a fourth-generation fabric-care expert and dry cleaner. He is all over social media offering popular advice on this topic at https://www.instagram.com/jeeves_ny/ and he is the author of the bestselling book, The Laundry Book: The Definitive Guide to Caring for Your Clothes and Linens (https://amzn.to/3Nu3I2Z). When was the last time you carved out some quiet time in your day to just sit alone with your thoughts? Today, people are constantly seeking distraction and stimulation from other people or their smartphone with zero quiet time. Yet, that quiet time can deliver huge benefits to you. For one thing, it allows you to be better prepared and more deliberate about what you do rather than just race through your day reacting to whatever comes along. And there is so much more to this as you will hear from my guest Joe McCormack. He is an entrepreneur and writer who in 2022 launched the Quiet Works program to help people manage the noise in their lives. He is author of the book Quiet Works: Making Silence the Secret Ingredient of the Workday (https://amzn.to/3NwuKa9). There is some controversy around those baby “cocktail” carrots sold in the store. Some people claim they are unsafe to eat and that they don’t taste as good as regular carrots. Listen as I reveal where these carrots come from and whether you should eat them or not. https://www.eatingwell.com/article/8068373/baby-carrots-vs-regular-carrots/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS MONARCH: Write your own money story with Monarch! Use promo code SYSK at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Monarch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get your 1st year of Monarch Core half off at just $50 AIRDOCTOR: Head to ⁠https://AirDoctorPro.com ⁠and use promo code SYSK to get up to $300 off ANY of their select AirDoctor models, plus you will get a 3-year warranty, absolutely FREE! with a 30-day money back guarantee. TREES. COM: Right now, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Trees.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠have great deals on planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to our show get 20% OFF their purchase when using the promo code SYSK at checkout. KA'CHAVA: Ka’Chava’s new Salted Caramel is the perfect balance of mouthwatering flavor and benefits. Embrace your salty side. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kachava.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use promo code SYSK to get 15% off your first order! VINTED: Ready to clean out your closet and make some extra money? Download the Vinted app for free and start listing! With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn and for a limited time, enjoy free shipping in the US on Vinted. QUINCE: Find your next Fall favorites at Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future? I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pechek and Anna Rattman, Executive Director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:32Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, I'll take you on a little tour of the $1 bill, then washing and caring for your clothes. If you're not doing it right, it's costing you a lot of money.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  My one piece of advice was to never, ever use fabric softener or dryer sheets with your synthetic clothes and things that you want to absorb water. So your towels, your sheets, your undergarments and your gym clothes.

• 0:59Mike Carruthers?

  Also, what's the deal with those baby carrots? Are they really safe to eat? And the powerful benefits of simply adding some quiet time into your day?

• 1:09Speaker 03

  So quiet isn't just like, oh, peaceful, tranquil, restful feeling. It's about being deliberate about what am I going to do today? What's the most important thing for me to do today? It's about having that time. It's not even hours, it could be minutes to think about things more deliberately, more intentionally.

• 1:26Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price. Quince uses premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, merino wool.

• 2:09Mike Carruthers?

  Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. And with colder weather coming, they have down jackets and classic wool outerwear as well. Quince prices everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. They have bedding, bath, kitchen essentials and furniture. We even have Quince pillows. So this isn't one of those endorsements where I try something once because they sent it to me. We shop at Quince and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 2:51Mike Carruthers?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:21Mike Carruthers?

  If you can, as we get started here, take out a $1 bill. It'll make this first thing we talk about more interesting. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I'm Mike Carruthers and we're starting with the dollar bill today. There are a lot of 13s on a $1 bill. First of all, flip the dollar bill over so you're looking at the reverse side and you will see both sides of the great seal of the United States. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson all had a hand in creating that seal. And there is no question that they wanted the original 13 colonies to be well represented. Now, as you look at the reverse side of a $1 bill, on the right side of the reverse

• 4:05Mike Carruthers?

  side, you will see the obverse or front of the seal of the United States. That eagle holds 13 arrows, representing strength in war, and an olive branch with 13 leaves and 13 olives, symbolizing peace. He's under a constellation of 13 stars and is adorned with a shield with 13 stripes. To the left is the reverse of the seal. The unfinished pyramid symbolizes strength and stability with room to grow. The all-seeing Eye of Providence at the top of the pyramid symbolizes the divine help the early Americans needed in establishing a new country.

• 4:49Mike Carruthers?

  The Roman numerals at the bottom of the pyramid is 1776. And if you were to count the layers of bricks of the pyramid as it goes up, 13. And that is something you should know.

• 5:07Mike Carruthers?

