Sorry Opal,
Preparation for others and respect to what they have to see or eat or smell is super important to me.
These manners just pertain to what I put in my own mouth or touch. I have a varied past.
It never caused harm to me in my misguided years. I like to believe it has made me stronger. So I never made a change in that area.
I’m probably somewhere around 5, with a variable of +/-1 depending on the situation. I tend to be slightly more fastidious about the state of my kitchen than the state of my bathroom.
I’m a one or less. I’m pretty much like fifty-six. I don’t wipe toilet seats. I’ll eat stuff off the floor or out of the trash if it didn’t touch anything gross. I’ll eat raw hamburger. I’ll use my wife’s toothbrush if I can’t find mine (damn rugrats steal toothbrushes. No idea what they do with them). I don’t fear public bathrooms. I wash my hands repeatedly before and while I’m preparing food. I might wash my hands after I take a leak if I get piss on them. I just don’t care about germs and never think about them. I hardly ever get sick. I drive my wife nuts with my apathy about the issue.
Like most, I’m about a one on the original scale…except that I’m a little skeeved about handling money. If I touch it, I need to wash my hands.
However, I have no problems kissing my cats on the face. Unless I see them washing each other’s bums, in which case, I wait a few hours (or a few minutes, depending on how cute they are that day). 
I figure the cat lips cancel out the money phobia.
I’m prolly a 2. I’ve eaten food off a stranger’s abandoned plate before. I’m more concerned with the appearance of a clean house than of actual germs (and as I glance around the hovel I call home, that’s not saying much). I prepare chicken and don’t disinfect. I don’t have a 5-second rule. It’s more like a 3-minute rule. I just don’t worry about it. And I never get sick. Either does Mr. K. We haven’t had the flu or a cold in nigh on 15 years.
If when you walk down a corridor in a building and the person coming toward you coughs, resulting in your holding your breath until you’re well past the virus cloud, does that make you germophobic? 
I don’t worry about toilet seats (I do enjoy the brand name for disposable toilet seat covers - “RestAssured”). When possible I’ll use a paper hand towel to open the public restroom door, because of all the pigs who don’t wash their hands after excreting.
I can’t be too germophobic though, because we have dogs. Every surface in our house is probably a zoological garden of dog flora. And I garden a lot, which means exposure to a zillion more microbes.
It has been said that toilet seats are far less a concern for contagion than kitchen surfaces which can transmit Salmonella and other goodies.
I am disgusted by the fact that my husband won’t put chips into a bowl, but rather eat straight out of the bag, contaminating all the other chips.
I have my toothbrush within five feet of the toilet and don’t put the lid down each time I flush. I would NEVER use someone else’s toothbrush. YUK!
When using a public restroom, I wash hands thoroughly and then don’t touch the doorknob. Don’t much care about the paper liner or sitting on the pot.
When using a grocery cart, I prefer to put my child’s cart cover on it so he doesn’t have to touch germs and I really like that stores are now offering disinfectant wipes at the entrance to wipe down the carts.
Gosh, what a society we’ve become.
So folks - grade me - I’m genuinely curious.
If they’re anything like me when I was five, they’re brushing the dog’s teeth with your toothbrush. 
MissGypsy: I brush my teeth at least once a day, but I only throw out the toothbrush after it’s gotten worn out or has had a severe misadventure. If it falls in the toilet and the toilet wasn’t clean, it gets thrown out. If the toilet had been flushed a few times within the last hour, it’ll probably get a Listerine bath or get bumped over to the “detail cleaning” position that many old toothbrushes are assigned when they’ve worn out their welcome. Hey, somebody’s gotta clean the grout!
Like Kalhoun, I’m much more concerned with my house being neat and orderly than germ-free. I’m more likely to clean with vinegar, lemon, and cleaners that have low synthetic chemical compositions than to break out the bleach and antibacterial wipes. However, if I’m cleaning the toilet seat or something else equally germy, I tend to use paper towels so I can just throw the germy gunk and cleaning solution away.
Who really has time to be paranoid about every surface being a potential harborer of germs?
<0 for me. I’m only careful with my food preparation if someone else is eating it. Dropped something on my annually-vacuumed kitchen floor? I’ll eat that :).
:dubious: And just what the hell is vinegar, if it’s not a chemical?
I hate this talk of “chemicals”. Every goddamn thing in the universe is made up of, yup, chemicals. Since when did a select subgroup of substances get labelled as nasty chemicals? And don’t give me the “oh but they’re synthetic, not natural” argument. Most of the deadliest known toxins are totally natural… e.g. batrachotoxins and curare from poison dart frogs, tetrodotoxin from puffer fish, etc etc.
There’s no such thing as “chemical free” unless you’re sitting in a vacuum.
Rant over
I can’t speak for anyone else, but certain chemical combinations (bleach, etc.) that are found in a lot of cleaning products cause me to react badly to being near them when they’re in use. Most of them tend to be some sort of man-made amalgamation of already existing natural chemicals. ::shrugs:: Can’t win every time.
I guess I would fall between a 7 and an 8. I don’t allow anyone to use my bar soap or wash cloth in the shower. I must shower at least twice a day. I wouldn’t sit on a public toilet seat covered or not. (Public includes any that are not my own including work or friends) I must wash my hands after touching any kind of coin but I am a little better about bills (no logic there). I wash my hands immediately when I enter work or home after being out. Not to mention twenty or thirty times a day while at those places. I carry sanitizing wipes in my purse for after handling shopping carts or pumping gas etc.
