I’m so dirty I should be dead!

I wash up, wipe up, a use a damp cloth everywhere else, or a spray of something if there's a grimy area.
Beyond that I've no interest.

I've got some Enjo cloths, you're supposed to be able to use them with just plain water.

I like my wooden or bamboo boards and will continue to use them - they seem to be hygienic enough for us.
The thought of a bit of plastic getting into my food is enough to put me off using plastic ones.

Mostly my knives go in the dishwasher and live on a magnetic board which, I suppose should have a wipe every so often. The oven has been professionally cleaned recently and I have been known to take the shelves out and wash them thoroughly in the dishwasher. Ditto the plastic chopping boards after every use. So far, so good, but the cutlery drawer? That's a different story.

I ditched my wooden knife block for a plastic see through one with removable top and bottom - the top has multiple slots in it so houses a variety of knives and the whole lot goes in the dishwasher. I change tea towels most days and clean dishcloths with bleach on a regular basis. I don't have wooden chopping boards but use plastic ones in various colours - red being for meat which goes in the dishwasher after use. I can see when the cutlery drawer needs cleaning. I change the beds every other week and hoover the mattress every few months when I remember! Must confess to the toaster harbouring crumbs underneath it for a couple of days though.

I read The Times 'quiz' this morning and failed miserably I am happy to say. Life's too short to obsess about a peck o' muck. This article was clearly aimed at women. Can you imagine any man reading it and fretting that he had not disinfected his bins and changed his hand towels daily? This is just another way of making women feel guilty for having better things to do. Don't fall for it, all that anti bacterial spray is bad for the environment and bad for our health. We need to use fewer to combat anti biotic resistance and maintain a healthy microbiome.

I started reading it, scanned down and decided some people are bonkers terrified of life ?

Do people really have lives that contain empty time enough to even think about doing all that stuff?

Yeesh! Would we even have evolved if dirt is so bad for us? Mega eye roll ?

By the way, I think those sanitising gels that are so popular nowadays probably help the spread of germs more than they prevent it. Why? Because they are sticky and sticky residues are left on everything touched by people who use them. I bet the germs that land on them are building up anti-sanitising strength.

We've overdone anti-biotics. Now we're overdoing sanitising.

I put my wooden chopping board about every 6 months in the dishwasher and never scrub it in between times. it is only for veg. We have another for bread and plastic for poultry which goes into the dishwasher.

Using all this disinfectent is bad for our rivers and the bacteria are back again in a few seconds apparently. It does us good to be in amongst all this bacteria because we have to become immune to it to survive.
I only hope that all these anti bacteria cleaning fiends don’t have dogs as the smell must be so unpleasant for them. I hate the smell myself.

I hated the trend in restaurants that instead of plates, food was on a wooden block, they never went through the dishwasher in the kitchen. Now they are covered by plastic, but I do avoid restaurants that use them. I don’t have a knife block and my knives are clean but blunt.

I am in complete agreement MOnica

I think a lot of it is just using peoples fear of germs to sell ever more products.
Surfaces can no longer just be clean, they have to have 99 percent less germs, and so on. Ad nauseam.

Did Anthea Turner set that questionnaire

Hilarious! Life is too short to bother with any of that.

I have been cooking for my family(ies|) since I was 8 years old and no one has ever had food poisoning. I don't use sprays or antiseptic wipes and find a quick wipe with a freshly rinsed dish cloth is enough to keep reasonable cleanliness. Most of the mess in the oven burns off eventually and have never had a problem with a knife block.

Cutlery drawers occasionally get tipped out to empty them of mystery bits that fall into them and similarly the toaster gets turned upside down and bashed when it starts to smoke. Oh yes a regular splash of household bleach down the kitchen sink if there is a hint of a smell!

The only regular clean is the powder/liquid drawer in the washing machine which in recent years grows black yucky gunge and needs a good scrub! Also my toilet is spotless due to DGC spills and accidents!

I don't know how we have all survived!!

Australia currently has an exceptionally high rate of allergies of all sorts in children. No one is quite sure why but one of the theories under review is that today's children are growing up in environments that are too clean. The widespread use of antibacterial products, sprays and wipes is thought to be one of the culprits. Kids need exposure to a range of "germs" in their early years that help to populate their gut bacteria and develop healthy responses to everyday bugs.

I have been using the same butcher block wooden chopping board for all foods for over 40 years and after use it just gets scrubbed under running water with a bit of detergent. No problems ever.

There is a world of difference between homes that are dirty and smelly and homes that are clean enough. Like all the recent advice about replacing pillows and mattresses after a certain time. It's all about selling more products not about healthy living environments.

Another one with M0nica on this question.

I recall years ago when DCs were small we visited relatives, both of whom were scientists. Their home was/is always immaculate, no doubt due in part to the fact that as she gave up paid employment when they married.

Whose kids got gastro enteritis? Not ours....

Some people equate uber-cleanliness with morality. If they clean everything more than their neighbour, then their logic says that they are a better person. That extends to the fad that you must regularly detox your gut - to some, clean insides mean clean-living, a principle probably fostered by a mother who pushed toilet-training too hard. I daresay psychiatrists have some technical terms for both conditions,
Sellers of cleaning products, inside and out, are happy to take advantage of them.

Did the op get to the question in The Times about how often people washed jeans? Evidently some people never wash their designer jeans. They put them in the freezer. I'm not normally a freakerout but that did freak me out.

Remember the old saying 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness'?

Grandma2213 where do those mysterious bits in the cutlery drawer come from if it only has clean cutlery put into it?

And Apricity I wonder if the high rate of allergies in Australian children is also due to the 'Slip Slop Slap' policy and that children probably don't get enough Vitamin D to build up their immune systems?

There is such a thing as too clean. And our apparent obsession with cleanliness and germs is doing no one any favours, in my view. I even heard that some school children weren’t allowed to touch the snow...ridiculous. To be so terrified of ‘dirt’ is almost pathological in itself.

The other saying of DM's which contradicts the one in my post above was 'We eat a peck of dirt before we die'.

Somewhere in between the two sayings would seem to be the ideal.

I'm feeling almost saintly because I cleaned the cutlery drawer this morning. I then got a bit carried away and cleaned the condiment 'thingies' on the inside of the fridge door. Feeling virtuous ?

The lice, fleas, bed bugs and worms that have long befriended me appear to have no problem with my personal hygiene.

I was horrified to read about mould in cutlery blocks, so I took the knives out of my 15 year old knife block, shone a torch into each section and it's perfectly clean. Phew. Where did that rumour come from?

However I am always surprised how dirty the cutlery draw gets. The cutlery is always clean when put in, it's only open for the amount of time it takes to take out what I want, it's under the work surface, so how does it get in there?