Unclutterer

1. Posted by DJ - 07/04/2009

   No surprises here. As I always try to remind myself, the vast bulk of microbes are totally harmless to people. Lucky for us, huh?

2. Posted by Chris - 07/04/2009

   Yeah, there may be 700 different species of bacteria in our mouth but they didn’t mention that most of them are good, and needed for the proper digestion of food. As far as those other things… yeah… that’s why we need good immune systems!

3. Posted by Brooke Edwards - 07/04/2009

   I find it interesting that dirt and bacteria have become synonymous. And that, because our mouths have a ton of bacteria, they’re considered “dirty.” Sometimes I wonder if these lists do much more (no offense) than increase the level of fear in our lives. Do we really have to be worried about our “dirty” keyboards? Okay, public restrooms…I’ll go with that one, but even then I’m not about to whip out the antibacterial spray/soap/gel.

4. Posted by Anna - 07/04/2009

   What about the keys? Didn’t you write about it recently?

5. Posted by Anna - 07/04/2009

   Agreeing with most of the commenters. If anything, you should be reassured that despite exposing ourselves to millions of bacteria on our dollar bills, door knobs, etc. — our immune systems can handle it! These lists are pretty silly.

6. Posted by Ally - 07/04/2009

   I definitely didn’t expect the washing machine to be on there!! Makes you really think twice about using public laundry facilities. Gross.

7. Posted by Khürt Williams - 07/04/2009

   I grew up eating “unwashed” fuirts picked from a tree and popped into my mouth. I see little kids sucking on feet that just 1 minute prior were inside of a pari of shoes. And yet … well .. here I am.

   I think Western (or maybe just American) society is developing mysophobia.

8. Posted by Karyn - 07/04/2009

   Working as a cashier, the money doesn’t surprise me a bit. Sometimes there’s a lot of grime coming off in the (foaming alcohol-based, and prolly not bacteria-ridden) soap when I wash my hands at work.

   What DOES surprise me is how many customers hold their dollar bills in their mouths while they’re waiting to pay. Apart from whether I really want to handle their saliva-riddled currency, I can’t help but wish I could ask: DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHERE THAT MONEY MAY HAVE BEEN?

   The worst I ran into was a woman with a “helper” dog. She put her credit card INTO THE DOG’S MOUTH and told the dog to give it to me. I quickly said, that’s all right, I don’t need it, even though her purchase was over the amount at which we start having to verify card signatures. I’m usually very conscientious about signature verification, but I was willing to make an exception in that case.

   The bathroom soap was a surprise to me, but the door knob sure wasn’t. I often think of that when I’m at work, having duly washed my hands, only to handle a door knob which has been touched by god-knows-how-many people who *haven’t* washed their hands. Maybe the dry climate-controlled air kills those germs by the time I get back to the register… to handle money.

9. Posted by rosie_kate - 07/04/2009

   Yeah, but get this– our bodies NEED germs. The number of microbes in and on us outnumber our own cells! And you just have to take the bad with the good. It is far more unhealthy to go around “disinfecting” everything that to live with the germs you come in contact with. You only get sick if your immune system can’t handle the microbes you encounter. This list does not surprise me at all. I’d much rather work on keeping my immune and digestive systems in good working order.

10. Posted by Deborah Marchant - 07/04/2009

    Like the mouth, the front door is the first place for things coming and a going,
    So I am looking for a sterilizing welcome mat!

    I found this information online today:

    “A Hot Spot: The Welcome Mat. It serves to greet not only your guests but also all the bugs on the bottoms of their shoes. One study found that nearly 96 percent of shoe soles had traces of coliform, which includes fecal bacteria. “The area near your front door is one of the dirtiest in the house,” says Reynolds. Once bacteria plant their stakes in your mat, anytime you walk on it, you give them a free ride into your home.

    Keep it clean: Spray the doormat once a week with a fabric-safe disinfectant (such as Lysol Disinfectant Spray). Leave shoes at the door, and avoid resting bags and groceries on the mat, too.”

11. Posted by T-mag - 07/04/2009

    If we keep disinfecting everythig we see we will only grow more super bacteria that we can’t deal with without doctors and stronger drugs. Just wash well with soap (you don’t need anti-bacterial) and the germs will wash away just fine, just as clean.

    Also, a dogs mouth is “cleaner” by far to your own.

12. Posted by Anita - 07/04/2009

    I agree with most commenters, in that there are good bacteria and bad bacteria. Being a single-cell organism doesn’t make it bad, and trying to make your environment bacteria-free would do you a lot more harm than good in the long run.

