It’s strange. When in public, I always wash my hands after using the bathroom.
At home, I don’t. (unless it’s #2) I do however wash my hands before doing anything in the kitchen.
Maybe you could shift the blame on yourself. Something along the lines of: “Yeah, It’s my one weird thing. I’m a total germaphobe. Would you mind washing your hands before using the kitchen?”
That seems like it would be a lot less judgemental and less threatening.
Of course you would have to follow that rule as well.
You’re probably right. A little fecal matter among friends never hurt anyone. Don’t hate me because I’ve worked in public health settings.
Wow, I’m amazed at the number of replies I’ve gotten in a mere 11 hours. Perhaps my other threads just suck. 
I know I run into people every day who don’t wash their hands after doing all sorts of unsanitary things. The main difference is that these people rarely come into my kitchen and touch all my utensils, cookware, cabinets, and appliances. Outside, I can control what I do with my hands after touching public fixtures or shaking hands. Inside, not so much. I can’t realistically be washing my hands every time I operate the sink or open a cabinet to grab a pot. For now, I just try not to think about it. I’m a bit of a germaphobe, but not so much that I can’t put it out of my head and power through when necessary. Still, this is one of those times where I feel justified in not wanting to have to do that.
I agree with the others in this thread that this is basic hygiene stuff that we were all supposed to learn as children. But I don’t want to present it to him in that way, because that’s kind of a dick thing to do.
I also agree that there’s a good chance that, no matter how I present it, he’ll just say “sure” and then not alter his behavior, and I will probably start resenting him even more for it.
I do like the “self blame” suggestion, Shakes. That, plus the “can you do this as a favor to me?” angle might keep him from feeling attacked.
I wasn’t going to say anything, but now that you mention it… 
Just kidding. 
I don’t like this idea, actually. I think it undercuts your authority to make a legitimate request. Also, I’m not a germophobe at all, and the not hand washing still bothers me, so I don’t even think this should be a factor.
^Yes.
It is a totally legitimate request. Don’t be apologetic about it fer chris’sakes! He’s being gross and it’s rather anti social don’t you think, to be bloody going round touching everything with hands you just wiped your arse with?
Yeah, as someone who has got typhoid from an unclean colleague, I’m not really big on the whole “it’s not you, it’s me” approach. Hand washing after bathroom use is something an adult is supposed to know to do.
I’ve also managed a water/sanitation project in Indonesia to try to promote hand washing there, one thing I’ve learned is that it is incredible difficult to retroactively toilet train adults, if they haven’t left childhood with this skill set, they probably won’t be able to develop it and will get pissy if you suggest they should.
Ba-dum-cha!
No passive-aggressive notes, no blaming yourself for this request. There are only two choices here: ignore it, which I would probably do because there’s no way to force hygiene on anyone, and bringing it up can get awkward, or to be blunt about it. “Dude, wash your fucking hands please.”
I went into the bathroom at a restaurant with my little brother a couple of weeks ago. It was one of those fancy bathrooms with a cornered entry so there was no door. We went in used the urinals. He went to the sink to wash his hands and I just headed out and back to the table. He yelled out, “Get back in here and wash your hands. That is disgusting!”. I replied back “I’m not like you, I don’t pee on my hands!”.
Some people overheard it and started laughing at one or both of us. That is a line from an old joke that I never got to use in real life before. Seriously though, I didn’t touch anything other than myself when I was in there and that part isn’t unclean. Turning the faucet off after I washed my hands would have left them more contaminated than not washing them at all.
Sorry buddy, but the master disagrees. There are bacteria that live on your private parts no matter what, and you always need to wash your hands after touching them.
I spoke with him yesterday afternoon about the hand washing. He asserted that he does wash his hands (when soap is available). So, here’s how my house is set up: I have the master bedroom and my own bathroom, the other two tenants have their own rooms and one shared bathroom between them. I mostly ignore this bathroom because I never use it.
So, apparently, over a month ago, they ran out of hand soap in their bathroom. Instead of, you know, purchasing more and refilling the dispenser, the subject of this thread has just stopped washing his hands in that bathroom, and says that he has instead been using hand sanitizer in his room. This is better than nothing, but it still boggles my mind that neither he nor the other roommate refilled the soap. This is pretty much par for the course for this roommate, who is an extremely nice guy, but seems to have grown up without certain basic life skills (this is the same guy who once mistook bleach for laundry detergent and ruined some clothes). He irks me, and I feel bad about that because he’s such a nice guy, but he really does.
I don’t know what the other roommate has been doing to clean his hands; I don’t want to know. I also don’t know how long the soap has been empty. They’ve been here since September and the average soap dispenser doesn’t last seven months before it needs a refill.
So, anyway, the roommate is now aware of my concerns. I told him that I keep a hand soap refill under the kitchen sink, and that he is welcome to use it to refill the soap dispenser in his bathroom. As of yesterday evening, it had still not been refilled, so I refilled it myself. I know this makes me kind of a busybody, and that I’m not (and shouldn’t have to act like) this guy’s mother. Still, I’d rather just bite the bullet and refill the soap periodically than worry about him foregoing hand washing because he can’t spend the $2 and 2 minutes it takes to purchase and use a soap refill.
