endecision:
My cleanliness preferences/rules seem really simple and straightforward to me and NO ONE ELSE SEEMS TO UNDERSTAND THEM. The crux of it is this: some things are cleaner than other things. Things become dirtier by touching dirtier things, or over time by slowly accumulating dirt/dust/microbes (food left out etc.). Things become cleaner by being washed, heated, chemically treated, etc. Cleaning is costly (takes time and effort) and it’s never 100% certain you got everything, so it is better to maintain cleanliness by avoiding having dirty things touch clean things.
There is a cleanliness gradient that runs from things that you will be eating (and things that directly touch those things) -> things that touch your skin, especially your face (the body has its own cleanliness gradient that I’m not going to get into) -> various indoor objects -> indoor floor assuming you take your shoes off indoors and vacuum sometimes <~> various outdoor objects -> outdoor ground ~> garbage, toilets -> whatever is worse than that.
I don’t know how much dirt/grossness transfers when things touch. I just assume a significant amount, enough to move the clean thing into or close to the category of the dirtier thing. It’s probably affected by the porosity of the material – I assume a porous object will hold more dirt inside it and be harder to clean, but possibly transfer less when touched as opposed to a nonporous object where the dirt is just sitting on the surface.
Things that have seemed wtf to me: someone wiping the kitchen floor with a cloth then using the same cloth to wipe the counter (a food prep surface or close to it!), putting dirty outside clothes on the bed, knocking blankets or pillows onto the floor, knocking tissue box onto the floor or putting it there intentionally. (I use those tissues on my mucous membranes! Please don’t!) Putting a backpack that I’d taken on a hike and had been on the ground etc. onto my bed (AUGH).
A lot of this is practical (disease avoidance etc.), but I admit that some of it is just purity feelings. An imperfect s1 approximation of the optimal practical thing.
Some of it is uncertainty. I have no idea what’s been on the bus stop bench but I’m going to assume it’s pretty gross and that, at the very least, people have stepped on it in their outside shoes which have also stepped in dog poop etc etc. If you don’t know the cleanliness of everything you’ve touched, just wash your hands before you touch something cleaner.
I have especially strong feelings about my bed, which probably has something to do with not having the energy to wash the sheets very often. I try to wash pillowcases once a week. (Part of the concern with things touching my face is a practical one about bacteria causing breakouts.)
Someone has misunderstood my thing about outside clothes being dirty as all of the outside having a dirt field which no and tbh felt like strawmanning. The outside air is fine and often better than the inside air. It’s just that do you trust yourself 100% to not have had your pant cuffs drag on the ground or have rubbed against any objects while outside? Also sweat etc.
I take this stuff seriously. In elementary school when I thought someone had “cooties” I was very neurotic about it and tried to avoid them. When I learned that flushing the toilet sprays bacteria everywhere I switched to only flushing with the lid closed, and brushing my teeth in a different bathroom where the sink was further away from the toilet. When I learned that the BART seats are covered in fecal bacteria I put a cushion on my chair and sat directly on the chair when I’d been on BART but on the cushion if I was clean.
Some of it is actually just completely irrational. A new, crisp dollar bill feels clean, especially compared to an old wrinkled one, but I know neither is. And I do sit on the couches etc. that people have touched with their outside clothes, while wearing my pajamas, then go to bed in those pajamas. (I draw the line at having to get dressed I guess.) I mean I assume the dirt transfer attenuates somewhere. I just assume the soap in the soap dish is always the same level of clean (unless it’s been dropped on the ground or something in which case I’ll try to wipe it off and wash off the outer layer with hot water).
Dropping my hairbrush on the bathroom floor reliably enrages me (especially if it comes up covered in dust and dirt).
Living and especially sharing a room with people who don’t care about these things makes it really hard to maintain the level of control and cleanliness that I want. I hope that one day I’ll have enough money to have my own room that no one else is allowed to use, even my partner.
I have much the same intuitions and categories (and wtf moments), and they seem completely straightforward to me too. (Though I’m more relaxed about public transport seats, probably due to the fact that I use public transport all the time and just… consider my chair fairly dirty rather than make a whole system about it. And I don’t close the toilet lid because that’s too much work, but I have a separate toilet and bathroom, so I don’t have the sink issue.)
Also, liquid soap beats a soap bar that everybody constantly touches with their dirty hands. And having a bunk bed solves a lot of the bed issues – nobody would put a backpack on there, and it’s cleaner anyway just by virtue of being far off the floor and only ever touched in a clean state.
Omphaloskeptomai 