On today’s special Christmas Episode of Hang Your Hat I am discussing the 12 Days of Christmas. In this episode I will explore the history behind the song, how it has changed over the years, and why there so many birds in the song.
The 12 days of Christmas Playlist:
What is the most important invention ever? If you base your answer on the number of lives saved then it is the toilet. Toilets have reduced disease, improved child mortality rates, and made it possible for humans to live in close quarters. In this episode, I explore the long history of the toilet from Neolithic drainage to today's porcelain wonders.
Click the pictures for links to articles with additional information.
Welcome to Hang Your Hat, I’m Amy, and this is Episode 25, the Throne
In this week’s episode, we are going to talk about one of the most important inventions in human history. One that has reduced disease, improved child mortality rates, and made it possible for humans to live in close quarters. Yet we rarely talk about it. What is this magical invention? The Lavatory, the Loo, the John, the Privy, the Latrine, the Bog, the Potty, the can, the toilet.
It may surprise you just how old the toilet is, but it turns out that even ancient peoples didn’t want to live in their own filth.
Excavation of the Skara Brae. The toilet room is the opening in the upper right of the home. It is thought to be one of the first examples of a toilet with a drainage system.
One of the earliest example of what we believe to be a toilet is from Skara Brae, a Neolithic settlement in Scotland that dates back to about 3000 b.c. And believe it or not, most toilet researchers think they had not only toilets but indoor toilets with built-in drainage systems.
The Skara Brea settlement was discovered around 1850 and was remarkably well preserved. When excavated archeologists found small rooms in the settlement’s dwellings that were connected to drainage chutes. While they fell short of indoor plumbing with running water they were able to flush their toilets by pouring pots of water into what was essentially their sewer system.
Despite their early entry into toilet technology, by 1970, 1 in four Scots was still having to share an outdoor toilet, a problem that has been rectified for the most part today.
Drainage at the Indus Valley city of Lothal. It was incredibly advanced and efficient for the time.
The Indus Valley civilization which was in what is now western India and Pakistan was also an early entrant into the race for modern toilet technology, despite the regions current sanitation issues.
The sanitation system used by the Indus Valley people was actually pretty similar to the system used at Skara Brea, in that they had indoor toilets that drained to the outside of the house, but the infrastructure was a lot more advanced.
Indus Valley homes had toilets that you could sit on and all of my sources described them as wet toilets, meaning that they held water. The toilet drained out of the house through a clay brick pipe into a drain that was shared with other houses, like our modern sewer system. From there the toilets would drain into cesspits, or be carried out of the city altogether. The sewer system was publicly maintained and had man-hole covers and larger chambers to assist with its maintenance. It really was a very modern sanitation system.
Public Roman toilets were actually considered dangerous places, and shrines to the goddess Fortuna were often near toilets so that bathroom goers would be protected while doing their business.
However, the Roman Empire is often cited as the pinnacle of sanitation in the ancient world, because they had toilets that flushed - at least sort of flushed.
The first flushing toilet that we know about was made by Minoans on the island of Crete. The oldest example we have is from the palace of Knossos, which dates back to around 1700 b.c. However, at that time toilets were used only by the elite.
The Greeks made toilets, even the fancy flushing kind, available to the masses. They made large publicly available latrine rooms, which basically consisted of a bunch of seats with holes suspended over a drainage system. While private toilets in the home were not available to the lower classes, many middle-class homes had toilet facilities, although they usually weren’t the flushing variety.
It was the Romans however, that whole-heartedly adopted the use of the toilet. They became part of Roman life, as ubiquitous as the Roman bath.
Roman public toilets were a lot like their Greek predecessors. They were basically rooms lined with benches with holes in the top connected to a drainage system below. Water would run through the drainage system cleaning away the waste.
The running water was a result of the Roman aqueduct system. I was surprised to find while researching that the aqueduct system carried both potable and non-potable water. The potable water was of course used for drinking and cooking, the non-potable water was used for things like the Roman baths and the sanitation system. One source even suggested that water from nearby baths was used to flush public toilets. That is using resources wisely.
However, despite the apparent modernity of Roman sanitation, it really didn’t do that much to reduce disease. One of the big reasons is that their toilets lacked a very important part of modern toilet technology, the “S” bend.
The S bend is basically an S-shaped piece of pipe that traps a bit of water when you flush. That bit of water keeps things from coming back up the pipe and into your toilet, like flies and sewer gas.
Since the Roman toilets didn’t have an S bend they stank, and more importantly, they harbored flies. Flies are a disease vector. They transfer whatever they have been eating or standing on, like human feces, to whatever they eat or stand on next, like your food.
Roman public toilets were dangerous in other ways too. They harbored rats, roaches, snakes, and god knows what else. Fortunately for the Romans, one of their gods did know what else. Many Roman latrines have shrines to the goddess Fortuna. She was thought to protect toilet users from illness causes demons and other bad things that could happen while using the toilet.
In addition, archeologists now don’t think that the Roman sewer system was nearly as vast or advanced as we used to believe, so the removal of waste may not have even been that effective.
After studying the remains of pathogens in archeological sites, scientists found that the prevalence of intestinal parasites like roundworm and whipworm didn’t decrease from the Bronze and Iron ages to the Roman period like they expected, they actually rose. Despite all of the effort involved, Roman sanitation didn’t make its population any healthier than previous peoples.