    Also: if bacteria=dirt, wouldn’t yogurt and sour cream (with active bacteria cultures) be somewhere on that list?

13. Posted by Dawn - 07/04/2009

    I read somewhere that the handle on a refrigerator is a major hot spot, too. They mentioned that a fridge door handle rarely gets cleaned and everybody in the house is touching it (before/during/after preparing foods), etc. I can’t remember where I read this article, but I found it to be interesting. Guess a little Lysol spray on the handle would be a good idea!

14. Posted by Kirsten - 07/04/2009

    I wasn’t surprised about the toilet seat being less germy than other spots in the bathroom. I’ve noticed so many people who are finicky about making sure they can use those paper seat protectors, but then they don’t use soap when washing their hands (running the water for 2 seconds is a dead giveaway).

15. Posted by Sarah - 07/04/2009

    I’m very particular about cleaning the washing machine about once a month with vinegar and hot water when at home. But sharing washers and dryers in the dorms is pretty disgusting.

16. Posted by Eternal*Voyageur - 07/04/2009

    Over sterilisation creates super-bacterias. In fact, super bacterias are becoming common in US hospitals…

17. Posted by Julie - 07/04/2009

    Wow, and I expected the comments to be mainly, “OMG, I’ve got to clean these places more!!”

    I’m pleasantly surprised that most of the readers are not panicked by this article, but realize that NOT ALL GERMS ARE BAD!!!!

    I live a fairly healthy existence; without the overuse of sanitizing or disinfecting agents that are generally man-made & a waste of my hard earned money!

18. Posted by Julie - 07/04/2009

    Eternal*Voyageur — You brought up one of the most germ-ridden places of all!

19. Posted by peter - 07/04/2009

    If they are reporting the mouth as dirty then they need to reexamine their definition of dirty.

20. Posted by Another Deb - 07/04/2009

    We all do carry around a huge normal collection of bacteria. The interesting thing the DNA analysis has discovered is that we carry so very many types! One study found 44 species living on the forearm alone, which are different than the many living on more moist areas of the skin. Even the bacteria on the inside of our elbow is different than that of the outside of the elbow (microclimates).

    I am not super-vigilant about kitchen sponges and dropped food. I once rescued a scoop of ice cream that had dropped off the cone onto the sidewalk. My husband never lets me forget that it fell off on very grimy concrete leading into a dog grooming shop. Ha, after two years of dieting, the risk was worth it! (Plus there was a safety layer of meltage left behind)

    That said, in these days of MRSA and flu pandemics, I do consider what I am touching. During the day as I teach, I make a strict effort not to touch my eyes and nose or to put anything in my mouth such as pencils or paperwork. After contracting impetigo on my arm, back in the 70’s, I don’t want to repeat that experience.

21. Posted by Jacki Hollywood Brown - 07/04/2009

    I worked in a public library in high school to support my horse. My hands were dirtier after an hour in the library than an hour at the barn.

    In my food microbiology class, the dirtiest thing we found was the handle of a grocery cart. (pick up raw meat package, put in cart, push cart, pick up raw fruits & veggies, put in cart, push cart etc).

22. Posted by Rhian - 07/04/2009

    I agree with most other posters – we need exposure to germs to keep our immune system strong. The worst thing you can do (especially with young children) is start disinfecting everything.

23. Posted by living400lbs - 07/04/2009

    I think toilets are a bad basis of comparison, since they’re frequently washed with fairly strong cleaners (often bleach-based).

    

24. Posted by Hugh - 07/04/2009

    I think that if we were really concenred about our health that we would wash our hands before and after using the bathroom.

25. Posted by kazza - 07/04/2009

    All 6 are just a part of life and building a healthy immune system.

    As to quantities of bacteria – you’d have to add cheeses, wine and yeast to that. So no bread or beer again?

    I’m more concerned about take-out food restaurants that can’t keep their food hot enough or cook it long enough to kill the bad bacteria. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t bought anything from any hamburger chain in over a decade

26. Posted by Kristen - 07/05/2009

    Why are we pretending this is intelligent information when you’re equating the words “dirty” and “bacteria”?

27. Posted by Suzjazz - 07/05/2009

    I’ve somehow managed to reach the age of 56 without contracting a bacterial infection from a public restroom, cell phone, or someone’s mouth. Just lucky, I guess.

28. Posted by CaigeNixon - 07/05/2009

    now im scared of money
    =[

29. Posted by Sian - 07/05/2009

    Yay sensible commenters! I couldn’t agree more.