Thanks for all the advice, everyone.
I’m happy it worked out for you. Did anyone ever tell you that you have really standards for (male) roommates? There is nothing wrong with that but if you plan to have more roommates in the future, the ones you have now sound like they are above average already. As many of us can attest, there is the potential for way worse things than you described. Just sayin…
Oh absolutely. I fully recognize that my roommates are good guys, they are adequate roommates, mostly fine. They do some little things that annoy me (and the hand washing thing, which was more of a health concern than a minor annoyance), but they’re generally good roommates.
On a scale of -100 to +100, where -90 would be someone who steals from me and cooks meth in the basement, and +85/+95 were my previous roommates, with whom I got along famously, these two guys are around +50. They’re polite, they pay their rent on time, they don’t do anything illegal, and they mostly don’t cause any damage to the house.
But yeah, I suppose I do expect a lot. It’s partly that I went from two of the best roommates I’ve ever had to two adequate roommates. That has kind of screwed up my standards a bit.
Just want to throw in that I find listening to and analyzing a roommate’s toilet use to be beyond creepy, and I can’t imagine how you’d ever say “So, I’ve been listening to your bathroom sounds, and I have a few critiques…”
Messing with other people’s bathroom supplies in a bathroom you don’t use is beyond being a busy body. It’s really, really weird. That’d get you pretty close to being on the psycho roommate list-- the one who gets stories like “Man, I lived with this guy who was a creepy weirdo. He used to listen to me shit and he’d go into my bathroom when I wasn’t around and put in his preferred toilet supplies.”
It’s probably also encourage me to buy some chocolate syrup and leave faint brown streaks on things just to freak you out.
Seriously, the world is a dirty place, and I doubt your roommate is contributing to that in any meaningful way. If it bothers you that much, run to Ikea and drop a few bucks on your own kitchen knife, or wash stuff before you use it. At least in that case you’ll be taking responsibility for managing your own neurosis rather than putting it on other people.
I agree it is kinda creepy. I’d also say there is a good chance that he is going to rub all your kitchen utensils on his cock the next time you leave the house.
Yeah, the odds that he is going to start washing his hands are less than the odds that he is going to stick you toothbrush up his ass.
At the risk of being the pot calling the kettle black, I think you’re being a little overly dramatic here. It’s not as though I waited for my roommate to enter the bathroom, and then crouched in the shadows by the door, listening in perverse, sweaty anticipation as he performed that most vulnerable and personal of explusions, so I could later critique his technique and replace his bathroom products with my preferred brands, subverting his human rights and molding him into my image.
I happened to notice that he wasn’t washing his hands, as I’m sensitive to that sort of thing. It grossed me out, so I mulled it over for a month, then I made a post on the SDMB to get an idea of how to handle it. Many people said: “You’re not crazy. Talk to him, it IS a health risk.” So I did. I was polite about it and he did not seem offended. He said he wasn’t washing his hands because there was no soap. From what I know of this roommate, continuing to not wash his hands as long as there was no soap was consistent with my past dealings with him. So I replenished the soap in his existing, empty soap dispenser. I gave him soap.
You make it sound like I changed out his shampoo because I thought his hair wasn’t clean enough. I wasn’t “messing with his bathroom supplies” any more than putting his dirty dishes into the dishwasher is “messing with his cookware.”
Now, that’s actually pretty funny. My opinion of him would go up a bit if he had the balls to do that.
My husband tried that line once. Once. I shot back, yeah, but you were just handling your private parts, weren’t you? Would it bother you if I stuck my hands down my pants like this <demonstrates> and then served your dinner?
It boggles my mind, too, but I’d say don’t just think of the refill you just did as a one-off: keep refills around, check up on it however often it takes to make sure the soap doesn’t run out, and refill it yourself when it gets low.
If that’s all it takes to get these guys to wash their hands after using the toilet, it’s totally worth it.
Sometimes you can’t help what you listen to, and the bathroom was right next to the OP’s room. And once you noticed the absence of handwashing sounds, you’d probably be listening the next time to see if you heard it right the previous time. At least, I damned sure would; YMMV, and clearly does.
I am dealing with this problem now. I cannot think of a way to tell an adult to wash his hands without creating resentment, and the knowledge that he would only wash them when I was home. So, I have taken to keeping bleach wipes in the bathroom and going around wiping door handles, cabinet handles, frig, etc. I also buy two different bags of cold cuts and hide mine in the vegie bin. Also, two different types of bread. Thankfully, he prefers white bread. It is a pain in the arse, but the thought of those filthy hands reaching into those bags is nauseating. And to those who think we are bathroom spies, some homes are small enough that one can hear these things with no special inquiry. He may have developed a stronger immune system, but my daughter and I don’t need to be ingesting his fecal matter. Somewhat of a germaphobe? I call it an ounce of prevention.