A castle garderobe. Made famous by the Game of Thrones TV show. It has a hole in the bottom to allow excrement to escape.
The dark ages in Europe saw a lot of scientific knowledge and technology that was common among the Romans lost to the mists of time, and toilet technology was no exception.
By the medieval period toilets for the masses consisted of a mixed bag of chamber pots, communal outhouses, and holes in the ground. The elite had something altogether different, however, the garderobe. A garderobe was usually a tiny room in a castle that protruded from the side of the building and was open at the bottom, allowing gravity to do the job of waste removal. You may have even seen a garderobe because one was featured in a certain scene in Games of Thrones involving a crossbow and the use of a toilet.
Christchurch Monastery Drainage Diagram 1167 a.d. Unlike most castles at the time, Christchurch went to lengths to keep the sewage from contaiminating the site or water supply.
Most garderobes simply let the waste fall into a cesspit or the moat, or directly to the ground, but some castle dwellers must have thought that was pretty gross and used a drainage system. Christchurch monastery was one of those. They actually had a really elaborate drainage system that separated running water, drainage, and waste.
If you are wondering why garderobe sounds so much like wardrobe it is because it comes from the French words for guard, as in protect, and robe, meaning clothes and is what the modern term wardrobe comes from. That is because clothes were often kept in the garderobe. The ammonia smell in the room from all the urine was thought to protect clothes from fleas and other bugs by killing them - which leads me to believe that that the smell of ammonia in the room must have been unbearable.
Harington's Flush toilet is the forerunner of modern flush toilets.
The forerunner to the modern flush toilet was finally invented in the 1590s, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the 1st in England by Sir John Harington. Harington was the Queen’s godson and a bit of a trouble-maker. During the 1590s he invented a flush toilet with a mechanical valve to seal off the toilet and a tank of water to flush it - 2 of the basic components that make up a modern flush toilet. He called it the Ajax - which was a riff of the slang word for the toilet at that time - a jakes. It took 7.5 gallons of water to flush it - an extravagant amount at the time since this was still before modern plumbing. It also flushed into a cesspool below the toilet, and since this was also before the invention of the “s” bend all the fumes from the pit wafted back up through the toilet into the house, making it - less than ideal.
Despite these obvious short-comings of the Ajax Queen Elizabeth herself is alleged had one installed.
Harington introduced the Ajax to the world in 1596 in a publication called, “A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax.” While the book did detail the workings of the Ajax toilet and how to build one, it was also a discourse on obscenity and a thinly veiled critique of his peers - the members of the ruling class.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ajax was not widely adopted.
Cumming's Design for the S bend finally made the modern flush toilet possible by keeping sewer gasses from escaping back up the pipe.
Toilets finally became practical in 1775 when the inventor Alexander Cumming patented what is possibly the greatest contribution towards the modern toilet - the “S” bend pipe.
The problem that had plagued toilets prior to Cumming’s invention was the smell. Sure you could flush away the excrement, but there was nothing stopping that stink from floating back up the pipe. There needed to be a sealed barrier that would not let the gas pass back up the pipe, and Cumming came up with a surprisingly simple and elegant solution - bend the pipe.
A pipe with an S bend look a lot like an S lying on its side so one of the curved portions of the S is pointing toward the floor. That part of the “S” captures a bit of water every time the toilet is flushed, and that trapped water acts as a barrier to the gas that tries to escape up the pipe, meaning that your toilet won’t smell like a sewer - at least as long as you clean it.
Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet, but he did popularize it. His toilet design is the classic that is often seen in old movies and cartoons.
It wasn’t until the 1880s that the flush toilet went mainstream though, and it is thanks to a man named Thomas Crapper.
First, let's get something out of the way - the word crap, meaning excrement, did not start with Thomas Crapper. Crap had been in use since at least the time that crapper was in diapers and referred to the contents of diapers. Crapper was just exceptionally well named for his eventual career.
Crapper, also, I am sure it is obvious at this point did not invent the flush toilet, although he did patent several bathroom-related inventions, like the ball-cock.
Crapper is so well known for his contributions to the toilet because he was hired by England’s Prince Edward to install some of his toilets in several royal palaces, and because he displayed his toilets in showrooms, so when people needed a toilet they were already familiar with the Crapper name.
You are probably familiar with the Crapper toilet design because they are common in movies about the Victorian period and in a lot of old cartoons. He mounted his water tank high up on the wall, with a pipe and pull cord leading down to the base of the toilet.
His design is still in production today. If you want to buy one, his iconic design starts at 2209 pounds and can be bought at thomas-crapper.com
The toilets that most people have in their houses today are not significantly different than the toilets available in the 1930's.
Throughout the 20th century, there were no major improvements to the basic toilet design. Between 1900 and 1910 the toilet’s wash down method was improved when siphon-jet models were introduced. Those are the little holes on the underside of the toilet bowl that are so difficult to clean. At the same time, high wall mounted tanks were replaced with low tanks, and the opulent and difficult to clean toilets of the Victorian era were replaced with the smooth white easy to clean surfaces that we know today.
The economic pressures of the 1930’s made new more affordable close coupled two piece models more popular, and these are basically the toilets we have in our homes today. Toilets have changed in style over the years, but the only significant technological difference between the toilets that we have today and those of the 1930’s is the amount of water used - we now have low-flush and dual flush models that conserve water.
Of course, there are some pretty cool futuristic toilets out there now that for the most part have not made it into people’s homes, but that’s a story for another time.
