I have just been bombarded with a series of dopy advertisments on TV that
together say: if you don't use this coloured stuff in your toilet, that
spray on your benches, floors and almost every surface of your house, some
perfume or insecticide in this dandy dispenser, and half a dozen other
cleaning products, then you are a bad parent, you will be shunned by your
neighbours and you and your family will die a lingering death of some
disease mediated by green and purple monsters.

Almost every day well meant questions are asked here along the lines:

- w has been in the fridge for 3 days
- x was out of the fridge for 2 minutes
- y still has it's skin on
- z was only washed once
- I wish I had (a tiled floor, or whatever) so my kitchen can be really
clean
- etc etc

what should I do, is it safe, and will this horrid lapse cause me illness,
death or just eternal shame?

We live in a micobiological soup of billions of organisms that occupy the
air that we breath, the water that we drink and every object that we touch.
Many of these bugs are pathogenic in the right circumsances. Your body is
covered with them inside and out no matter how much stuff you put in your
bath, or spray on to yourself or gargle, or the colour of your toilet water.
The food that we eat and you and I are dirty from the day we are born to the
day we die.

Unless you are conducting surgery or are dealing with a person in poor
health whose imune system is compromised all this fuss over super
cleanliness is doing nothing but causing you worry and enriching vendors who
know how to play on your fear and your desire to conform and 'do the right
thing'. Use common sense cleanliness routines - wash your hands, wash your
cooking equipment and so forth. Do these measures make you and your stuff
really clean? No. Neither do all the bunkum products

That is why you have an immune system - to deal with the potential
pathogens. You need keep clean enough to reduce the numbers of the bad bugs
to the point that the immune system can deal with them and to reduce toxins
below harmful levels. Simply measures and common sense will achieve this.
Yes you do need to sterilize things in some circumstances (when even a small
number of bad bugs will get the time and conditions to grow to harmful
levels) this is what brewing and preserving are all about. In normal
cooking sterility is neither needed nor possible.

Those routines taught by grandma or in home economics before the era of 1001
perfumed sprays were actually pretty useful. So trust your nose and your
life experience more and relax.

There I feel better now.

David