No Bleach!
It turns out my aversion to housework will help me in the long run. A study run over twenty years by the University of Bergen in Norway shows that inhaling regular cleaning products, like degreasing sprays, window cleaners, and other substances, can reduce lung capacity to the same extent as smoking twenty cigarettes a day.
Though, thanks to my father's smoking habit in my infancy, I already have asthma, now I am vindicated in not having a spic and span house. I never did like the smell of most cleaning products, however brightly and attractively they did smell. My refusal to use bleach now has a good reason behind it. Despite the Spanish love of bleach to disinfect and leave everything bone white, my gut was telling me it was not a good idea.
So you can smell the last meal we cooked when you walk into my house? At least it smells more natural than canned roses or plastic pine needles. It also damages the lungs less. And there are more germs and bacteria around. Which is good, as I've mentioned before, because if your body is accustomed to them, they will hurt you less.
Other studies have been done which show that exposure to pets, farm animals, and dirt in infancy strengthens the immune system. Living in a dirty environment will make you stronger. That is because your body becomes accustomed to many bacteria and the immune system recognizes them. So, it's not necessary to clean and disinfect the house every day.
More than anything, this urge to clean the house comes from the twentieth century new-found belief that cleanliness is next to godliness. Also, clean houses meant servants and wealth. In many photos of the beginning of the twentieth century we can see poorer people living in dirtier conditions than the nouveau riche, surrounded by their maids and butlers. It was a sign of poverty to be dirty, mostly because there was little time to spend on cleaning the house when life was a struggle to survive, and workdays often reached twelve hours or more. When people had more time and a little more money, they started to clean themselves and their houses to deny poverty, and to look more like their rich overlords.
So, those newly invented cleaning products were sold to us as necessary for modern living, yet the study about lung damage also mentioned that many of them were not necessary. It went on to mention that many of the places they were used could be cleaned with microfiber cloth and water. Yet, we spend millions of euros every year buying cans and bottles of chemicals to have our houses bright and sparkling. But the best cleaner remains water and elbow grease. True, that sometimes we run low on the elbow grease, but it's better for our lungs and immune systems.
Though, thanks to my father's smoking habit in my infancy, I already have asthma, now I am vindicated in not having a spic and span house. I never did like the smell of most cleaning products, however brightly and attractively they did smell. My refusal to use bleach now has a good reason behind it. Despite the Spanish love of bleach to disinfect and leave everything bone white, my gut was telling me it was not a good idea.
So you can smell the last meal we cooked when you walk into my house? At least it smells more natural than canned roses or plastic pine needles. It also damages the lungs less. And there are more germs and bacteria around. Which is good, as I've mentioned before, because if your body is accustomed to them, they will hurt you less.
Other studies have been done which show that exposure to pets, farm animals, and dirt in infancy strengthens the immune system. Living in a dirty environment will make you stronger. That is because your body becomes accustomed to many bacteria and the immune system recognizes them. So, it's not necessary to clean and disinfect the house every day.
More than anything, this urge to clean the house comes from the twentieth century new-found belief that cleanliness is next to godliness. Also, clean houses meant servants and wealth. In many photos of the beginning of the twentieth century we can see poorer people living in dirtier conditions than the nouveau riche, surrounded by their maids and butlers. It was a sign of poverty to be dirty, mostly because there was little time to spend on cleaning the house when life was a struggle to survive, and workdays often reached twelve hours or more. When people had more time and a little more money, they started to clean themselves and their houses to deny poverty, and to look more like their rich overlords.
So, those newly invented cleaning products were sold to us as necessary for modern living, yet the study about lung damage also mentioned that many of them were not necessary. It went on to mention that many of the places they were used could be cleaned with microfiber cloth and water. Yet, we spend millions of euros every year buying cans and bottles of chemicals to have our houses bright and sparkling. But the best cleaner remains water and elbow grease. True, that sometimes we run low on the elbow grease, but it's better for our lungs and immune systems.
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