Today’s show topic was requested by a listener and turned out to be a much more interesting show topic than I had anticipated. You can find pictures of all of the toilets I talked about in today’s show on the show notes at hangyourhatpodcast.com. The early flush toilets are really pretty cool looking.
If you have an idea for a show topic you can let me know about it by leaving a comment on hangyouhatpodcast.com, or by emailing me at hangyourhatpodcast@gmail.com
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And as always, thanks for listening.
Seventeen years ago the National Dairy Council put out a commercial about a little girl feeding Santa cheese instead of cookies. Now, I have kids of my own, and we leave cookies for Santa every year, but I wonder if there is a better alternative, something Santa would like better than cookies and milk, like cheese. On this episode of Hang Your Hat I explore the foods kids leave for Santa all around the world and hint, it isn't all cookies and milk.
Watch the video that started me on the path to Santa food exploration.
In Australia, kids leave Santa Beer, and there is a good chance that Carlton Draught is the beer Santa drinks most. Check out their very funny commercial.
British kids leave Santa mincemeat pie on Christmas Eve. Modern mincemeat rarely contains actual meat, but if you want to go super traditional and make your mincemeat out of actual meat, you can! Saveur has a recipe for traditional mincemeat that is from Mrs. Beeton's original 1861 Book of Household Management.
Welcome to Hang Your Hat. This is episode 24: Santa Food
In December 2000, here in the US, a Christmas commercial was released by the National Dairy Council. In it, a little girl rushes to tell her parents that Santa has come and leads them out into the living room, which is packed full of over the top Christmas presents, like a car, ski mobile, and a pony. The parents are of course in shock at the pure abundance left for them by Santa, and the dad remarks, “whoa, those must have been some cookies.” The little girl responds, “I didn’t leave him cookies, I left him cheese.”
When I first saw this commercial, I thought, it was surprisingly good marketing by the National Dairy Council, and that Santa probably would appreciate some variety in the food left out for him on the big day. I know that I would certainly get a bit tired of cookies and milk, after the 1 millionth serving.
At that time, 17 years ago, I had assumed that cookies and milk were universally served to Santa the world over. I was, as you can probably guess, dead wrong on that front. It turns out that, while Santa’s food offerings are pretty consistent within a single country - they tend to be pretty different from one country to the next. Santa is left a wide variety of food and drink, some sweet and some savory, and some completely lactose-free - in case Santa’s digestive system can’t take more than a couple million gallons of milk.
On this Episode of Hang Your Hat I will be exploring what kids leave for Santa around the world, but, before we get into that I will discuss why we got started feeding Santa in the first place. It is an ancient practice passed down through the generations, just good manners, or merely a bribe for better presents? It turns out it is all of the above and a bit more.
Like nearly all of the historical topics covered by Hang Your Hat, there is no definitive origin story for feeding Santa. There are in fact many theories on how we got started feeding Santa, and there is probably some truth in several of them.
Humans started leaving sacred or supernatural beings, like Santa, gifts of food in exchange for blessings thousands of years ago, and this type of practice used to be common all around the world. Since our earliest Santa stories come from Europe some think that the tradition of leaving food for Santa stems from winter solstice-themed pagan rituals in pre-Christian Europe, during which gifts of food were offered to the spirits of ancestors in exchange for a blessing.
The practice of leaving Santa and his reindeer treats also has a lot of parallels in Norse mythology. Odin, the head honcho of the Norse gods would lead a big hunting party every winter during the Yuletide festivities. He would ride his eight-legged horse Sleipner throughout the countryside with a raven perched on each shoulder. Children would leave out treats for Odin’s horse, like carrots, and wine for Odin (since that is all he ate or drank) in the hope that Odin would stop by their house while he was out on his hunt and leave them presents in exchange for the food.
Odin’s horse must have been pretty good at traveling through the snowy north because Santa takes a page out of Odin’s book today and trades his reindeer in for horses when he is traveling in some of the Scandinavian countries.
St Nicholas, like Odin, was also known for traveling during the Christmas holidays. Historically the Dutch would hold a feast in honor of St Nick on the night of December 6th, St. Nicholas Day. Since the party would start too late for kids to attend, the kids would leave out food for Santa and his entourage, who had traveled a long way to get to the party. The next morning the kids would wake to find that St. Nick had left them presents in place of the food.
St. Nicholas day celebrations fell out of favor during the protestant reformation - it was considered gaudy and extravagant and was discouraged by the church. The Dutch people didn’t want to abandon their St. Nicholas day festivities entirely so they moved the party to the night of the 24th, and kids continued to leave food for Santa on Christmas eve.
Leaving food for St. Nick was not always about just being nice though. The original St. Nicholas was born in Greece in 280 a.d. and was known as a defiant defender of church doctrine, that rewarded the good and punished the bad. Food was occasionally left for mean St. Nick as a bribe. Naughty kids left St. Nick a treat in the hope that they wouldn’t be punished by him.
Fortunately, Santa eventually morphed into the jolly fat man we know today who is much more likely to hand out treats than punishments (maybe all of the cookies sweetened him up).
One of the first references to leaving cookies for Santa here in the US is from the 1870’s and comes from a short story called Polly: A before Christmas Story. During the Victorian era, when this story was published it was customary to leave treats for visiting travelers and St Nick was no exception. It was also the time when the concept of “childhood” really began to take hold. Kid’s were encouraged to practice childhood rituals like leaving food for Santa and the food left for Santa was the food that was typically a treat for kids.
