Confessions of a Recovering Germaphobe

I’ve always been a bit of a neat freak, trying to keep the house organized, things properly filed in the filing cabinet, the kitchen scrubbed down with spotless floors, bathrooms without a stray hair or spots on the mirror. I’m far from a perfect housekeeper as evidenced by the lack of dusting, but general neatness and cleanliness is important to me. When I was in the nesting phase of my first pregnancy, I had a few moments when I was convinced the house would never be clean enough. Fortunately for my loving husband he was off on business trips when I would go off on a cleaning jag.

My neat freak backslide started after the birth. I had complications during labor and delivery and was physically weak for a couple weeks after. Thankfully we had family to help, but I clearly remember thinking, “If I don’t mop the floor every few days, it won’t be such a big deal.” That was my downfall.

The next big shocker was when Builder Guy went to preschool. He had never been a sickly child and we miraculously avoided the worst of childhood illnesses, but starting in January that year he seemed to catch every bacteria and virus that came to school and of course he brought them home to share with Top Gun. We had weeks on end with one or both boys sick which led me to ponder the wisdom of calling in a hazmat team to scrub down every inch of the house and car. The next winter brought more of the same and by then I was pregnant with Monkey Boy and going through a horrid bout of maternity sickness. It was then that I gave up. The germs had won.

My three boys are capable of creating gooey, sticky, crumbly, revolting messes, but instead of making me even more of a neat nick and germaphobe, it somehow forced me to reassess many things, including how much time I allot to general housekeeping. Kitchen and bathrooms are the first priority, followed by toy pick up and floors in other rooms. Dusting and windows are way down on the list. Each time we added another child to the family, I slid a little further until I reached the point of casual acceptance of all things germy.

Recently I had a flashback to those sick years when two of my boys and I all came down with sore throats, headaches, stuffy noses, and coughs, and I began to wonder if I should get us all checked for H1N1 flu because schools are checking children carefully for even minor symptoms. My six-year-old coughed his way through the night and complained of a sore throat and headache when he woke up, and the first thing I thought of was the new PSA with Adam and Jamie of The Mythbusters which shows a truly vile slow motion spewing of germs a la Time Warp. That mental image sent me off to call the pediatrician.

Fortunately it’s just a cold and hopefully we’ll all feel better in a few days, but in the meantime I’m breaking out the Lysol and Germ-X.

The photo is a screen shot from a Discovery Channel H1N1 public service announcement.

Original DC Metro Moms Blog post.

Andrea Meyers writes about cooking, edible gardening, and her four hungry guys.