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Life Hacks My Wife Taught Me

2019-07-09 · list · John · 3:24 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life (also: Personal life) · mode: Advice & reviews

John shares seven life hacks he learned from his wife Sarah (weekly clean sheets, the double-loop shoe tie, merging soap, ditching sponges, keeping wooden boards out of the dishwasher, decorating walls) and ends saying the real hacks are about connecting with the world and people, plus a honeymoon story.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Seven life hacks from Sarah; clean sheets weekly; John's old view of bath towels

  • ★★ John says the internet is bursting with life hacks that either do not work or do not improve your life, but he will share seven he learned from his wife, all of which work and dramatically improved his life. — 00:00:00 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ John says he was profoundly unhappy for much of his 20s and, in retrospect, a large part of the problem was not changing his bed sheets often enough. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ John recommends changing your sheets once a week: getting into a bed with clean sheets is the purest sensory wonder and gives every week moments of splendor. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • ★ In his teens and twenties John believed bath towels needn't be laundered because they only dried his clean body; he now calls that worldview incorrect. (playful) — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — The double loop, merging soap, kitchen sponges and bacteria

  • ★★ John recommends tying shoes with a double loop: no annoying double knots, the shoes never come untied, and it takes about two extra seconds. — 00:00:58
  • ★ John recommends combining a small leftover piece of soap with a new bar so no soap is wasted. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says an average used kitchen sponge holds around 82 billion bacteria per cubic inch, which one study's author says equals the bacterial density of human stool samples. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says sponges are warm, wet and full of air pockets, ideal for bacteria, and putting them in the dishwasher to sterilize them might make the problem worse. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John and Sarah now mostly clean with rags and throw sponges away when they start to stink, as researchers recommend. — 00:01:27 · Sarah Urist Green

00:01:56 — Wooden cutting boards and the dishwasher; thanks to Josephine Cochrane

  • ★★ Until he met Sarah, John thought wooden cutting boards just fell apart naturally; they only fall apart when put in the dishwasher. — 00:01:56 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ John thanks Josephine Cochrane, inventor of the automatic dishwasher, which has saved millions of work hours at the small cost of ruined cutting boards and unsterilized sponges. (playful) — 00:01:56

00:02:26 — Put stuff on your walls: cheap decoration, the Young Farmers photo, Nina Katchadourian

  • ★★★ John recommends decorating your walls, which he once thought an unnecessary expense: album art, prints made with an Art Assignment video, or student art shows; it enriches indoor life. — 00:02:26 · The Art Assignment
  • ★★ John says the photograph of three farmers on their way to a dance never gets old, nor do Nina Katchadourian's airplane-bathroom recreations of Renaissance portraits. — 00:02:26

00:02:55 — Real life hacks are about connection; Sarah opens beers with her wedding ring on the honeymoon; sign-off

  • ★★★ John says the real life hacks are not about maximizing soap usage but about connecting more deeply with the world and the people in it. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ On their Caribbean honeymoon John brought beers to the beach but forgot a bottle opener, so Sarah opened them with her two-day-old wedding ring. (playful) — 00:02:55 · Sarah Urist Green

Humor (significant)

  • John's old belief that bath towels get cleaner with each use — 00:00:58

    “worldview is incorrect”

  • John thanks the dishwasher's inventor for saving millions of work hours — 00:01:56

    “at only the small cost of destroying our wooden cutting boards and failing to sterilize our sponges”

  • Sarah opens honeymoon beers with her two-day-old wedding ring — 00:02:55

    “True love.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Sarah Urist Green

Also: Caribbean · Josephine Cochrane · Nina Katchadourian · Renaissance · The Art Assignment · Young Farmers

Only in the description or credits: August Sander · Sopheap Pich

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