# Cleanliness **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 2, 2024, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505 "2024-01-02T17:39:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/61 "2024-01-03T19:09:17Z")
I was wondering about prisons. I mean if you’re slightly smelly from just normal sweat and activities (🤔) and you reside in a sea of other stinky individuals I guess b.o. isn’t a problem. I bet virus and upper respiratory stuff goes like wildfire through a prison. (Omg. Poo flingers. There’s a bunch of reasons I’m not a criminal but flying poo is up on the top of the list) ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/62 "2024-01-03T19:16:41Z")
I wash my bath towel when I can smell it. In summer that’s three or four days, and in winter it can be a month. I have a sensitive nose. Because _what are you going to catch from your own personal bath towel, exactly?_ Ever heard of anyone who caught some illness from their own bath towel? I rest my case. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/63 "2024-01-03T19:19:04Z")
My ex says he only uses 4 squares. Ummmm. I use a lot more. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/64 "2024-01-03T19:19:20Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > Most of the articles I read don’t imply that you would actually get a contagious disease if you don’t wash your sheets often enough. They mostly say that allergies might act up as your sheets will be full of dust mites or that your scalp will get itchy if you don’t wash your hair. Some of them don’t even bother doing that. I remember reading one a few years ago (sorry, no idea where to find it now) that started out polling people as to how often they washed their sheets, and got answers mostly running between one and two or three weeks. The article then ended with an authoritative statement saying that you should wash your sheets every week. No evidence whatsoever was given for that proclamation. (I suspect it differs from person to person based on a whole variety of factors. I usually wash mine about every two weeks.) I don’t think I’m going to catch anything from a wet toilet seat, but it feels yucky to sit in somebody else’s piss, so I wipe public toilets down first. Just with toilet paper, though. > [@LSLGuy](#): > > Procter and Gamble _et al_ have sown a lot of fear and loathing in our society. That’s for sure. And they’ve made a whole shitload of money at it, too. ‘Let’s see, what can we convince people needs to be washed much more often with an expensive specialty product, and then have deodorant applied to it ditto, and then to have a perfume which smells worse to many people than the original situation be added, preferably as yet another specialty product?’ > [@CoolHandCox](#): > > when I flush, _I imagine_ millions of very tiny particles (water, poop, whatever was in the toilet) shooting up into the air. And me, being right next to it, breathing them in. Is that a real thing that is happening, and if so, real enough to be concerned about? It’s a real thing that is happening. However, it’s nothing to be concerned about. Think a minute: If it were, almost everybody would be horribly sick all of the time. The world is just plain full of tiny little critters. This is normal. This society worries about it way too much. Having said that: wash your hands a reasonable amount, and if you’re sick with something potentially contagious, stay away from other people as much as possible. Unless you’re going to lose your job over it, don’t just drug the symptoms into temporary submission and come into work/school anyway; and if you do have to show up, wear a mask (unless you’ll lose your job over _that_, don’t get me started.) And how often you need to shower depends on your particular skin, your particular glands, and what you’ve been doing. But IME most people don’t actually start to stink for at least a couple of days. Oh, and be careful about all that bleach. Chlorine gas isn’t good for you. > [@Beckdawrek](#): > > 5 days of a towel hanging in a bathroom? Damp. Toilet plume floating around? > Visitor _borrowing_ it to dry their infected hands? Yup. Maybe longer than five days. Never had anybody get sick from the towels. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/65 "2024-01-03T19:21:02Z")
Yet😳!! ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/66 "2024-01-03T19:26:40Z")
I’m 72. And I’ve never even heard of anybody getting sick from the towels. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/67 "2024-01-03T19:26:46Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > I bet virus and upper respiratory stuff goes like wildfire through a prison. Having had 1400 patients to care for when covid hit, and having seen 1200 of them test positive for covid, you’re right! ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/68 "2024-01-03T19:29:46Z")
Given how many cruise ships have had norovirus problems, I imagine that’s also an issue in prisons. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/69 "2024-01-03T19:38:15Z")
IMO these are far more about journalists needing an easy story than anything related to actual science or microbiology. In particular the classic comparison in such articles “ZOMG thing X is has more germs than a toilet” is BS. Toilets are impermeable porcelain surfaces that are regularly washed down with bleach, so actually don’t have that many germs. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/70 "2024-01-03T19:41:42Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > 5 days of a towel hanging in a bathroom? Damp. Toilet plume floating around? > Visitor _borrowing_ it to dry their infected hands? And you dry your genitals that night, with grotty disgusting towel? Why would I be drying my genitals with the hand towel that visitors have used rather than a bath towel? We’ll forget the fact that there are very rarely visitors at my house long enough to use the bathroom so it’s really only my husband and I using any of the towels and if using the same towels will give me anything, I most likely have it already. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/71 "2024-01-03T19:46:09Z")
Visitors do unknown things in your bathroom. I shudder to think. Maybe they think the hand towel is decor. I ain’t trusting enough to leave a towel hanging on a shower stall for anyone to use if it’s my bathing/drying towel. Not gonna. If you don’t have visitors, I say lucky you. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/72 "2024-01-03T19:48:21Z")
Forget it **doreen** ; it’s Squicktown. We aren’t going to convince a squick-o-phobe their concerns are ill-founded. In **beck** ’s case she has a bunch of long term chronic health issues so IMO she gets a bunch of a pass. Not a complete pass, but a bunch. The vast majority of squick-o-phobes are simply phobes. Deserving all the respect any other irrational counterfactual set of beliefs deserves. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/73 "2024-01-03T19:55:13Z")
