Supa dupa clean!

There are some of you out there.. and you know who you are, who are taking this whole clean and sanitized thing to an unhealthy level. Its an argument I have made for years. You can over-clean. Sanitize and disinfect too much. Keep your kids in sterile environments so much that you are actually hurting rather than helping.

There was a good article on MSN today about this phenomenon. Link here. Basically its talking about how our bodies NEED a lot of the stuff that people are constantly trying to prevent. Sure you don't want to start rubbing raw chicken onto your child, but there is a big difference in watching out for salmonella and making it so that every inch of your house is scoured with industrial strength cleansers that are more dangerous than the stuff its supposedly removing.

Its the same thing with parents that don't want their kids in daycare or in public in general for the simple reason is they don't want their kids to get sick. You can't protect them that way. Putting them in a bubble doesn't help in the long run. Unless they have some physical complication, their bodies are designed to deal with sickness and disease as it encounters it. Sure it sucks when your kids is sick, but sheltering them to the point where their immune system never develops is not helping them in the long run.

Now I'm not saying that keeping a clean house is a bad thing. On the contrary, I like my house clean. I don't however bleach the place every other day. I don't scrub out my shower with super disinfectant and a brillo pad after each use. I don't carry a bottle of hand sanitizer with me just in case I actually have to touch a door handle out in public.

There is someone at work .. and I don't know who.. that irritates the living crap out of me. He uses the restroom by my office. I can only assume he scrubs up afterwards like a surgeon sterilizing before going to cut someone open. Afterwards, he drys his hands and then takes the paper towel with him to the door. He then uses the paper towel to open the door and then leaves it there as he is ducking out quickly so the big scary germs can't catch him. So you made it out safe.. and now the rest of us get a nice wet paper towel left on the door handle? There is no way a warm damp paper towel is going to breed any kind of bacteria or germs right? Right? Get a hazmat suit to walk around in if you are that damn paranoid.

People need to chill the hell out with this stuff. We were all like this once though. Remember back in elementary school where you wouldn't touch the opposite sex for fear of cooties? I suppose its not the same though, because back then you would also drop food on the ground, blow the dirt off and eat it. Kids sneeze on each other, on the playground equipment, on their neighboors grilled cheese sammich. They get cuts and scrapes, let the dirt clot that stuff right up, and keep on truckin.

Oh how times have changed. When I was growing up, my parents would drive for 12 hours with me in my crib they put in the back of the VW Bus they had back then. There are pictures of me freewheeling around the back of this thing as we cruised to Myrtle Beach. Now you have to have kids in a 14 point space shuttle type harness til they are 12. Lawn Jarts was a toy given to kids to play with back then. We quickly determined that the point of the game was to stand in the circle, throw the heavy sharp metal object straight up in the air and then run around and try not to get impaled through the skull. Nowadays parents might as well put their kids in a sanitary sealed hamster ball and let them roll around and bump into the other kids so they can't come in contact with anything bad for them.