  There is a pretty good chance that you're wearing clothes right now. Clothes you paid for, clothes you care for, and hopefully that last a long time. But there's a lot of confusion about how to care for clothes. And that confusion can be costing you a lot of money. Money in clothes that fade out and wear out too fast? Clothes that get stained and you have to throw out because you can't get the stain out? Maybe because you're washing your clothes too much or using the wrong setting on your washer and dryer? And there's a really good chance you are wasting money to heat hot water that you don't need to. And what's the deal with dryer sheets? I mean, I've already heard the conversation you're about to hear and I have learned so

• 5:51Mike Carruthers?

  much that's going to help me and save me money. And I think you will find this conversation just as fascinating and useful. Meet my guest, Zach Pozniak. He is a fourth generation fabric care expert and dry cleaner who provides great clothing care information on his social media channels. He owns the New York City branch of Jeeves, which is a luxury dry cleaner. And he is author of this monstrous bestselling book. I mean, this is huge because people are buying it because everybody is interested in this subject. The book is called The Laundry Book: The Definitive Guide to Caring for Your Clothes and Linens. Hey Zach, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.

• 6:36Mike Carruthers?

  So I'd like to know, how do you do laundry? Like when it's time to do laundry at your house, at the Pozniak household, what's the process?

• 6:46Speaker 02

  So when it comes to sorting, I think there's two really main ways to go about it. First, by color. So we want to keep our light colored garments separate from colored and darker garments. And the main reason is because we don't want the dyes from the colored garments and dark garments making our whites look dingy. And in the same vein, we don't want the white lint from our light colors getting on our darker clothes because they'll look kind of covered in white lint, which is not really what we want. And then the next step of sorting, I would say do it by weight. You know, I think my favorite example is that a towel dries much faster than your gym shorts.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  So we're going to be harming our gym shorts by subjecting it to the enormous amount of heat and time compared to something that dries pretty quickly, even just through an air dry.

• 7:39Mike Carruthers?

  Okay, so then they're sorted and now it's time to wash? And you wash them? How?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  I mean, my biggest piece of advice is just washing in cold water. I mean, it's the best thing possible for your clothes and the environment, the most sustainable way to do your laundry. My favorite little fun fact is that you can reduce your energy consumption by up to 90% from switching from hot water to cold. And if you switch from warm to cold, you reduce it by 70%. So modern appliances and products have really come such a long way, even in the last decade, but let alone 50 years, that we don't need that really aggressive horsepower of hot water anymore. And hot water fades your clothes. So there's just so many wonderful benefits to using cold water.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  And look, don't get me wrong, there's still a place for hot water, but I kind of view it as it should be reserved for those really stained or stinky loads. And you know, my analogy is like, you don't want to power wash your deck every other week. Do it once a year when it really needs it.

• 8:42Mike Carruthers?

  But the prevailing wisdom seems to be and continues to be that you need hot water to clean clothes, or at least to clean them well.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I totally get that. Laundry has progressed so much in the last 100 years. And just 60, 70 years ago, we really didn't have many products. And you had to use hot water because water does do 80% of the cleaning, right? Detergent's there to kind of help move things along and break down some tougher stains. But look, it still has its place. Hot water is always going to clean better. I will never, ever refute that, but you just don't really need that much power sometimes.

• 9:22Mike Carruthers?

  It seems to me that people are more likely to wash whites in hot water. That whites, to really make them white, you've got to use hot water.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  I think with whites, hot water is going to cause premature fabric degradation. So you may prematurely start to cause some holes in your sheets or some thread barrenness, which is letting you know that your sheets are kind of the end of their life. But what I would recommend using to keep your sheets and linens super white is oxygen bleach. And especially when you're using, if you're doing this in the washing machine, something like OxiClean, which is, I think, the biggest brand name of powdered oxygen bleach in the United States, or Vanish if you're abroad.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  That stuff uses an active ingredient called sodium percarbonate, which is an oxygen bleach, also known as a color safe bleach. And it basically attacks the color of the stain molecule to correct it through a pretty cool kind of reaction. But it's absolutely incredible. And I think it's one of those things where if you do that, maybe once or twice a month with the hot water, you can get away with washing your whites in cold water to, again, hopefully preserve the integrity of the fabric.

• 10:42Mike Carruthers?

  So I've heard this advice, and I want to get your comment on it, that we overwash our clothes, that we basically throw our clothes in the dirty clothes pile because we wore them, not because they're dirty. And that much of the time, just a quick wash would do because the clothes just don't get that dirty.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you're right on it. And that's actually something that a lot of manufacturers want you to kind of switch to. And in the business, we would call that a refresh load, things that aren't really that dirty. Maybe you're trying to do some preventative care for your clothes by washing away that body oil so you don't get those yellowed underarms and collars. But yeah, what you were saying, and you're also going to save a ton of money on your energy bill because you're not creating all this hot water. You're using much less water, using less energy, and you're saving your time. So I love the quick wash cycle. I think it's amazing for just about everything. And I reserve the normal loads for things that really need that kind of deeper cleaning.

• 11:39Mike Carruthers?

  What is the difference, if you know, the difference between what goes on in the washing machine, between a normal load and a quick wash, other than the time spent? But what's taking so long in the normal wash because the quick wash seems so fine?

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's just really in a bridge cycle. So the main cleaning component of a washing machine, specifically front loader, is mechanical action, which is a really fancy way of saying rubbing. And the longer that kind of start of the cycle, the wash cycle gets to work for, the more that fabric gets to rub against other fabric. And you're likely going to have more stains that come out. And again, you're just tightening up the cycle time. And it just really depends on how soiled things are. But I think more people should be using that express cycle.

