I watched this show on Discovery Health channel last week that totally grossed me out. It was about germs in our homes. This scientist guy took some germ-reader-doo-hickey-thingy and tested the levels of bacteria in common places around a woman’s house. She thought her home was sparkling clean. Au contraire!

Did you know the tub in your washing machine is usually one of the germiest places in your home? Go figure! I thought it would be clean since that’s all it ever does is clean your clothes! But that’s just it…your clothes have lots of yuck on them and logically, it can’t all escape through those little holes in the side of the tub! So a way to remedy this yuckiness is to regularly do at least one load of wash in hot water with bleach or do an empty load of just hot water and bleach before starting your laundry routine.

Also, if you’re like me and you use those cool rubbermaid-type plastic laundry baskets to tote both the dirty and the clean from room to room, guess what…those are laden with bacteria as well. Same reason as above but the dirty stuff that falls off your dirty clothes as you take them out don’t have anywhere to go! So they’re just sitting there in the empty basket awaiting the arrival of your clean clothes! BLECH! So wipe out those baskets regularly with disinfectant wipes, lysol or bleach and water.

The kitchen is gross all over…especially the places we usually take for granted: the oven door handle, the fridge handles, the knobs or buttons of the dishwasher, the fixtures on the cabinets or drawer pulls, the light switches. These should be wiped down with disinfectant wipes as well.
Basically, this show threw me into a total paranoid fit! Less than ten minutes after the show was over, I was in the kitchen pouring Clorox Clean Up over everything I could get my hands on. Honey was following me around the kitchen reminding me that some of the bacteria is good for us (he’s an Environmental Health Major, he should know!). Anyway, I got the kitchen clean and mostly-germ-free, only to realize the next day that I had to start it all over again! GROSS!

I’m not going to turn into one of those paranoid people who wash their hands raw 20 times a day (I already have to do that at work anyway!). But I am definitely going to be much more conscious of how I treat the food, surfaces and other frequently-used things in my kitchen. I stocked up on Lysol and wipes so I’m ready to go!!!