30. Posted by Malcolm - 07/05/2009

    I too am pleasantly surprised by how unworried most comments are about this. The only thing we worry about is the handles of supermarket trolleys – we often see someone pushing a cart, taking their hand off the handle to cover their mouth as they cough or sneeze – then putting the sneezed-on hand right back on the handle! We do keep some antibacterial wipes in the car to use immediately after shopping, ie before we handle our own purchases again. In over 60 years, so far, no health problems from any of these common germ sources…

31. Posted by Melinda - 07/05/2009

    i have an immune system, so i’m not worried at all.

32. Posted by The Daily Click - 07/05/2009

    Most of them didn’t surprise except the washing machine one. I would have thought with the water and detergent a lot of the bacteria would have been dealt with.

    But now having read this I wonder how clean the mail is as it obviously goes through several pairs of hands as well as machinery at the sorting office.

33. Posted by FekketCantenel - 07/05/2009

    If you make a Venn diagram of ‘Unclutterer readers’ and ‘Cracked.com readers’, I’m in the very tiny overlap.

    I wish you would include some link love to the article you’re talking about (it’s blogging etiquette). With your warnings and a NSFW label, no one should complain. But hey, Cracked doesn’t need trackbacks that desperately; they’re already pretty popular.

    Just out of curiosity, how did you find this article? You don’t seem the type to troll the comedy RSS feeds, so I imagine someone emailed it to you.

34. Posted by Karyn - 07/05/2009

    @T-mag – “Also, a dogs mouth is ‘cleaner’ by far to your own.”

    I knew someone was going to trot this out. True or not, it doesn’t make handling dog spit any less disgusting–and I hope everyone would agree that it’s really bad customer etiquette to expect a cashier to be cool with it. Also, I don’t stick my fingers in my own mouth, either, especially when cashiering.

    My comment on this post was meant to be humorous, by the way; if I got any response, I was expecting at least a (virtual) chuckle or two, not a bunch of “oh, well, germs are a part of life” remarks. Sure they are, but there’s a happy middle ground between OCD germophobia and dismissing any need for cleanliness!

    And if anyone’s tempted to try the doggie-with-credit-card trick… don’t. Just don’t. Thank you.

35. Posted by Erin Doland - 07/05/2009

    @FekketCantenel — Ha ha ha ha ha!! Okay … I want you to do me a favor. I want you to e-mail the people at Cracked.com and ask them how many e-mails they get in a day from people without a sense of humor who complain about their language and such. My guess is that they would give you a number in the hundreds, maybe thousands, of the nasty grams that they receive. I bet they would say that they find these messages to be CLUTTER.

    By giving explicit instructions for how to find the article instead of the link itself I was avoiding that exact same kind of clutter. (It’s the same way articles are referenced in print newspapers and magazines — article name, publication.) I hate nasty grams. Every time I have linked to a NSFW article I have had my inbox filled with complaints about the language — even when I have said “this link is not safe for work” or “not family friendly” before the link. So … I’m keeping clutter out of my inbox. Clutter that the good people at Cracked.com know a great deal about.

    Oh, and I read Cracked.com. I also do stand up comedy. Too bad you missed my last show at the DC Improv.

36. Posted by Sara - 07/05/2009

    This is how we build our immune systems, by being exposed to everyday bacteria and germs such as this. Plus, most contagious illnesses are passed person-to-person (like the common cold and flu), so it should be sick people you should avoid, not public restroom soap.

37. Posted by Mander - 07/06/2009

    Like many others, I just can’t understand the paranoia over bacteria and dirt. Unless you have an immune disorder and need to be extra careful about what you are exposed to, then I don’t see what the problem is. That’s what white blood cells are for.

    I’m certainly not going to start toting a tube of anti-bacterial gel around and start insisting that my friends put their shoes on a hot plate when they come into my house.

38. Posted by Emma - 07/06/2009

    Its so nice to see all the positive comments on here. The cracked article is funny, but useless really.

39. Posted by Krys Slovacek - 07/06/2009

    I was surprised by the mobile phone. So many parents let their kids play with their mobile phones that it seems ’safe’.

    I have an iPhone, so no keys to get gooped up, and now that I have a baby, I’ve been running anti-bacterial wipes over everything within reach. All the same, though, yuck!

40. Posted by FekketCantenel - 07/06/2009

    Standup comedy about uncluttering must be awesome. I’ll have to do my own version someday, if I can develop a voice that doesn’t make people smack themselves.