• 12:32Mike Carruthers?

  So for the most part, is laundry detergent laundry detergent? Or are some really so much better than the others, or what?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are some really, really strong performing detergents. One of my favorite performing detergents, what I use is Tide Hygienic Free & Clear. A free and clear detergent just means there's no perfume or dye. So really good for people that have sensitive skin or don't want their clothes to smell any type of way. It's an unbelievable product. It works really well. And then other than that, Kirkland, which is Costco's generic brand, is a wonderful value detergent that works really well.

• 13:09Mike Carruthers?

  So talk about the dryer, because we always talk about washing clothes. But drying clothes takes a long time. And I imagine the heat probably might do some damage if it gets too hot. So what's the recommendation on the dryer?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  I would try and air dry as much stuff as you can. And to anyone living in a city, I apologize because I know you don't have a lot of room. But specifically your synthetics and really delicate pieces, try and air dry them. Again, that dry heat from the dryer is just going to really just kind of break down those, especially synthetic fabrics quicker than they need to be, especially like elastic. So I'm talking gym clothes, your workout gear and things like that. But I think the biggest thing when it comes to the dryer is to use a cycle, like a normal cycle, that uses the moisture sensors of the dryer. I think the worst way to use a dryer is using the time to dry because that's how you overcook your clothes. It's going to give you really bad wrinkling, if not creasing, and cause you to have to rewash them or iron or steam.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  And then you're wasting your time, you're wasting energy, and a whole slew of things. So I think for me, just use those cycles. A lot of science goes into those moisture meters and they work really well. And then my other kind of just random tip with dryers is I love using wool or acrylic dryer balls. And in my testing, I don't think they speed up the drying time, which is kind of how they've been sold in the past. But they do do a wonderful job of keeping the things in the dryer spread out even. And that's really important for things like sheets and towels because I'm sure we've all taken out sheets and they're in one big wadded clump. And then you've got to redo it, they're wrinkled and things like that.

• 14:52Mike Carruthers?

  What about dryer sheets? I've heard some bad things about them, but people use them a lot and like the fact that there's no static and that maybe it makes the clothes a little softer. What do you say?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so dryer sheets, not something I use, but I do think they have value. They're basically just paper towels coated in fabric softener. And they do work at removing static, which is pretty amazing. I think that's their best functionality. But I think that's totally just a personal preference of people, the same way using fabric softener is. But my one piece of advice was to never, ever use fabric softener or dryer sheets with your synthetic clothes and things that you want to absorb water. So your towels, your sheets, your undergarments and your gym clothes. Because that's quite literally lotion and you're coating the fabric and you're clogging the pores.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  And it's kind of going exactly against the functionality of those pieces and garments that you want your undergarments to absorb sweat. That's kind of what they're there for.

• 15:58Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about how to take better care of your clothes. My guest is Zach Pozniak. He's author of The Laundry Book: The Definitive Guide to Caring for Your Clothes and Linens. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple.

• 16:44Mike Carruthers?

  And when an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. And importantly, there are no seller fees on Vinted. So when you sell something, you keep everything you earn. I like this whole idea because instead of clothes just taking up space, somebody else gets to wear them and you get some money out of the deal. Your closet looks better, too. I mean, everybody wins, even the closet. So maybe it's time to stop waiting for someday. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees. So you keep everything you earn.

• 17:25Mike Carruthers?

  I thought I had a pretty good idea of where my money was going. And then I started using Monarch. And it turns out there's a big difference between thinking you know, and actually seeing it all laid out in front of you. I've spent some time with Monarch now. I've connected everything and really tested it out. And I like it a lot. Your accounts, investments, savings goals, spending, they're all there in one place. But what really got my attention is Monarch doesn't just show you what's happened. It helps you spot what's happening right now. They have an AI weekly recap and it can flag a spending spike or a change in your net worth or upcoming expenses.

• 18:09Mike Carruthers?

  Things that are surprisingly easy to miss on your own. And I found that once you actually see the numbers, you look at your money differently. If you've ever wondered where exactly is all my money going? I think you'll find Monarch pretty eye opening. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code SYSK at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code SYSK. So Zach, you're a dry cleaner. Can you explain to me what dry cleaning actually is?

• 18:53Speaker 02

  I think it's important to start with. Dry cleaning is different than going to a dry cleaner. So a dry cleaner, I like to kind of explain as the mechanic and body shop for your clothes. And the dry cleaner has many different ways to clean your clothes. But dry cleaning specifically, you're still using a liquid, still going in a machine. So dry cleaning liquid used to start as a petroleum based solvent way back in the day. And now there's been some really wonderful advancements. We have alcohol based solvents and liquid silicone and hydrocarbons. But basically it is a clear liquid that does not smell like water, but looks like water. It sits in the bottom of these tanks of dry cleaning machines

• 19:37Speaker 02

  that look like really, really big, complicated front loading machines. And you put your clothes in there, they go in dry. They are, they get very wet and they're dried in there because the dry cleaning solvent has to be filtered and recycled within the closed loop system of a dry cleaning machine. We don't want that going down the drain. That's really, really bad. And then they come, the clothes come out dry too. So there's no powders involved. I love asking people what they think dry cleaning is. I wish I asked you before. That's one of the processes dry cleaners have at their disposal. And wet cleaning is water based cleaning. In chemistry, a solvent that is water based is wet and a solvent that does not have water is dry.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  So that's where dry cleaning comes from.

