Am I the only one who doesn’t lose their mind at the sign of a dust bunny?
Concern, and downright obsession, about cleanliness and sanitation has swept developed countries, according to an Cult of Clean in the Sept/Oct 2008 issue of Psychology Today.
I can remember being a kid in the 1980s (yeah, I’m only 24), spending time digging in the dirt, playing on the kitchen floor, and doing dishes once a week. Does that mean I was raised in a family of slobs? Not at all! Everyone in my family got sick roughly 3 times a year, including colds and flus. Our immune systems were strong, but if we had taken up the modern, psychotic focus on scrubbing, we would have been miserable.
Spending your life focused on a sterile environment is a life truly wasted. The world is dirty - there is no way around it. As Ella Gudwin, Director of Strategic Initiatives at AmeriCares, says in Cult of Clean, “The whole world is covered in a small film of fecal matter. Just get used to it.”
Being germophobic is not going to keep us safe - it is actually doing the exact opposite. Obsessive cleaning, just like overusing antibiotics, leads to germ mutations and stronger infectious diseases that cost humans billions of dollars to investigate and treat.
There is a common misconception that “germ” is a bad word, but not all germs are out to get you. “The adult human body contains 100 trillion cells - but only 10 percent of those cells actually belong to us! The rest are germs,” shares Cult of Clean article author Carlin Flora. Most of those are the helpful bacteria that live in our digestive tract, keeping us nourished and safe from intruders.
If you thinking cleaning helps to reduce your anxiety after a busy day, think again! “Significantly, our dreams of disinfection parallel the rise of anxiety in our culture,” says Flora. Social isolation, fear of diversity, and spiritual inconsistency are just a few of the root causes for millions of anxiety cases. “It is likely that envisioning the build-up of ‘junk‘ in our bodies is a way of expression cumulative emotional damage” adds Flora.
Soaking and scrubbing isn’t going to solve your emotional problems or improve your health. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t vacuum, do laundry, wash the dishes … etc. Follow basic sanity concepts and you’ll be find - no extraneous effort needed.
Instead of spritzing and mopping, spend your time with friends and family - clinically proven to help reduce anxiety. Remember your favorite hobby in college? There’s still time for that too. You’d be surprised just how much sanity you will regain when you realize one dirty dish isn’t going to infect your entire family.
Need a new hobby? Try gardening! Digging around in “unclean” (a silly myth) dirt has been shown to reduce dementia, improve immunity, provide healthy food and exercise, expand social networks, and foster spiritual connections to life and the plant as a whole. Gardening can teach you creativity, patience and humility; making mistakes and having fun is all part of the cycle.
[Image courtesy of solarnu on flickr.com]
25/11/2008 at 7:18 am Permalink
I have read research that says “cleanliness is next to sickliness” - they also now have said children who are not exposed to pets & dirt develop more allergies as adults. Also what most people consider “clean” now really equals chemicals, that are making up sick…
When I was a kid people didn’t get sick as often each year, people caught a flu maybe once a year or every two years… not several colds in one year. All this hyper cleanliness is bad for our immune systems. I should know, I grew up in a house that was cleaned 24/7, my mom had OCD- I lived in a mist of 409 spray- and now have an auto immune disease & chemical sensitivites.
25/11/2008 at 9:06 am Permalink
It’s so important to maintain a clean home. People look at that very seriously, especially the bathroom. If you work constantly and have no time to clean a great tip is less is more. The less stuff you have in your home, the easier it will be to maintain.
25/11/2008 at 9:38 am Permalink
I resonate with this article, developed countries ARE obsessed with cleanliness - we were doing fine dirty for thousands of years, why stop now?
25/11/2008 at 10:13 am Permalink
Thank God, I’m validated.
25/11/2008 at 10:14 am Permalink
I couldn’t agree more. My mother stressed organization and clean hands over OCD cleaning and dust bunnies.
I’m so happy to see companies start jumping on this bandwagon by turning to more natural cleaners to help cut our addiction to harsh chemicals and OCD cleanliness.
25/11/2008 at 11:08 am Permalink
Hmm…. from my own experience, that’s not always true. I’m one of five children, all of whom enjoyed good health, in a tidy and clean home. Our six double cousins (sharing all four grandparents, so same gene pool) lived on a farm, in a very messy home - four of the six had asthma, and developed allergies. They were always sick more often than we were.
