You would think washing the dishes counts as washing your hands — dish soap is usually stronger than hand soap, and you might well be giving each individual finger a proper exfoliation with that skillful maneuvering of the sponge. On the other hand, so to speak, you...
If you’ve never opened your suitcase a crack and gotten a powerful whiff of your shampoo, count yourself lucky. The smell comes with a dread of what you’ll see when you look inside — a fear that almost always comes true. One of your toiletries has exploded,...
Face soap: It’s a blessing, and a curse. On the one hand, it keeps you clean, bacteria at bay and your skin looking bright and healthy. On the other, it can be a goopy mess, get in your eyes and otherwise take loads and loads of water...
If you’re reading this, it probably means you’ve gotten through practically all of your (likely) adult life without ever questioning how you shower. I mean, why would you? Basically, you wake up, you get in the shower, you rinse, you lather up, you rinse again, and you’re...
When you share a bathroom with a partner, it’s inevitable that you’re going to end up sharing more than just toothpaste. Our bodies are constantly crawling with bacteria — some good, some bad — and the bathroom, a room dedicated to both dampness and nudity, is the...
Many of us assume that our showers are, well, always clean — they get sprayed down with a concoction of soap and water every day or so, after all. Sadly, though, our soapy runoff does virtually as little for the cleanliness of our showers as it does...
Anyone who owns a shower curtain knows one thing for sure: It’s going to engulf them as soon as they turn the water on. This strange phenomenon is called the shower-curtain effect, and while there’s no conclusive explanation for why running water causes shower curtains to billow...
Belly buttons can be filled with any number of things: Dirt, sweat, lint and maybe even some jewelry if that’s what you’re into. But a 2012 study — appropriately titled, A Jungle in There: Bacteria in Belly Buttons are Highly Diverse, but Predictable — found that our...
Idle hands may be the devil’s playground, but a layabout towel is a back-to-back Coachella weekend for bacteria. To prevent germs (and their sidekick, rank odors) from proliferating in the fibers of your towels, they should be washed every few days, or as soon as they start...
Let’s have a little talk about eye cream, which will make a nice change from us talking about stuff like eye gunk. Eye cream can help rescue your under-eye zone from looking dark and puffy, nudging it towards refreshed, invigorated and just plain satisfying to look at,...
After years of showering on a daily basis, you’d think stepping out completely clean is a given. Some body parts, however, are easy to miss, and so are often left unwashed for weeks at a time. Below is a list of every hard-to-reach body part, how to...
There are those who believe that one secret to a happy relationship is having separate bathrooms, which makes sense when you consider all the less-than-attractive things we do in there. But what happens when there’s only one bathroom at your disposal? Does that mean you’re doomed to...