• 20:24Mike Carruthers?

  So let's take a suit. You take, you dry clean a suit. And when it comes out dry, what's it look like? Does it look all pressed and nice? Or do you then have to iron it?

• 20:36Speaker 02

  So a suit's a good example of why, of an item that really, really needs to be dry cleaned, that you can't handle it at home. And that's more, not so much as the materials, even though most suits are wool, which reacts poorly in water. But suits have interfacing. Basically I have structure within it. And that just doesn't really love getting wet with water. So that's why men's suits and blazers do much better in dry cleaning. But no, they still need to be pressed. And there's some really cool pressing equipment. So like there's something called like a jacket buck, where you put the jacket on it and it, you know, it holds it taut and blows the steam through it. So it gets rid of all these wrinkles. And then it dries it out with air that kind of blows it out too, which is honestly quite satisfying to watch.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  But then you have the pressing team touch it up to make sure it's perfect.

• 21:24Mike Carruthers?

  And I've heard that the advice, I don't know if this is valid or not, but that, that you should not leave the dry cleaned clothes in the plastic, that you should get them home and air them out.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Correct. For long-term storage, you should absolutely be taking the plastic off. And that's basically going to prevent any types of yellowing. The main way, yellowing or oxidation, which is the same exact thing that happens when you cut into an apple or an avocado and it starts to brown. If there is a stain or maybe some body oil still on your clothes that didn't come out, when it's kind of in that sealed environment, it's going to promote oxidation much quicker than if it had just open air.

• 22:06Mike Carruthers?

  When a label says dry clean only, is it really dry clean only?

• 22:13Speaker 02

  It's a really difficult question to answer because there are some things like higher end brands love saying that their pieces are dry clean only, or they can't be cleaned at all. And I'm talking about like a nylon hat, which I take. It might cost $500, but I'll take it if I'm cleaning it and I'll put it in the washing machine because it's a synthetic. That's not going to bleed. It's pretty strong. And I think it's twofold. I think it's one, this kind of artificial way to increase the value of a garment. And this is specifically on the higher end. When you look at that care label and says, oh, like this only could go to the dry cleaner. And this must be really expensive and fancy and well made. And I'll just screw it up at home. But also kind of sheltering yourself and themselves

• 22:58Speaker 02

  being the manufacturers from any type of risk. You know, say, oh, you tried it at home. Well, it said dry clean only. That's kind of your loss. And it's really up to the manufacturer to test it and provide their consumer and their customer with the right information. And it's, it's no man's land out there. And there's a lot of bad information on the care labels. And it's just truly disappointing because again, I'm the one who gets blamed. And that stinks. So it's frustrating.

• 23:25Mike Carruthers?

  It's your fault.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  It's my fault. It's always a dry cleaner's fault or the easiest people to blame.

• 23:30Mike Carruthers?

  So let's talk about stain removal. Cause there's nothing more frustrating than, you know, having one of your favorite pieces of clothing get a stain that doesn't seem like it's going to come out. And let me start with, you know, those, those stain removal products like Shout. What do you think of those?

• 23:48Speaker 02

  I think all purpose enzymatic stain removing sprays, which is what you just described, are absolutely amazing. So their main two active ingredients are enzymes, which are very similar to the enzymes in our digestive tract that take these really big, complex molecules like proteins or carbohydrates. And when they're that big, they're really hard to remove from our clothes because they're quite literally wrapped around the fibers. And they digest them and they make them smaller. And that's why I recommend if you do use something like a Shout, you work it into stain and you let it sit for an hour or two. Because it literally needs to eat that up, digest it. And then it's easy to wash away.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  And the other end of it is the surfactants, which is a fancy way of saying soap that, you know, is very common in dish soap and laundry detergents. And it actually physically surrounds a stain and allows water to wash it away.

• 24:47Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's really interesting. So just spraying Shout on a stain and then tossing it right into the wash is probably not very effective.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  It's not. And something I really like to recommend is if you're doing laundry like once a week, like I keep a bottle of Shout hanging off my hamper. If I got a coffee stain, I take my T-shirt off. Before I put it in the hamper, I spray it on. And basically as long as you wash it before seven days, it's going to be so much more effective than giving it two minutes on the stain. If you let it sit for a couple of days, you should have no headache down the road. When it comes to stains, just a little bit of pre-treatment goes such a long way. And you can't really expect the washing machine and laundry detergent to do all of the heavy lifting. You just need a little bit of, you know, specific focus on those stains and it's going to go such a long way.

• 25:37Mike Carruthers?

