good morning Hank it's Tuesday as you
may be aware the Internet is bursting
with life hacks that either do not work
or do not improve your life but today
I'm gonna share with you seven life
hacks all of which I learned from my
wife all of which work and all of which
have dramatically improved my life
okay so first this is our bed and it is
amazing not because like the mattress is
fancy or whatever but because the sheets
are clean for much of my 20s I was
profoundly unhappy and in retrospect a
legitimately large part of the problem
was that I was not changing my bed
sheets often enough listen the world
contains many sensorial wonders but none
is as pure as getting into a bed with
clean sheets I don't want to overstate
this or anything but if you change your
sheets once a week every week of your
life will feature at least a few moments
of absolute splendor also semi-related
when I was in my teens and 20s I
believed that it was unnecessary to
wander bath towels because since they
were cleaning off my newly bathed body
they were getting cleaner with each use
that worldview is incorrect
okay second the double loop if you tie
your shoes like this with a double loop
you don't have the annoyance of double
knots but also your shoes will never
come untied it's a game-changer and it
takes like two extra seconds third soap
when you're down to a little bit of soap
and it's sliding through your hands and
splitting into pieces and etc combined
that little bit of soap with a new bar
of soap so that no soap is lost or
wasted fourth kitchen sponges
oh god Hank kitchen sponges so the
average well used kitchen sponge
contains around 82 billion bacteria per
cubic inch which according to the author
of one study is the same density of
bacteria you can find in human stool
samples sponges are usually warm and wet
and full of air pockets which makes them
great breeding grounds for bacteria and
so I used to put them in the dishwasher
to try to sterilize them but it turns
out this might make the problem worse so
now we mostly use rags for cleaning and
when we do use sponges we dispose of
them when they start to stink as
recommended by researchers speaking of
things you shouldn't put in the
dishwasher wooden cutting boards which
until I met Sara I thought just fell
apart in the natural order of things but
it turns out only fall apart when you
put them in the dishwasher before we
move on let's pause to give thanks to
josephine cochrane inventor of the
automatic dishwasher a tool
has saved literally millions of human
work hours at only the small cost of
destroying our wooden cutting boards and
failing to sterilize our sponges right
okay next put stuff on your walls for
many years I lived in apartments with
bare walls because I thought decoration
was an unnecessary expense but in fact
decoration can be very cheap you can put
up album art you like for instance or
follow along with this art assignment
video to make your own prints or go to
student art shows at local arts
organizations and also if like me you
spend a lot of time inside it really
enriches your life like I've been
looking at this photograph of three
farmers on their way to a dance for a
long time and it never gets old nor do
these pictures of the artist Nina
katchadorian recreating Renaissance
portraiture in an airplane bathroom
using nothing but materials from the
plane lastly after Sarah and I got
married we went on a honeymoon in the
Caribbean and look the real life hacks
are not about how to maximize soap usage
or whatever they're about how to connect
more deeply with the world and the
people who inhabit it but that's not the
life act I learned on my honeymoon what
happened was that I brought a couple
beers down to the beach but forgot a
bottle opener so Sarah proceeded to use
her two-day old wedding ring to open the
bottles true love Hank I'll see you on
Friday