Surprisingly, this practice became even more common during the great depression. Times were tough then, and parents wanted to make sure that their kid’s learned that when someone does something special for you it should be rewarded with a heartfelt thanks. Leaving precious treats for Santa was a great way to say thanks for the presents that he brought.
Throughout the world, countries have their own special ways of thanking Santa for the presents that he brings. Here are a few of the foods that Santa eats on his Christmas journey around the world:
Australia
In Australia, kids might leave Santa some cookies and milk and some carrots for his reindeer, but Santa’s Christmas eve treat would not be complete without a cold beer. Keep in mind that it is summer time in Australia when St. Nick comes to visit, so he needs something to help him cool down after climbing down the chimney in his snowsuit.
I couldn’t find any stats on the most popular beer brand to give Santa, but I was able to find some of the most popular beers in Australia, and it makes sense to leave Santa the kind of beer that you would have on hand. So based on that, as of 2016, Santa was probably most likely to receive a Carlton draught during his trip down under, because it was the most popular beer in the country.
I had never heard of a Carlton draught, so I got curious and looked it up. It is a pale draught lager, with an absolutely terrible rating on ratebeer.com and a pretty bad rating on beeradvocate.com; however, it does have really funny commercials. There will be a link to one that is like a high-speed car chase but on foot holding beer in the show notes.
Sweden
Swedish kids give Santa, or Tomte the Scandinavian spirit of winter associated with Christmas, the most logical of all of the Christmas treats in my opinion - Coffee. Santa is going full steam for 24 hours straight, and Santa magic can only go so far - the guy must be exhausted by the end of the night, and Swedish kids appreciate that and give him a little pick me up.
Denmark
In Denmark, Santa has to share his Christmas Eve treats with his elves, called the Nisser. The Nisser remind me of the elf on a shelf. In Denmark, they live in the attic watching over things for Santa and making trouble.
On Christmas, eve Kids leave Santa and the Nisser Risengrod, because if they don’t the Nisser will cause trouble.
Risengrod is a special rice pudding that is a traditional part of the Christmas Eve dinner. It is made with sugar, cinnamon, milk, and sometimes dried fruit. To my American eyes, it looks a lot like a tasty bowl of oatmeal.
Germany
In Germany kids don’t leave Santa snacks – perhaps they are just as concerned about the big man’s blood sugar as I am – instead German kids leave Santa personalized letters, which Santa, of course, takes the time out to read.
When the kids wake up on Christmas morning, their letters are gone, but Santa has left them presents in their place.
The Netherlands
In the Netherlands, Santa gets another break from the treats, and his horse (yes horse - not reindeer) gets all the love. Kid’s leave Sinterklaas’ horse carrots, hay, and water, and in return, Sinterklaas leaves chocolate coins, mandarin oranges, and marzipan.
France
In France, Santa won’t be downing any glasses of milk, although he might get a glass of wine. However, French kids tend to lavish their love on Santa’s reindeer, rather than the big guy himself though. After a long trip all the way to France they are going to need some nourishment too after all. French kids fill their shoes with carrots for the reindeer and find their shoes filled with toys and sweets the next morning. So far the reindeer have not complained about their carrots smelling of feet.
Britain
In Britain, Santa is left a traditional British Christmas classic - mincemeat pies.
Mincemeat is not something that we really have here in the US, so when most Americans hear the word mincemeat, they think meat, like steak, but modern mincemeat pies are not that likely to have meat in them. They are usually filled with a mix of dried fruits and spices
If however, you want to give Santa a traditional mincemeat pie this Christmas so that he has some protein to sustain him through the night, you can make one. I will link to Ms. Beeton’s 1861 recipe from her book on household management. Her recipe contains Beef Suet and rump steak.
Santa washes down his mincemeat pies with glasses of Sherry, which are sure to keep him warm and toasty during the cold Christmas night.
Ireland
In Ireland, Santa gets another big helping of mince pies, and maybe a Christmas pudding or two, but he isn’t likely to drink any sherry in Ireland. Instead, he gets a nice pint of Guinness - that should hold him over while he makes the long trip across the Atlantic.
Argentina
Santa’s reindeer get one more chance to tank up before journey’s end when they get to Argentina. Argentinian kids leave the reindeer hay and water. Circumnavigating the globe while pulling a sleigh, Santa, Santa’s jelly belly, and enough presents for every nice child in the world is hard work, and the reindeer could use the calories.
Chile
In Chile, Santa is known as Old Man Christmas, and kids leave a special treat for him on Christmas Eve, Pan de Pascua. Pan de Pascua is a spice cake with a texture similar to sponge cake, sweetened with honey and filled with ginger and sometimes candied fruits or nuts.
I can’t think of an equivalent cake here in the US, the closest comparison would probably be fruit cake, but Pan de Pascua is much lighter and fluffier than the dense, and usually gross fruit cakes we eat here in the US. A better comparison would probably be Italian Panettone or German Stollen.
Pan de Pascual looks delicious, and I bet Santa saves room for a few bites in all the homes in Chile.