  I remember hearing some advice about stains that, that if you have a stain and you wash the shirt or whatever, and it doesn't come out, don't dry it, just wash it again and wash it again. And eventually if you, as long as you don't dry it, the stain will come out, particularly if you use one of those stain removals in between.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you nailed it. Another common misconception that kind of falls in the same category is hot water sets stains because you're quote unquote cooking it. Something I actually wasn't really sure about. And then I did some testing and turns out that hot water doesn't set it. It's the hot air from the dryer. So yes, the worst thing that you can do when it comes to stain removal is to dry a stain in the tumble dryer before it's out. And like you were saying, take a look at it after the wash. If it's not out, re-treat it. And then maybe let the pre-treatment sit for overnight. If you only let it sit for an hour before. And then maybe go up in water temperature. Now's a great time to start using warmer hot water because you do need a bit more heavy lifting. And then you can kind of slowly just start to increase.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Because again, we also don't want to go crazy on it because we may, you know, rub the heck out of the stain, use hot water, and now we have a hole, right? And that makes it worse. So I think just kind of slowly getting more aggressive and risky with stain removal is kind of how to, how to go about that.

• 27:02Mike Carruthers?

  Everyone listening to this has washed clothes and everyone listening to this who has washed clothes has learned at least one thing, probably more than one thing in the last 20 minutes that they didn't know before. And it's probably going to end up saving time and money. My guest has been Zach Pozniak. He is a fourth generation fabric care expert and dry cleaner and author of The Laundry Book, The Definitive Guide to Caring for Your Clothes and Linens. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Hey, thanks. This was really informative, Zach. I appreciate you taking the time.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you, Mike. Really appreciate you having me on.

• 27:41Speaker 05

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• 29:08Speaker 06

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• 29:39Mike Carruthers?

  Something I've noticed that's changed over the years. You used to see somebody, say, sitting on a park bench, or sitting in a coffee shop, or on a train, and they would just be sitting there quietly, presumably alone with their thoughts. No stimulation, just quiet. Today, that's a rare sight. People are constantly on their phones, playing a game, being distracted by something else. And that's just part of the problem. We are bombarded by noise and distraction from everywhere. So the whole idea of just sitting quietly seems almost impossible, and for a lot of people, undesirable. You'll often

• 30:21Mike Carruthers?

  see people seem very uncomfortable when they have to sit alone quietly. Well, that can't be a good thing, can it? That's what Joe McCormack is here to discuss. In 2022, Joe launched the Quiet Works Program to help people manage the noise in their lives. He's author of a couple of books. His latest is called Quiet Works: Making Silence the Secret Ingredient of the Workday. Hi, Joe. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, Mike.

• 30:52Mike Carruthers?

  So I must not be normal, but I like quiet. I seek it out. And it seems to me that people need quiet. We used to have more of it. So what is the issue here, as you see it? Why is there so much noise and distraction, and why do people crave it?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  There's a number of problems. I think one of them is technology, in how, over the last 10, 20 years, we've consciously or subconsciously let it play a really prominent role in our lives, where it dictates the distractions, the disruptions, the device itself dictates this is where I spend most of my time and my attention. I think that's a big part of it. I also think that people run from quiet. They are busy. They're running around doing a million things, but they don't ever stop to think and listen and reflect because busyness is seen as productive, meaningful. If you ask people how they're doing, you know, busy, busy, busy is an answer that you get all the time. And I think that's kind of a default mode for a lot of people.

• 31:54Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, that being busy is better, better than being alone. And being with people and collaborating, that, you know, it's all, everything's about collaboration and teams today, that that's better than working by yourself.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  We pointed ourselves in the direction of like, collaboration is king, and being together means that's better. And it's not to say that being with people is not great. It's amazing, but it's not the only way to define our life. I mean, whether it's at home, or with friends, or at work, you always have to have people around to make it meaningful. And, you know, certainly, I don't have to make this argument to an introvert. The introvert is, is going to naturally go to silence or quiet, you know, more readily than an extrovert. But I think more collectively, as a society, we, we define like, living is being around people and connected, and in being busy, and in being accessing information and distributing information, and being on social media is like, that's living. I want to give people

• 32:53Speaker 03

  another option, which is, you can do that and be alone, because the being alone part actually makes the being together part better.

• 33:02Mike Carruthers?

  So I get it. I hear your message. And it sounds right. It seems like it makes sense. But how do we know this is true? Is there science behind this, or is this just kind of an assumption, or what?

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, the best book to read on it, there's two books, actually. One is called The Shallows, which is how technology's made people shallow thinkers. And another book is by Cal Newport called Deep Work. Both of those are incredibly well-researched books that talk about value in society is coming from not being shallow or superficial, but being a deep thinker and doing deep work. And deep work is defined, in Cal Newport's book, as being in like, longer states without distraction. And for a lot of people, that's just not the reality.

• 33:52Mike Carruthers?

  So I think most people would agree that distraction is a problem, that we're very distracted by so many things, and we should eliminate, or certainly cut down on the number of distractions. But that doesn't necessarily mean quiet is good. You know, distraction's bad, but how do we know that quiet is good? I mean, in school, when you took a test, usually it was quiet, silence, no talking. But how do we know that quiet is really good for doing good work?

