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Thursday, December 17, 2009

Winter, OCD, germs and handwashing



How old do you think this person is? 60? 70?
Try 37. These are my hands today after I cleaned the cat litter box and the downstairs bathroom. It isn't even 10:30 am and I still have a day full of more hand washing ahead of me. Oy. Winter means bleeding, cracking and stinging hands after applying lotion. Some might call me a germaphobe. I have not been diagnosed with OCD. Whatever the reason, I wash my hands a lot. I have lotion pumps in every room in my house except the basement, attic and the kids rooms. I wash my hands before preparing food, after preparing food, before serving food with my hands (if I will be touching the food like brownies) after touching anything that is not clean (which means everything), before I eat, after cleaning anything dirty or germy (which means everything), after cleaning with sanitizing wipes or sprays or any spray that has chemicals in it, after going to the bathroom, after touching the dirty laundry to put it in the washing machine, after I get home from being out, before unloading clean dishes from the dishwasher, after loading the dishwasher with dirty dishes, etc.
I already try to group doing "dirty" things so I can cut down on hand washing but clearly that isn't working. I put lotion on and then it gets washed off before it can sink in. I have a box of sterile gloves in my bathroom for suppository insertion (Stephen can't take oral meds when he is sick) and I think I need to start wearing them. I don't think my level of hand washing is unreasonable. I just know how germy everything is and don't want myself or my family to get sick.
Am I the only one that washes my hands this much? Does anyone else have this problem with super dry bleeding hands in the winter?

1 comment:

Stat Mama said...

Heh, oh yeah. I understand more than you can imagine.