US
Here in the US we thank, and possibly bribe Santa, by leaving him some nice sober protestant milk and cookies, which could get pretty boring after a couple of million homes. Fortunately, variety is the spice of life and there is no standard type of cookie to feed Santa. Popular Christmas time or really anytime cookies in the US include chocolate chip, sugar cookies, and snickerdoodles, which are packed with cinnamon, as well as, gingerbread, peanut butter, shortbread, and oatmeal cookies, but the one cookie Santa is more likely to get in the US than any other are Oreos. Oreos are sandwich cookies consisting of two chocolate wafers with a creamy substance of indeterminate origin stuffed between the wafers. Oreos are the number 1 selling name brand cookie in the US with over 674 million dollars in sales in 2017 alone.
So, how many calories worth of Christmas delights does Santa eat every Christmas eve? It is hard to know exactly because there is no database in which families report what they fed Santa or the caloric content of what he ate, but back in 2013, Delish did an article on the subject which used what I thought were some pretty reasonable assumptions about Santa’s cookie consumption. They based their figures on Santa being served cookies and milk at the houses that left Santa food, which we know will not be the most accurate estimate since the food that he is served varies by country, but for the purposes of estimation, we will assume that the average caloric content per household evens out to about caloric content of cookies and milk.
Delish estimated that 1 billion Cookies or Cookies equivalents are left for Santa, and 500 million glasses of milk or milk equivalents are left for Santa each year. If Santa takes 2 bites of each cookie and drinks most of his glass of milk then he consumes just under 40 billion calories each Christmas Eve. Now if you take into account the fact that quite a few of the glasses of milk equivalent are alcoholic, and most of the food he is eating is very sugary, you can see that Santa is likely to have some health problems on the horizon, namely cirrhosis of the liver and diabetes.
When I asked my son, who is 10, how Santa stayed healthy despite eating more than 1000 elephants worth of sweets and 9 olympic swimming pools worth of milk and booze, he told me that Santa drinks magic juice when he gets home Christmas morning that restores his body. I can’t really argue with that.
Thanks for for listening to Hang Your Hat. I hope you enjoyed the show and learned a lot about Santa’s gluttony. This Christmas, do your friends and family a favor and give them the gift of podcasts. Teach someone special about how podcasts work, and share your favorites with them.
This will be the last show of 2017, but I will be back in the new year with some brand new topics that I am looking forward to sharing with you all. If you have a question or topic you would like me to cover during the next year please let me know. I would love to know what you all are interested in learning about. You can get in touch with me at hangyourhatpodcast@gmail.com or at hangyourhatpodcast.com
The Hang your Hat podcast is a production of gerwerkencrafts.com. You can visit gerwerken crafts for diy inspiration, home décor, crafts, tutorials and more.
Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, and I hope you have a great New Year.
It is time to officially make the transition to fall, and that starts with the Equinox. In this week's episode we will explore what the equinox is and how it occurs, ways to celebrate the equinox, including several variations on harvest festivals, and how your work in the garden is not over even when the harvest is done.
If you want to learn more about the movement of the Earth, check out this video from Vsauce: https://youtu.be/IJhgZBn-LHg
It's here! Science stuff, mind-blowing stuff, Vsauce stuff, oh my!!
It’s summer, and nothing says summer quite like a backyard cookout filled with good friends and grilled food. In this episode find out about how back yard grilling got its start, why lovers of grilled food should appreciate harbor buoys, and why the charcoal we put in our grills probably isn’t charcoal. I will also discuss some of the pros and cons of different types of grills, and some vegetarian options for your next cookout.
Episode 14's music was by Andy G. Cohen and Jason Shaw. You can find it on http://freemusicarchive.org
(affiliate links)
Has the coming of spring left you with an inexplicable urge to clean and organize? In this episode of Hang Your Hat I will give you some insight on why that might be, and what you should do about it. I also talk about how not to kill yourself with cleaning supplies, and a couple of the more helpful cleaning hacks I found during my research for the show.
Update 10/20/2017:
Since creating this show Smartvacuums.co.uk published a great article on pet hair removal. They go into detail on the removal of pet hair from multiple surfaces both inside and outside the home. If you have a pet hair problem and are in need of a solution you should check it out.
http://www.smartvacuums.co.uk/guide-removing-pet-hair-from-your-home/
It is time for another Episode of Hang Your Hat and this time I am taking on the Furniture giant Ikea. In this episode, I dig a bit into the history of the furniture mega store, divulge some of it’s dark secrets, and discuss why, despite it’s failings, I still love the store. I will also review it’s new and much lauded 2017 PS line, and talk about a recent accolade that we should all be excited about.
See the Better Shelter in Action: http://www.bettershelter.org/better-shelter-awarded-beazley-design-of-the-year/
Learn More about How Natural Light Can Reset Your Sleep Cycle: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31522-6
Welcome to Hang your Hat: Ideas that are Close to Home.
This is Episode 7: How's the Kullen coming along?
Of all the multi national, tax evading, global conglomerates that dominate a single industry and use a mind boggling amount of natural resources to do it, Ikea is my favorite.
In this episode, I dig a bit into the history of the furniture mega store, divulge some of it’s dark secrets, and discuss why, despite it’s failings, I still love the store. I will also review it’s new and much lauded 2017 PS line, and talk about a recent accolade that we should all be excited about.
Since this episode is full of swedish words and names, and I do not speak Swedish, I want to apologize in advance for my atrocious pronunciation. Believe it or not, I am trying my best to get it right.