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Concentration. Think collaboration, together, concentration alone. For me, the one of the biggest ones is preparation. I have to have time to prepare what I'm going to do, and that requires no distractions, some quiet focus, to be able to think about those things, to plan those things, to prioritize those things. And if I don't have that time, I don't do that. I'm not prepared. And I go into my life kind of aimlessly, jumping around from thing to thing. And that's how a lot of people live their lives. It's just, they don't have a plan. If you look at what the day looked like, it just sort of happened. So quiet isn't just like, oh, peaceful, tranquil, you know, restful feeling. It's about being deliberate about what am I going to do today? What's the most important thing

• 35:06Speaker 03

  for me to do today? It's about having that time. It's not even hours. It could be minutes to think about things more deliberately, more intentionally.

• 35:15Mike Carruthers?

  Well, here's something I've noticed that I want you to comment on, is I see people who are really uncomfortable with quiet, that, that they can't not get their phone out. They can't sit there quietly. They can't. It drives them crazy because they're so used to outside stimulation, that to be alone with your thoughts is, is painful.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Blaise Pascal, a famous French philosopher, mathematician, once said, I'm paraphrasing, "Most of the world's problems would be solved if a person can sit alone in a room by themselves." And one of the things that people have with quiet is they run from it because they're afraid. I was the same way. I got on my phone all the time, and I was just collaborating, and I was really moving through my life pretty, pretty, pretty quickly, pretty briskly, kind of thoughtlessly. And when I started doing this, taking some time every day in quiet, it was difficult in the beginning. And what I discovered was that it was exactly what I needed, because I needed that time, and I wasn't giving myself that time. It was, it was explained to me by a person recently, we're talking about exercise. And if you

• 36:22Speaker 03

  look, think of collaborations like exercise. What you do before you exercise, you stretch. Quiet is like stretching before you collaborate. There's a connection between that time, very slow, like, I'm going to spend this time thinking, and then I'm going to talk, or I'm going to collaborate. And people don't stretch before they work out. They don't do quiet before they collaborate. It's kind of a connection I made. And if you start doing it, it starts becoming really, really valuable.

• 36:46Mike Carruthers?

  So since you train people and work with people, when you make this claim that you need quiet, that quiet's important, that you need to get away from the distractions,

• 36:57Mike Carruthers?

  do they know that? Do people go, well, sure, I get it? Or do they go, gee, I can't imagine what you're talking about. This makes no sense to me. I've got to, I mean, do, do people know this is a problem?

• 37:10Speaker 03

  I train a lot of different people. I train corporate leaders. One of the people I train is I train people in the military, specifically special operations folks, which ironically call themselves quiet professionals. And we do exercises in the courses I teach them. And I'm talking about like, Green Berets, Navy SEALs, people like that, very elite people. These are people that didn't wake up, you know, yesterday saying, I want to, I want to do with my life. And when we do exercises, I'll, I'll do an exercise, like, all right, take five minutes in quiet to prepare a meeting that you're going to have with your commander tomorrow. And I set the watch, and after five minutes, I ask them before we start, okay, well, how did that feel? And you get some really surprising answers. Yeah, logically, people know that it's important, but you, but they're habitually not doing it. And when you don't do it, and then you start doing it, it feels weird

• 37:55Speaker 03

  in the beginning, because you know, because you're running around all the time. You don't actually stop. You don't pause. And these are pretty elite people that know that it's important, but don't do it as a habit, really, at all. During, during the day, maybe a little bit when they drive into work, but it's not a habit of their lives. And when I introduce it, and they experience it, and it actually is valuable, then they're like, oh, I can start, I can, I can see myself doing this. So it's not knowing it's doing it. It's kind of like stretching. You're like, yeah, logically, it makes sense, but I don't do it. Well, let's stretch a little bit. And then they start seeing a difference in their lives.

• 38:30Mike Carruthers?

  What's the prescription, do you think? I mean, if, if people listening to this are thinking, yeah, see, I'm running around all the time, and like, but where would you start? Do you need five minutes? Do you need an hour? When do you do it? What's the, what's a good way to put your toe in the water?

• 38:44Speaker 03

  This was my first takeaway, is quiet isn't a technique. It's an appointment. So the first reason people don't do it is because they don't know how to do it. And my, my argument is, it's not about how you do it. It's that you do it. So the first thing is make an appointment. So start with five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the afternoon. Like, schedule an appointment, like, from 8:00 to 8:05, I'm going to think about one thing, my, my day, or, you know, what, what's the most important thing I need to do today, or I'm going to think about, you know, whatever. I'm going to read a book for five minutes. Whatever you do, that's alone, that's just quiet. And do it for five minutes, and just treat it as an appointment that is a part of your day. It doesn't have to be like, it's like working out. You don't start working out with like, an hour. You

• 39:28Speaker 03

  might start working out with like, you know, 10 minutes or whatever. So think of it like that. And you just do it for five minutes, and you make an appointment. Let yourself experience it. Do it poorly. I heard this quote a while ago, it really helped me a lot, is anything that's worth doing in life is worth doing poorly. So do, don't give yourself a grade. It's, it's okay to be terrible at it. Just do it as an appointment for five minutes. But don't miss the appointment, because it's time for you, and only for you, by you, with you. It's like, nobody else needs to be at this appointment other than you. And when I started doing that, it changed my day. Over time, I stopped canceling the appointment, which I was canceling all the time. And I stopped, I started keeping it. And then the five minutes became 10. And then I started putting these pockets of quiet appointments during the day.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Not a million of them, you know, half a dozen. And it really helped me become much more deliberate about how I navigated my day.