I agree that too much in the way of antibacterials and antibiotics is a bad thing, but surely there’s a happy medium of cleanliness? Personally, I get anxious and distressed if I’m in a visibly dirty environment. I have pets, and I don’t feel the need to sterilize my home, but a sinkfull of dirty dishes or an unvaccumed floor make my skin crawl.
25/11/2008 at 11:16 am Permalink
I don’t think that you’re entirely right about the link between cleaning and anxiety.
Often when people are stressed or anxious, it is because they feel some aspect of their life is out of their control. Cleaning or tidying is a way of exerting control over your environment. This feeling of control can reduce anxiety or stress, even though it does not address the underlying cause of that stress. The physical exertion of cleaning (if done vigorously) is a form of exercise, which also reduces stress levels.
Some people also like a tidy environment, and are more comfortable and relaxed in their home when things are neat.
25/11/2008 at 1:43 pm Permalink
I think several people missed the point. The object was not that living in squalor is better for you, it was that obsessively washing everything down with clorox, washing your hands over and over and over, spraying disinfectants on everything they will not damage, and doing things like dusting everything every day lead to neurosis and actually over time, especially with a child’s developing immune system, can make your natural defenses less hardened by the everyday irritants and most common harmful bacteria.
This type of behaviour is being heavily marketed, and I personally run into this type of person at about one in 5 working in office buildings (especialy new mothers/fathers). Often the people who are your “work-group’s” germaphobe/clean freak will noticibly be off sick more than the level headed, and will stress out much much harder over things like dust accumulation in the light fixtures because the janitorial staff hasnt had time to break-out the ladders and clean the ceiling fixtures in two months.
I have had people of this personality type explain to me that they can often “feel” the germs of the recirculated HVAC in the building infiltrating their lungs.
This in it’s self isn’t so bad, sure you will always have the people who are neurotic about things, but this is a higher percentage than I see with other things, and as the years pass it appears the numbers of the sterility nazis are growing. When I first started working there was usualy the office germaphobe, and a couple clean freaks, but now every work-group, every floor, and every department has several of varieing degrees. This is what is unnerving.
25/12/2008 at 10:02 am Permalink
I just moved in with my fiancee a little over 3 months ago. Before my 2 kids (13 & 17) and I moved, my house was frequently trashed because I had to work 2 jobs and the kids were home by themselves. Now that things have changed, I have more time to clean and take care of things. I prefer to do the cleaning myself because my fiancee’s idea of cleaning is mainly organizing…everything in its place, including the dirty dishes and the dirty laundry. I can’t leave the dishes in the sink for 5 minutes without him having to put them in the dishwasher. Our laundry room is in a utility closet in our bathroom…there isn’t enough room to sort the laundry inside the closet however. I can’t sort the laundry and leave it lying on the bathroom floor until it’s finished without him shoving it all inside the closet anyway. He constantly hounds my kids about putting their glasses in the dishwasher. I have taught my kids to use the same glass all day, rinsing it out after each use so we don’t go thru so many. He is driving me absolutely crazy, and there’s no way I’m marrying this guy if he can’t relax a little and realize that a little UNorganization, a FEW dirty dishes in the sink and piles of dirty laundry for a few hours isn’t going to hurt a darn thing. He is also obsessed with always doing the right thing - praying before every meal, going to church faithfully, excessive politeness. His own father has even said that he is “TOO GOOD…TO A FAULT”. HELP!!!!! I can’t stand his OCD or OCPD or him being a CLEAN FREAK…whatever is going on!!!!! I was married before to a clean freak and a control freak, and I’m not going there again.
He also won’t take his 5 year old daughter to a public restroom anywhere other than Starbucks because they’re the cleanest. If he has no other choice, he lines the seat with toilet paper before she can sit down and go already. She takes a bath at night, but that’s not good enough for the next day. In the morning he makes her wash her armpits.
It’s pretty bad when I’ve tried to talk to him over and over again about how this makes me feel, but he has no regard for that even tho he’s told me over and over again that he understands. It’s about to ruin our relationship - we’re arguing about this stuff on Christmas Day because he can’t relax enough to enjoy himself today. It’s sad that this is becoming a widespread problem.