I would NEVER use another’s toothbrush. (I just shuddered at the thought.) I put my sponges in the dishwasher to sanitize them after doing pots and pans or wiping counters. Food must be thrown out at least two days prior to its expiration date.
I will not kiss anyone that hasn’t just brushed their teeth or have sex with my SO (or all SO of the past) unless they have showered within 4 or 5 hours. No oral sex unless showered within one hour.
Ummm, after reading this, I may have to bump myself up to a 9.
Anally-vacuumed? Now there’s a talent I haven’t heard of before.
I think yours might go to an 11.
…and now I understand why I get a brand new bar of soap for my own use every two months when I visit the future in-laws, despite the fact that the soap I used the last time is still there, and there’s liquid soap available as well. Then again, the house is set up so that nobody has to share a bathroom with anyone else. Weird.
I reckon that you’d better put me at a 1 or less on the OP scale. The only germs I’m phobic about are involved in food handling and illness (I’ll wash my hands frequently when I’m ill and warn others not to shake my hand).
Have I dropped a hamburger or ground pork pattie on the patio, picked it up within the 5 second window, cooked it and eaten it? You betcha.
Will I pour milk with an expiration date of 3/27 on my cereal last weekend and eat it? Sure, why not?
Will I use the fork I’ve just fed the dog a couple of scraps from after she’s finished? Not intentionally, but if I forgot, it’d be no big deal.
stops biting nail… 1
I thought there was a special metal bar on the outside of wheelchair wheels that people used instead of the actual wheel itself, but then, I haven’t closely examined wheelchair wheels that much. Do you have to use the wheel part? Or does the metal part still get icky? I hadn’t thought about that before.
I’m pretty low on the scale. I only use hand sanitizer when I change a poopy diaper, and not always then (but I do wash, or use a baby wipe if there’s no sink nearby). I wash before and during food prep, after cleaning the cat box, and going to the bathroom, but I don’t wipe the toilet seat, I’ll eat things that have fallen on the floor in my house, and I couldn’t care less what shape the grocery cart’s in. I have 2 small boys who wipe their noses on their hands and then hug me, and one who drools on me. We don’t use antibacterial handsoap, because we don’t want to kill off nice bacteria. We don’t get sick much.
Another -1. It just doesn’t bother me. I figure that some germs are healthy, and keep your immune system active. I rarely get sick, and I swear it’'s because I give my immune system a real workout.
I don’t think I’m necessarily the “worst” in here, but I am definitely down there. Here’s a few points:
I often forget to wash my hands before handling food or when switching from raw meat to something else. Hell, if I know it’s about to be cooked (like a hamburger), I often deliberately don’t wash my hands… that’s what cooking is for–to kill germs, right? I do try to be meticulous if preparing food for other people, though.
I have eaten raw beef (well, it was warmer than room temperature, but it was entirely red, no pink or brown), and undercooked foods that are “dangerous if not cooked properly” like ham, chicken, or raw egg. I will also eat food that has been sitting out for an undetermined amount of time. What…we had pizza last night and someone forgot to put it in the fridge? Hey, pizza is great for breakfast afterall. I also have no problem eating foods that have expired, even dairy products. I’ve had milk that had expired more than a couple weeks prior (it didn’t smell or taste bad at all). I’ve had moldy cheese… just cut off the fuzz and keep going. I’ve even eaten yogurt that had expired as much as six months previously; it did require a lot of stirring to get the parts mixxed properly.
I also don’t have any set time limit for dropping food on the floor, or location. I’ll drop food, and wait a minute or more before picking it up. As long as I can pick hair or whatever off of it, I’ll generally eat it. Hell, I’ve even DELIBERATELY dropped food on the floor and eaten it when I’m around people that can’t stand that, just because I thought it was amusing.
I have no problem using public toilets without wiping. I usually give it a quick look, and if it’s obvious someone has peed on it (i.e., large spots of liquid), then I’ll either grab some TP and dry it, or maybe go to another stall.
I have no problem using other people’s silverware or food; even if I don’t know them. Often at concerts, some of the club bouncers will pass out bottles of water and people will pass them around and share it. One time, at an outdoor concert in the summer, they were carrying around buckets of water for the people to dip their bottles in. I reached down, grabbed a bottle off the ground that had been stepped all over, dipped it in the water, drank some, and passed it around.
I DO shower everyday, not because of germs, but because I hate how my skin feels and how difficult it is to brush my hair if I don’t shower. However, sometimes when I have a day off and I’m feeling lazy, I won’t bother if I’m not going out.
FWIW, I’m in excellent health, and I haven’t been sick in several years (probably about 8-10 years). The worst I’ve been since then is with a sore throat and stuffy nose, which was probably from allergies, not from an infection. I tend to agree with a bit George Carlin did about our bodies needing “practice germs”; and I find it amusing that the people who are more germophobic and wash and scrub needlessly tend to get sicker more often. Is there perhaps some wisdom to the notion of not living a completely sanitary lifestyle?
So, I guess I’m around 1… maybe not quite as “bad” as fifty-six, but certainly no where near germaphobic.