• 40:20Mike Carruthers?

  And as you carve out more time to be alone with your thoughts and think about things and prepare things, what else does it do? What are the other benefits, if any?

• 40:30Speaker 03

  The time alone makes the time that you have together with people better. So as I, as I go home and I have a little bit of quiet in my car and I walk in the front door, I can be much more deliberate about, okay, well, what am I going to do? And what am I going to say? And how am I going to be versus just being in a, in a busy mode? Or if I go to work in the morning and I, I spend my first 10 to 15 minutes of quiet alone, planning my day, who am I going to talk to? What am I going to say? What's the most important thing? It will make my day better. And if you, you start to do that habitually, you'll communicate better, you'll, you'll work better, you'll live better because you have a plan. And that plan has happened in that appointment that you made for yourself, with yourself

• 41:15Speaker 03

  and by yourself and quiet without distractions. And even if you did it poorly, it's still going to be good. Nobody will ever say after a minute of quiet appointment that it was a waste of time.

• 41:25Mike Carruthers?

  In this quiet appointment, though, what is it you're doing? Are you just quieting your mind? Are you planning your schedule for the day? Are you thinking about what to say to the boss? What is it you're trying to accomplish here?

• 41:41Speaker 03

  The short answer is one thing at a time. You could do nothing. You can read, you can plan, you can reflect, you can think, you can prepare, you can complain, you can choose. I'll use choose as an example. If you're going to make a decision, for example, you're going to buy a house or buy a dog or take a big trip or invest money in the stock market. Most people don't think a lot alone before they make a decision. And that's a really good way of using quiet. Like, I'm going to make a decision about where I want to go to college or that I'm going to sell my house or whatever those decisions are. Those, many decisions are not made deliberately, they're made sort of impulsively. And I'm not saying in a moment, decisions like that are bad.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  I'm just saying that that would be one list of, among many of things that you use in quiet because it's something you do by yourself. And that list goes on and on, but, but those are a few things that I would do in quiet.

• 42:39Mike Carruthers?

  And what you do depends on what? Just whatever you think or?

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Your day, your, your day, your circumstances, your life. Let's say that a person's going through difficulty. Let's say that they're going through like a relationship issue or they're having a problem with work or with a, with a friend or something. That would be a good opportunity to use five minutes of quiet or 10 minutes of quiet to think about it. You know, what, what's going on? What's, what's, what's happening? Why is this happening? What would happen if I didn't do anything about it? How am I going to approach it? But when you grab your phone and you start doing something else, then that thought's broken. And there's research that says as soon as you get distracted, it takes about 20 to 25 minutes to regain the thought. So that thought that you were on, you wanted kind of on a path to, to really being more considered, more thoughtful about that.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Most people don't wake up going, I'm going to be thoughtless today. I mean, they're not. They, they just go about their day from thing to thing to thing to thing. And the day becomes a blur. Quiet makes the day less of a blur because I can spend time thinking about this issue or this plan or this decision I need to make or I want to learn something. And I can dedicate time to do that without distraction and have a chance of it being possible. And I think a lot of people, that time doesn't seem like it's there. And I, I look at time as like, not in scarcity, but in abundance. There's pockets of quiet all during my day. I just have to seek them out, schedule the time to do it. And I find that a lot of great things happen when I do it.

• 44:09Mike Carruthers?

  For those people who can remember a time when there was more quiet time, where you weren't connected, where you couldn't check your smartphone because there was no such thing as a smartphone, people remember that time fondly, I think, for the most part. That, that you could escape the world and you could be alone with your thoughts. I think today, for those people who weren't around then, who've always been connected, they can't imagine that. That, that seems like, how do you function in the world if you can't like be on your phone?

• 44:44Speaker 03

  Well, one of the things in, in doing this, a belief that people fall into, whether they think about it or not, which is everything is an emergency. But when, in doing so, when they, when they grab that thing and they don't have quiet, but they dive into noise, then something else happens and then they lose that opportunity and then they start their day that way. And I, I just think that when you look at how people start and live the day, having these little pockets during the day, aren't just like someday that I'll have them because I think a lot of people don't have them at all. And then five years, 10 years, 15 years go by and you're like, what happened in your life? And it's a blur. And what I started experiencing was my day started slowing down because I started slowing it down by making these appointments and keeping them.

• 45:28Speaker 03

  And my collaboration got better. I got a lot more innovation, a lot more creativity. It inspired me to write more. I own a business. I'm doing new things, all of which I may have missed if I hadn't kept that appointment, kept those appointments.