For the first time since 2014 Ikea has come out with a new PS collection. 21 designers collaborated with Ikea to make 60 new products, ranging from furniture to drink mixes. According to Ikea this new line was made for the “fiercely independent” who “give convention a wedgie.” That is actual copy from their website - give convention a wedgie. I think it is pretty clear that they are targeting millennials, particularly those that are living in transient or shared conditions. As a result, most of the furniture is small and foldable, and looks pretty unconventional.
For example the collection has a love seat that is made from two strapped together corner seats constructed from a metal grid covered with 36 pillows. It looks like metal outdoor furniture covered in an angry pointy cloud. I think it is safe to say that I am not a fan of this particular piece of furniture, but I can see how it might be really great for people that move a lot. The fact that it can be separated into two smaller pieces means that it could fit in multiple home layouts, including ones that don’t have enough room for a love seat. The metal frame is durable enough to survive several moves, and looks like it would be a lot lighter weight than a traditional wood and upolestry love seat, and the fact that it can be broken into pieces makes it easier for a single person to move, and easier to carryupstairs or fit through narrow doorways. Even though I am not a fan of this piece, it is a really good design for the target audience.
There is also a chair that is covered in a mesh fabric that I am a fan of, it looks fantastic. The chair has a metal frame and wooden seat with the mesh fabric, that forms the body of the chair stretched over the frame. The chair is mostly a horse shoe shape, that is a bit squeezed in on the sides for the arm rests. It also has araised back that sort of flows into the sides. My overall impression of it, is that it looks like a really comfortable, inexpensive office guest chair. It also comes in a pretty plum color, or a soft grey.
I am also a fan of the collection’s rocking chair. It is shaped like half a sphere suspended on rockers. Firebeard said it looks like one of the wheeled standup chairs the kids had before they could walk, and it kind of does, but I still kind of like it. It looks like it might be a great place to cuddle up to read a book, or plot an evil scheme - it looks like it might be a good super villain lounger too.
There are a couple of things in the collection that I think are just duds. The coffee table looks like a short folding TV tray made from metal. It is at best the size of a side table. If they had called it a side table, I might have been able to get behind the design, but as a coffee table, it really misses the mark for me.
They also have a USB powered flash light in a cage, that just doesn’t make any sense at all. I think the idea is that it is a lamp that can be powered by your laptop or a car charger, so you don’t need to be in a house to use it, but it just seems like a flashlight with portability issues.
My absolute favorite from the collection is a 3 in one self watering plant pot set. It is a 3 piece set that consists of a metal plant stand, an off white water proof outer pot, and an unglazed terra-cotta inner pot. The metal plant stand cradles the outer pot so that it is suspended above the floor which looks quite nice and keeps your floors from being ruined. The outer pot acts as a water resivoir. You fill it up from a hole on the side, and the inner pot slowly sucks up the water keeping the plant moist. I love this thing. It is attractive, useful, practical. After my next trip to Ikea my house will be filled with them.
The collection has a lot of other really great pieces and several not so great pieces, that I plan to cover in detail on the blog. For now I’m just going to mention a few. There is a very pretty emerald green knit throw with a wavy texture, some smokey glass vases that would work with a lot of different decorating styles, a room divider that would be great to make a private space for guests when you don’t have a guest bedroom, some travel mugs with a really interesting shape, and a truly bizarre lounging blanket that looks a bit like a quilted vest made for someone 7 or 8 feet tall.
Another quick mention, around the same time that the PS collection came out Ikea also released a bicycle. It is belt driven rather than chain driven, which according to ikea makes it easier for novicesto work on, and it comes with quick attachment points that make it easy to add on some of their accessories like a pull behind trailer and panners, which are like square bags that fit next to the back wheels. It also comes with a 25 year warranty. I am a tiny bit of a bike snob, so I am reserving judgement on this one until I see it in person. I have doubts that the belt drive will really work that well, especially under a load, but I hope that I am wrong and that this is a good inexpensive transportation option.
Ikea’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad, was born in Smaland Sweden in 1926, and seems to have become a business man at the point of exiting the womb. At 5, he was already buying matches in bulk and selling them to his neighbors at discounted prices, and by 7 he had expanded into other markets - nearby towns selling things like Christmas cards and pencils.
Kampradstarted IKEA in 1943, at the age of 17 using money that his father had given him for doing well in school, despite his dyslexia. Initially the company sold things like pens, picture frames, and watches at reduced prices, but in 1948 he expanded the line to include furniture produced by local manufactures.
By 1951 IKEA was already producing the IKEA catalogue, much like the Ikea catalogue we know today, and in 1953 the first IKEA furniture showroom was opened. The showroom was a response to a price war with an Ikea competitor. Since people could see the quality of the Ikea products in the showroom, buyers could make their furniture choice based on both cost and quality rather than just cost alone. This proved to be a good move for Ikea, and their sales continued to grow.
Ikea began the move to manufacturing their own flat pack furniturein 1956, after Competitors encouraged furniture suppliers to boycott Ikea. In my opinion, this is when Ikea as we know it today was really born. Soon after, in 1958, the first IKEA store, like the Ikea stores we know now was opened in Almhult Sweden.
The ikea brand really took off from there. The first IKEA restaurant was opened in 1960, and the first store outside of Sweden was opened in 1963. Ikea finally reached US markets in 1985.
Ikea has actually been fairly slow to expand. They seem to want to get things right the first time, and are willing to slow their expansion to do it. For example, it took 6 years to open it’s first store in south Korea. Their strategy seems to work though, when they expand they do it right, selling a mass produced product internationally, while still somehow catering to the needs of the local market.
