For better or for worse lately we’ve all been paying a lot more attention to germs and typically we’ll use the toilet seat as a benchmark at least in our minds for something that we think is super dirty.
But I’m here to tell you there are many things in your house and in the world that are way dirtier and way grosser than a toilet things that you don’t think about. You don’t pay attention to things that probably aren’t getting cleaned with the same level of detail that your toilet seat is getting cleaned with.
So in this article we’re going to deep dive into some pretty gross germy areas and find out what is actually dirtier than a toilet seat. Think about what your toothbrush holder actually does, sure it might look fancy and match your bathroom decor but it has a disgusting job after you finish brushing your teeth which is by the way one of the dirtiest places on your body.
You’ve got tons of bacteria in your mouth you rinse your toothbrush it’s soaking wet and you take it and pop it back in your toothbrush holder wet so that it can drip dry into your toothbrush holder and over time your toothbrush holder can become discolored and smelly because so much bacteria is building up inside or around.
In fact I am so grossed out by toothbrush holders that I don’t use when I lay a washcloth on my counter that I change out very regularly and I dry my toothbrush after use so that I don’t ever have to deal with a gross toothbrush holder I am just so turned off by them so if you do have one and it’s nasty you can soak it in vinegar for about 10 minutes to try and loosen up any of that hardened buildup.
A great thing to do is just to put it on the top rack of your dishwasher the next time you’re running through a load and if it’s not dishwasher safe you can give it a good scrub with dish soap and water after that vinegar soak.
A car is one of those private little places where you can just be yourself and thanks to tinted windows most people can’t even see what you’re doing in there, now when you have to go and fill up that car I would just caution you to think about the last people who have used that gas pump before you, what have they been doing in their cars that you don’t know about at least that’s what goes on in my head which is why and I’m not a germaphobe but I do think that way so when I pick up a gas pump I make sure that I’m very mindful about what I touch.
After and again I pre-covered was not someone who used hand sanitizer after going to the gas station pump but now I always look for that Starbucks napkin or a piece of paper towel or a piece of junk mail and I try to use that I’m telling you this because I know it sounds crazy but I’ve actually just become so much more attentive to how gross the gas pump is so the whole point of this is they’re not as clean as they should be and just be mindful when you’re using one that you don’t touch your face or eat anything after using one until you have had the chance to wash your hands or if you’re someone that loves hand sanitizer use hand sanitizer before you eat something.
Ride sharing is easy and convenient but it’s also not as regulated as a cab or a rental car and this was made very clear by a study that was done on the dirtiest places in rideshare cars rental cars and cabs and what was found was that the rideshare cars were overwhelmingly more disgusting than a cab or a rental car because if you think about it the latter two when somebody is done using the vehicle cab driver has to drive the car back to a depot at the end of the day because they are regulated.
Those cabs have to be cleaned and maintained they have to be in good working order same thing goes for rental cars but when you hop into a ride share vehicle you don’t know whose car it is, you don’t know who was in there before you, you don’t know if the person who’s driving the car, you don’t even know if it’s their car but you don’t know if they’re taking care of their car they might have five air fresheners going and offer you a mint but you might not know the last time that they actually took a wipe and cleaned the interior of the vehicle.
Drains are one of those things that are out of sight out of mind, but I can tell you having cleaned a gross drain they are disgusting whether they are drained in your kitchen or drains in your bathroom. Let’s just talk about how they function for a minute so that everyone else understands exactly why you have to take good care of your drains and make sure that they’re clean otherwise they will become filthy.
So here’s what happens, you rinse everything down a drain you don’t see it you don’t think about it if you have long hair or in the case of the kitchen food bits back to the bathroom you’ve got soap and soap scum and dead skin cells and everything else that goes down the drain whether it’s the sink or the shower eventually you’re going to start to get a build up, so hair tangles up down there then soap gets caught bacteria it just becomes a mass of really disgusting stuff that eventually one day is going to stop up your drain.
Whether again it’s the shower or your sink you will then have to clean that out and you’ll pull out something that looks like a living thriving being, it’s just going to be a big mass of hair it’s going to stink and it is it’s truly one of the most gut-wrenching experiences I’ve ever had. So here’s what I want to tell you make sure that you’re taking good care of your drains in your bathroom use a drain cleaning tool fairly regularly.
There are also products that you can use that are safe for the environment, you can dump them down your drain run water and they will kind of blast it out and give it a good cleaning for your kitchen drain, you want to make sure that that sink trap is cleaned on a regular basis, this throw ours in the dishwasher actually because that traps all sorts of disgusting things and you can also use the same product to go down your kitchen sink. Now one final tip you don’t want to throw fats oils or grease down your kitchen drain and you want to make sure that food is not going down there because food will rot and then your drain will stink pre-pandemic.
I’m sure that for most of us the location of our purse, backpack, gym bag, grocery bag didn’t exactly cross our minds on a daily basis you’d sort of put it down pick it up and not think twice about it. I thought about it but a lot of people didn’t and in fact when you go to a hotel room those luggage stands exist so that you don’t have to put your luggage on your bed so many people would do that. But now we know we’ve got to be a little bit more attentive about germs we have to kind of think about where things were and where they will be and can we get anything from that.
So when it comes to a purse a bag or a backpack things happen inside of there that can get dirty that don’t get clean on a regular basis case in point a gym bag you can have clothes that sit in there for a while and stink your water bottle you probably haven’t cleaned in a while that can be quite germy and dirty and smelly and even the bottom of those bags. Let’s say you get off of transit and you get into your home and you kind of plop your bag down on your counter or your bed all of a sudden you start to think twice about where you should be putting those things because who knows what they can pick up along the way.
Since the pandemic has hit how have your attitudes and opinions changed about what is truly dirty specifically what is the item or object or thing that you didn’t care about before that now you are so particular about let me know in the comments down below. For me it’s the keypad on a payment machine I like using tap wherever possible but if I have to punch in my pin code now what I do is I take out another card and I use the corner of that card to enter in my pin code because I don’t want to touch that thing.
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