• 45:43Mike Carruthers?

  I think too, that, that we suffer in our communications with people. And one of my real pet peeves is, you know, when I'm talking to someone and their, and their phone goes off and all of a sudden that gets priority. That, well, wait, we were just talking. Well, yeah, but my phone rang. Well, yeah, I don't care. I mean, I hate that. I turn my phone off or I try to. Somehow those distractions get right to the top of the list. And then, or if you've ever had that experience of you're, you're talking to somebody and they start reading a text and they, they didn't hear a thing you said. And I thought, God, that's so rude.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  When you were just talking about the, like, if the phone went off during the interview, I, one of the things that I was thinking about is you interview a lot of people and you talk to a lot of people. How many of those people spend enough time in, in quiet preparing for the interview? And how much better the interviews would be if they did more of it? And I start thinking about things like that. I'm like, well, that would be significantly better for you, for them, for everybody, for your listeners. But when you don't, it's not as good. And that's, I think a lot of people's days are like that. I think you're like, my day was pretty good, but would it have been so much better if I had just given myself permission to pause for 10 to 15 minutes to think about the most important thing? And one of the things that I, I suggest to people, it's a really simple thing.

• 47:04Speaker 03

  It's a sentence and it says, you know, people have different roles in their lives, right? You have a role as an interviewer, I have a role as an author, entrepreneur, father, you know, uncle, whatever. And it's in my role is blank, the most important thing for me to do today is blank. And that, if you do that in quiet, like, all right, well, I'm just going to finish that sentence. In my role as father, the most important thing today is to, you know, wish my son a happy birthday. It's not his birthday today, but let's say it were. Well, if I did that in quiet, my debt, it makes me more deliberate about how I put, that's the most important thing I have to do today or to think about. And I think people miss those opportunities because they're too busy running around.

• 47:41Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it also seems that when you take some time to prepare, say for an interaction you're going to have with someone else later, you plan what you're going to say, what you're going to do. When you give it some thought ahead of time, it makes you more effective in that exchange later. It also makes you more efficient and people appreciate that, that you showed up ready to go.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  When you think about how much time people waste, other people's times because they don't prepare in quiet beforehand, it's absolutely mind blowing how little people think before they do things, before they say things, whether it's a leader or a parent or a coach. There's no quiet in the day. And if there's no quiet, there's no thought, there's no preparation, there's no deliberation. And then they just make it up on the fly. They're wasting an enormous amount of people's time.

• 48:35Mike Carruthers?

  You also talk about doing this, enforcing this kind of quiet time before a meeting with other people where everyone takes a few minutes to be quiet.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Which feels a little weird when you do it, but when you, when you gather a bunch of people together in a room and you say, okay, we're going to have a meeting, let's start with two minutes of quiet about what we're going to talk about today. You know, what's important? What do we want to get out of this time that we have here together? Let's take two minutes to do that. The conversation that ensues is much better because people have gotten their minds right. They've, they've got a mindset of, okay, this is, I'm prepared. It's like going on a football field or playing in an event. You know, like, I'm going to think about this thing for a second here before I start doing it. Makes it better. It's never a waste of time. Even two minutes of it, it's never a waste of time.

• 49:19Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I'm certainly on board with this. I've been a practitioner of this idea for a long time. And I like to see that you're out promoting it to people who, who maybe haven't really thought much about it. I've been speaking with Joe McCormack and his latest book is called Quiet Works: Making Silence the Secret Ingredient of Your Workday. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. And I appreciate you coming on and taking the time. Thanks, Joe.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Mike, it's great to talk to you again. And thanks for what you do. This is a great podcast. I really appreciate you having me.

• 49:53Mike Carruthers?

  There's been some controversy about baby carrots. Some people say that they're mini mutant carrots soaked in chlorine. Well, that's partially true. They're perfectly safe to eat. Cocktail sized carrots are real carrots. Farmers have modified the regular tapered carrot that we know to grow specifically for cocktail carrots. They're less tapered and easier to cut and shape. They usually cut about three or four baby carrots from a bigger carrot. As for the chlorine, it is true that they're rinsed in a mild solution of water and chlorine to kill bacteria and extend shelf life. But in fact, most pre-cut vegetables are.

• 50:37Mike Carruthers?

  The amount of chlorine residue left on those carrots is about the same amount of chlorine as if you were to rinse them under your tap. Baby carrots can taste different from regular carrots because they're sometimes made from older carrots, which can be starchier and less sweet. And baby carrots are more expensive than regular carrots. They can also dry out and develop a white film called carrot blush. And the fact of the matter is you can just buy regular carrots and cut them into smaller pieces. But in fact, baby carrots, the cocktail carrots are perfectly safe to eat. And that is something you should know. There are a couple of different things you could do to help support this podcast.

• 51:19Mike Carruthers?

  You can share it with someone and help us get new listeners. You can share it on social media to help spread the word. Or you could write a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever platform you listen on. Anything you can do to help spread the word is greatly appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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