Now there are more than 318 Ikea stores in more countries than Walmart, and additional expansion into emerging markets like China and India is still very much on the agenda.
Ikea’s net income has increased 31% in the last 5 year up to$4.5 Billion.
Why is Ikea so successful? It’s model is based on volume. It produces a lot of the same item and sells them in many different markets. That lets them get lower prices from their suppliers, and in turn charge their customers lower prices. The more volume the greater that discount becomes, which is why many IKEA favorites have actually become cheaper over the years, despite inflation.
For example, as of 2015 one Billy bookcase was sold every 10 seconds, that kind of volume allowed the company to lower their 2015 price by an average of 1% below the 2014 price.
Is is actually so ubiquitous a product, that Bloomberg has created a Billy bookcase index as an indicator of the fiscal strength of each of the countries they are sold in. In case you were wondering, in 2015, the latest year I could find, Slovakia was the cheapest, followed by several other European countries that use the Euro. The price reflected decreasing prices in the Euro zone at that time. Egypt was the most expensive, reflecting rampant price growth in the country.
The Ikea has not escaped controversary however. We probably all rememberthe horsemeat meatball scandal of 2013. Ikea was of course, not the only company impacted. After investigation, by the European Union, food adulteration was found to be far more widespreadthan had been previously thought; however, Ikea seemed to become the name that was most closely associated with the scandal.
Ikea also uses a really absurd amount of natural resources, particularly wood. All of my sources differed slightly in the amount of wood they said IKEA uses, but most agreed that it was just about 1% of the world’s commercial wood supply every year, and that Ikea is likely, at least in the top 5 of commercial wood consumers in the world.
Critics argue, that given the lifespan of most Ikea products, that using that much wood is a terrible waste of natural resources. I think that this argument has some validity. Using that much wood does seem environmentally irresponsible. However, Ikea is currently attempting to mitigate it’s impact. As of last year about 40% of the wood they used came from either recycled sources or Forest Stewardship Council certified forests. Forest Stewardship council certification means that the wood is sourced in an environmentally friendly, socially responsibly and economically viable way. It is a huge step toward sustainability. Ikea plans to have at least 50% of the wood it sources to be sustainablethisyear, and 100% of it by 2020.
What I think is really important here is that since IKEA is SO big, and it’s part of the consumer wood market share is SOO huge, that it’s move toward more sustainably harvested wood could actually impact the entire consumer wood market. No supplier is going to want to miss out on a large portion of the market share, and that may mean a greater move toward sustainable wood production over all.
Ikea also used East German prisoners as slave labor to reduce costs in the late 70’s in early 80’s. In 2012 the practice came to light after an independent audit by Ernst and Young. The Ernst and Young report said that while Ikea had had a policy of visiting production facilities to control working processes, access to East German suppliers had been restricted. In 2012 The company made a public apology for it. Peter Betzel, the head of Ikea Germany, stated "It is not and never was acceptable to Ikea that it should be selling products made by political prisoners and I would like to express my deepest regret for this to the victims and their families.” Betzel further stated that the companyhad received tipoffs that it had been using forced labour, but had taken insufficient action against the claims, and that since 2000 it has had had a strict system of checks and balances in place. The company now does over over 1000 control checks every year.
Anita Gossler, an east german prisoner that was forced to make goods for other companies stated that "There were many companies involved in this practice," “ they should all be named and shamed. Ikea has put its head above the parapet and admitted its guilt but there are plenty of others who should also be approached for compensation." She also said that she welcomed Ikea’s announcement that it planned to donate funds to research projects on forced labour in the former GDR.
This accusation about forced German labor came at about the same time that the company was accused of using cuban political prisoners for the same purpose. It turned out that the cubans had made sample goods for the company, but the company never actually sold goods made by cuban prisoners, and that Ikea was unaware of any involvement of cuban prisoners.
There have also been allegations that Ingvar Kamprad had Nazi ties. In 1994 Kamprad’s Nazi ties initially came to light when the letters of Per Engdahl, the leader of the New Swedish Movement, and supporter of Nazi Germany (but not Nazism), came to light. The letters showed that as a teen Kamprad had given money to and recruited for the organization, and that Kamprad was friends with Engdahl. Then in 2011, a book by the Swedish journalist Elisabeth Åsbrink showed that Kamprad had been a member of the the fascistgroup, the Swedish Socialist Union (SSS), at the time that he founded Ikea. There is even some evidence that he recruited for the organization, although it is unclear how official that capacity might have been.
In 1998 Kamprad made a public apology for his Nazi ties, calling them a part of my life which I bitterly regret, youthful sins, and the biggest mistake of his lifeMost at the time seemed to believe that Kamprad was truly remorseful, and most groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, accepted his apology.
In addition, Asbrink’s 2011 book, “And in Wienerwald the trees remain”, the book that brought further Nazi ties to light, also details Kamprad’s long term friendship with a Jewish refugee that came to work on Kamprad’s family farm and later was a member of the team that launched Ikea. Perhaps this friendship helped show Kamprad there error of his ways.
Back in 1998, Kamprad stated that The IKEA he created is based on democratic principles and embraces a multicultural society. I think support for that vision of Ikea was given on January 30, when Ikea came out with a letter in support of their immigrantemployees in the US after the US travel ban restricted movement of people from 7 primarily Muslim countries into the US.