    If you have prior experience, point taken about the link love. Besides, like I said, they get plenty of trackbacks from sites with (hopefully) people who don’t take the language so seriously. I don’t exactly understand your methodology, though; googling the article or going to Cracked and searching for it through hundreds of similarly-crass articles (a much faster process than your newspaper citation example) is almost as easy as clicking the link. You’re making it slightly, slightly harder and therefore weeding out those with the most passing curiosity, but other than that, people will probably reach it anyway. The only way to really stem the effect would be to not mention the site at all, but that would be even less link love, so you’re between a rock and a hard spot.

    Those who’d like to declutter their browser of distracting profanity could do like I did and install the anti-profanity Greasemonkey filter (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4175) or other such addon. Once you do that, the Cracked articles are pretty alright.

    I actually had a neighbor who, before and after using a grocery store cart, would wash her hands with antibacterial soap. She had gone through a month-long, debilitating gastro virus, which her doctor said was most-likely contracted from that kind of surface. I could understand her paranoia.

41. Posted by Erin Doland - 07/06/2009

    @FekketCantenel — My stand up comedy isn’t about clutter/uncluttering/cleaning/organizing/etc. I’m not really sure people would laugh at that.

42. Posted by Marie - 07/06/2009

    I’d love tips on how to clean a washing machine. I run an empty load of bleach every now and then, but still it smells stale and musty at times.

43. Posted by Kristen - 07/06/2009

    @Marie To clean your washing machine run a full empty load of the hottest setting adding 2 cups of white vinegar, then another using 2 c. of bleach. Don’t mix these; do it in 2 separate loads. Then run a final load with just water. Finally, and this will help with the smell too, make sure you leave the lid open to air it out every time you use it. It may not look nice, but not doing so just creates mold and mildew, along with that smell. And if you’ve never done so, you should also wash around the top of the basin area. This can be a very moldy area as well.

44. Posted by Natalie - 07/06/2009

    I have to wonder about shoes, and the kitchen sink- though I’m not one to really worry about bacteria.

45. Posted by silverten - 07/08/2009

    The point about soap is that it makes your hands slippery, so germs are more easily rinsed off- not that it kills germs.

46. Posted by Irene - 07/08/2009

    This is probably the least useful article I’ve seen on Unclutterer.

    Bacteria are not clutter.

    Most of them are harmless or even beneficial; if you got rid of all the bacteria in/on your body, you would regret it.

47. Posted by Lilian G. - 07/10/2009

    The toilet seat being less infected than the knob and sink surprised me the most. The cellphone one, I always kind of knew it would be the most dirty. Sadly, I keep my phone on my bed too because I text on it often

48. Posted by Lilian G. - 07/10/2009

    Irene, no one said you should be scared of all bacteria. However most on these items are ones that can get people sick. I have been in college for a year and haven’t gotten sick. However, every year for four years when I was in high school, I got a cold at least 4-5 times a year because they have such strict bathroom rules and I couldn’t wash my hands too often. This was the same in elementary and middle school.

    Personally, I found this article pretty enjoyable to read.. even though people here have claimed it’s “least useful” and not part of clutter. It’s not, but at least it’s something nice to know about. Thank you for sharing!

49. Posted by EngineerMom - 07/22/2009

    Lists like these are why there is overuse of antibacterial products. Shame on you, unclutterer, for promoting fear and misuse of powerful drugs.

    Our mouths have many types of beneficial bacteria. Yes, some of them aren’t so great, but if it wasn’t for the beneficial bacteria, the “bad” ones would overmultiply and make us sick!

    The best defense is a good offense – not of cleaners, but of competitive “good” bacteria. Same goes for your skin – if you’re scrubbing all your skin every single day, you’re removing the good bacteria that help compete out the stuff that makes you sick!

    The door handles and soap dispensers are why you should wash your hands for at least 15 seconds in hot, soapy water (NOT under the running tap), dry with paper towels, and use a paper towel to open the door on your way out.

    As for the cell phone thing, you could wash after use (yet another reason not to use it in the car!), or just make sure you wash your hands between cell use and touching food or your face.

50. Posted by Bill Giovannetti - 07/22/2009

    I love this post, and I must, at all costs, keep my darling clean-freak wife from ever reading this, or she’ll make me clean even more than she already does. Sorry, but you must be blacklisted.

51. Posted by Bill Giovannetti - 07/22/2009

    P.S.
    I think the dirtiest thing in my house would be my kids.

52. Posted by FB @ FabulouslyBroke.com - 08/02/2009

    Not all bacteria is bad. Some are good, like in yoghurt. And in our saliva.. which comes from our mouths, incidentally

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