I agree. I have an over active ick-o-meter. I always have. I can’t tell you how many places I turned and ran from. On the other hand I think cleanliness is a virtue. I’ve gotten quite dirty gardening or volunteering at the shelter. One of my favorite most satisfying jobs at the dog shelter was cleaning. They loved me for that. No one else wanted to do it. It was nasty work. But it fed my need to clean. Same with my house. It _needs_ to be a certain level of clean to suit me. Yeah, my family kinda hate me. (Send cards😊) ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/74 "2024-01-03T20:26:05Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > 5 days of a towel hanging in a bathroom I wash my towel (singular), _at most_, twice each month. Now, where I live, humidity is just something you hear about in other places, so nothing stays damp for long. ETA: and on further reading, I apparently am far from alone! ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/75 "2024-01-03T20:29:12Z")
In our case, overnight guests are not a worry, and normal visitors would use the bathroom off the living room. DH and I use the one off our bedroom for bathing, so bath towels are only used by the two of us, and I simply don’t worry about passing bugs between us. After over 28 years of marriage, it’s very unlikely that one of us has something the other does not (at least not for long). ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/76 "2024-01-03T20:41:39Z")
Humidity is a big deal here. Wet clothes in the washer overnight? You’ll be washing that load again. According to how damp your towel is it would be at least overnight for it to feel dry. If you walked it outside and hung it on the clothes line you could dry it in a hour in warm weather. Cool weather. It’s a guess how long it would take. It’s easier for us with the amount of showers and baths taken in this house to wash and dry towels. Too many people. Not everyone would hang their towel properly. (I have a well, so it’s my water) Don’t get me started on the dirty clothes hamper. The bane of my existence.😡 ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/77 "2024-01-03T20:45:03Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > If I get cleaned up and dressed in the morning, later change to swimwear and go to the beach, then come home, shower & get dressed again, I’ll put on all the clothes I’d worn the first half of the day. Both undies and outerwear. After all, they’re cleaner as I’m putting them on again than they would have been at that moment had I never taken them off for the last 3 hours. If it’s convenient, I’ll change my underwear. I don’t like putting on underwear if i can smell myself on it. No, i don’t think there’s any health concern. But clean dry underwear is nice. If it’s not convenient, yeah, I’ll put on the same underpants. > [@doreen](#): > > > [@Beckdawrek](#): > > > > Visitor _borrowing_ it to dry their infected hands? And you dry your genitals that night, with grotty disgusting towel? > > Why would I be drying my genitals with the hand towel that visitors have used rather than a bath towel? We’ll forget the fact that there are very rarely visitors at my house long enough to use the bathroom so it’s really only my husband and I using any of the towels and if using the same towels will give me anything, I most likely have it already. Visitors use one of the downstairs bathrooms. Except when we are doing construction or something, i shower in the upstairs bathroom. Zero chance a guest will dry their hands on my bath towels. And who the hell uses a bath towel to dry their hands when there are hand towels right there? > [@Beckdawrek](#): > > One of my favorite most satisfying jobs at the dog shelter was cleaning. They loved me for that. No one else wanted to do it. It was nasty work. But it fed my need to clean. That’s awesome! ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/78 "2024-01-03T20:55:54Z")
I have a half bath downstairs. It supposed to be for guests. The boys use it thru the day and anyone else here who doesn’t wanna go upstairs. Bear uses it(yes the Siamese cat, he’s a toilet boy, I promise I clean up after him) Overflow uses the bathroom in my lower level bedroom. We don’t have 100s of visitors, at all. Occasionally Son-of-a-wrek has a few here. And there’s often a hanger on around. Me, the gatekeeper watches in my silent squickitude waiting with my bleach and Lysol for them to leave. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/79 "2024-01-03T21:03:23Z")
There is a sort of puritanical obsession about sanitising things that sometimes seems to take root and then manifests as a sort of hammer/nail behaviour; a couple of examples (sorry, these are somewhat US-specific, but that’s just where I have happened to notice the phenomenon expressed in its most obvious form). Washing and refrigerating eggs: Eggs from domestic fowl aren’t especially clean - what with birds only having the one orifice for egg laying and defecation, and the fact that the eggs are laid onto substrate that isn’t itself guaranteed to be clean. So it makes sense to wash them, except that destroys the cuticle layer on the egg shell, making it more porous and more susceptible to foodborne pathogens; as a result, washed eggs have to be refrigerated, and may be unsafe to eat raw; last I checked, the incidence of food poisoning from eggs is greater in the USA (where eggs are washed and refrigerated) than countries with more or less equivalent standards, but where eggs are not washed (and _can_ be refrigerated, but don’t need to be). Here on the board, I recall a thread where some hapless individual was requesting advice for managing a hygiene problem with their feet - and it turned out that they had some regime that included soaking their feet, socks and shoes in a variety of different chemicals and disinfectants, and yet, for some reason, their feet were really sore and kept getting infected; they wanted to know what additional chemicals or medications they could _add_ to the regime, to solve the problem. Now, I know that hygiene hypotheses where it is claimed that we actively need dirt and infection to be healthy are somewhat suspect, but that aside, I think it is true that it is possible to be trying _too hard_ to sanitise the world, and in doing so, new problems can arise that will not be solved by adding more sanitary chemicals and procedures. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2024, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505/80 "2024-01-03T21:14:24Z")
Yeah? Well chicken poopy eggs ain’t coming in my house. You don’t gotta scrub. But a rinse ain’t gonna ruin 'em. I fridge, anyway. I don’t wash store bought eggs. Til I’m gonna use them. (It’s a hard life I live) Being diabetic I’m skin aware. I get clean with mild soap and I moisturize thoroughly. Watch for breaks and rashes. I’m kinda Nazi about it. You can dang sure hurt your skin with chemicals, thereby leaving your skin disturbed enough that all those filthy germs get in. And…here I am full circle. I win. 😊 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleanliness/995505.md?page=5)