On public toilets: I use two stips of TP, one on each side of the seat. This isn’t for germs, this is for the really creepy stuff like other people’s hairs or fluids that you don’t notice until you sit in it.
On toothbrushes: I’ve never heard of a toothbrush on the sink being a bad thing. I keep mine in a holder on the ledge.
On clothing: Clothes are good until they smell (which is rare). It takes my body days w/o a shower to start to smell, and I shower daily. Therefore, I can wear the same clothes for weeks. Hell, in Iraq, I went 15 days in the same uniform.
On food: Ingesting things is different. Hits the floor= hits the garbage. I wash all my dishes in scathing water and lots of soap. Even water rings on spoons freak me out. I’ll eat food that’s in a container unrefrigerated after 18 hours, no longer.
On washing hands: Only after the bathroom. It’s not just me that’s dirty. The toilet, the sink, and the door knobs are filthy too.
Overall, germs don’t bother me unless I might eat them. My skin is impervious, my stomach isn’t.
I saw George Carlin once and he did the bit about how he never washes his hands after using the bathroom unless he shits on them ("…and that happens once, twice a week, tops. Maybe a bit more often during the holidays.") After the show, I went in and used the bathroom, then joined everyone else at the row of sinks to wash hands. I was tempted to comment- after all, they had just seen the same show- but naaaah. You never really know how well such jokes will go down with strangers.
Oh, C’mon folks, how often do we have someone lying themselves prostrate, begging for review? Am I a 5? I will use the 3-second rule only if my floor has been mopped within the week. But…I don’t wash my fruit. :o
This reminds of a professor we used to have who was giving lectures on all sorts of internal parasites, pausing every fifth minute to wash his hands in the sink next to the blackboard :eek:
Anyway, I guess I can’t be a germophobe living in a shared house with five other people, having to have to do the bathroom/toilet cleaning chores roughly once a month. Cleaning the hairy goo out of the shower without rubber gloves leaves me somewhere around 1, I guess
As to the OP’s standards, I’m a 1 (though I’ll admit I was surprised in my penny/bathroom floor thread) by how many people would never ever pick a penny off the ground, not out of laziness or indifference, but because of hygiene. A guess some good points were made there, but nothing that really changes my general habit.
I go through life pretty much not thinking about whether there are germs on anything I touch or eat, with the exception of when I have to handle raw meat. And even then, I just wash my hands with dish soap- no special anti-bacterial soaps or cleansers. I will eat things that have fallen on the floor if they fell in the last few seconds and there is no visible dirt from the floor on them.
I do not use those disinfectant wipes with shopping carts. In fact, I think the stores are rather silly for providing them. I don’t use toilet-seat covers, either, and I think those are even sillier.
I don’t get upset if someone who is sick comes near me or comes into contact with me. So I get a cold or the flu- big whoop. It’s not like there’s an epidemic of some disease like smallpox that is actually likely to kill me, and the occasional cold or flu probably makes my immune system stronger.
Yes, I have that. However I get a much better grip (and therefore it’s not as tiring) on the tires than on the ring, so if I’m going uphill or if I’m simply in the mood to go like a maniac (which is often), I grab the tires. Even if I do use the ring, the sides of my thumbs still rub again the sides of my tires.
I was thinking of his bit about how he and his friends used to swim in the shit infested Hudson, and no one ever got polio, because the germs were afraid of them.
I’m a 3 myself. When I was a kid there was no such thing as toilet covers. I’ll eat stuff off the floor, if it isn’t dusty. My only fetish is that I hate food being out.
BTW, my daughter was on Good Morning America this morning, as a part of a demo at the University of Maryland. They sprayed some stuff on their hands, which they said was some kind of lotion, and when the kids returned a few hours later, they used blacklight to see how well they had washed it off. Not very. Her right hand was fine, left not so hot. Luckily, she hadn’t been out to the barn to shovel out stalls in between.
Well, I almost never get sick, and when I do, it’s an airborne virus. I can’t remember the last time I got a stomache bug or any kind of bacterial infection.
Oh, yes I have. Right now I live in a tiny apartment, so it isn’t an option.