Last, but certainly not least, IKEA is a tax dodger. Technically, IKEA is a charity. In 1982, Ingvar Kamprad gave his ownership stake in IKEA to the Stichting Ingka Foundation, which is a dutch charity. The charity runs IKEA through Ingka Holdings, a subsidiary of the Stiching Ingka Foundation, that operates as a for profit company.
As of 2006, the charity had an estimated endowment of $36 billion dollars, but it wasn’t very charitable in it’s giving. The foundation has been giving Sweden’s Lund Institute of Technology 1.7 million Euros a year, which is a lot, but it is very little in comparison to the foundation’s gigantic endowment.
So why the complicated structure? Since Ikea is owned by a charitable organization, all of it’s profits are tax free. And guess who is in charge of the Stichting Ingka Foundation, it is a board, headed by Kamprad.
Ikea, as you probably think of it is actually many companies, and subsidiary companies with an extremelycomplex organizational structure that make it difficult to tell who owns what, and who benefits from the company’s success.
The result is very little tax being paid on a huge amount of profit, and it appears to be completely legal.
So why, after the horse meat, huge resource usage, forced labor, Nazi affiliations, and tax doging do people still like Ikea? I think there are two reasons.
For one, Times are tough. Millienials earn on average 20% less than their parents did at the same age. Many have to stay at home with their parents to make ends meet, and those that do get out on their owndon’t have a lot of extra money for furniture. Low cost furniture suppliers, like Ikea, make it possible for a millennial to both move out of their parent’s basement, and have a bed to sleep on in their new place. That is a powerful motivator to forget a company’s past misdeeds.
The 2nd reason isa little less concrete. I think that, for the most part, Ikea really do seem to be trying to learn from their mistakes and do better. Whether that is from an inherent desire to make the world a better place, or because it is good for sales, the end result is that you can feel ok about buying an Ikea product. While your purchase probably isn’t making the world a better place, it probably isn’t making the world a worse place, and that it not something that you can often say at a similar price point.
On the environmental front, ikea is working toward sustainability. They have switched to all LEDs, make high efficiency appliances and low water use faucets. They are working toward completely sustainable wood and cotton. They have cut out polystyrene and are cutting out palm oil. They are investing in renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions, increasing efficiency, and reducing waste. Many of their stores are at least partially solar powered, and they have begun to offer solar panels to consumers in test markets. Half of the food they serve is from local sources, and most of the fish they serve is sustainably sourced, and they are working toward all of their products coming from renewable, recyclable, or recycled sources in the near future.
They are also working toward social justice. 48% of their managers are women. They are enforcing a conduct for their suppliers that enforces things like good working conditions, and recently they have begun employing Syrian refugees that have had difficulty finding jobs. In addition, the Stichting Ingka Foundation - Ikea’s non profit parent company, has committed to providing additional support to communities negatively impacted by climate change, and providing clean drinking water.
However, I think their most important contribution to social justice recently is the Better Shelter, A flat pack home for refugees that won the prestigious 2016 Beasley Design of the year award.
The better shelter is a lightweight rigid polymer structure that can be set up by a team of 4 in a matter of hours. They sleep 5, are far more durable and weather proof than a tent, and havea solar panel on the roof that provides enough energy to power a light, or charge a cell phone.
In other words, it is a tenable living situation for refugees, that provides a modicum of security and a sense of home.
Before I go, I have a quick update from Episode 6: Sweet dreams are made of these. On February 2, just a few days after the episode aired, a new study came out in the journal current biology, called Circadian Entrainment to the Natural Light-Dark Cycle across Seasons and the Weekend. The study focused how exposure to natural light, as opposed to the electrical light we are exposed to all of the time impacts the body clock. Exposure to electrical light delays the body clock, so we go to bed late and wake up late. They wanted to find out if exposure to natural light would reset the biological clock so that a person would go to sleep around sunset and wake up around sunrise. So they sent study participants camping. The participants were exposed ONLY to natural light, no flash lights, no phones, nothing. They found that the natural light DID reset the biological clock. The participants went to bed earlier and woke up earlier. It even helped prevent cases of the Monday’s. So if you are in need of a biological clock reset, it may be a good time to go camping, or failing that, at least spending a bit more time outdoors and away from screens.
If you want to learn more I will link to the study in the show notes.
Thank You for listening, I hope you enjoyed the Show. If you did, please rate the show or leave a review on I tunes. Due to travel obligations, I will be back in three weeks rather than the typical 2 weeks. If you would like to get in touch in the meantime please send me an email at hangyourhatpodcast@gmail.com. You can also visit the website hangyourhatpodcast.com.
The Hang your Hat podcast is a production of gerwerkencrafts.com. That is G-E-R-W-E-R-K-E-N crafts (all one word) .comYou can visit gerwerken crafts for diy, home décor, crafts, tutorials and more.
It's that time of year again. Get ready for the holiday season with Hang Your Hat. In this episode I discuss the History of Christmas Cards, and Addresses, a couple of fun finds for the holiday season, and I have a special guest on to talk with me about consumable clutter free gifts that are perfect for everyone on your Christmas list.
Show Notes:
The article referenced in the Christmas Card segment (The Female World of Cards and Holidays: Women, Families, and the Work of Kinship, by Micaela di Leonardo) can be found here.
Crafting a Life.
Welcome to Gerwerken Crafts, Home of the Hang Your Hat Podcast, and information about DIY, crafts, home improvement and much more.
