If you know me well in real life, you know that I’m a germaphobe and a neat freak.
If you don’t know me well but have kept up with my blog, you may have figured this out already.
If you don’t know me well and have not kept up with my blog, this post will help you realize this.

Keeping my house clean and being a germaphobe was a lot easier before I had kids, because, obviously, I had more time. And yes I do realize, it’s good for your kids to ingest germs from time to time, to build up their immunity. And YES, I did let my kids eat food off the floor. I just turned the other way and pretended not to see it. Haha. I did. Believe me!

But now that they are older and I find myself with a bit more time on my hands, I find myself returning to my old germaphobic ways. It’s probably also has a bit to do with that fact that we’re living in the middle of a pandemic and the entire world is just now learning that it serves to disinfect! Remember my Facebook post about how the world is just now catching up to Manouri?! It’s true, I feel totally and completely validated.

My friends used to laugh at me when I told them what my cleaning routine was. Is the routine still funny? You tell me. Here are the 10 most unusal things I clean on a regular and frequent basis.

1. Doorknobs, light switches, telephones and handrails
Granted, we don’t have a landline anymore, but I started this practice long ago when we did. Once a week when Dave and I did our weekly house clean, I’d wipe down every doorknob, light switch and telephone with a clean rag soaked with Lysol. Actually, several clean rags, discarding one every few wipes instead of soaking it again. I remember in grade nine science, we tested the bacteria on several surfaces, and the doorknobs were the worst. Blech. I still do this to doorknobs, light switches and any commonly manhandled surface to this day.

2. Interior doors
The tiny ledge above the door frame gets a dust about once a month. Dave laughed at me when he saw me do this the first time. What??? It gets dusty, just try it and see! Also, if you have panelled interior doors with molding, the molding gets dusty too, especially the corners. Take a good look and see.

3. Rugs
When I think of what we track in with our shoes and what gets on those front hall rugs, yech, I’d be washing them more often that I do! So I try not to think about it that often, maybe only once every few months or so. I buy the kind that I can squish up and throw into my washing machine easily. As soon as the backing starts to crumble off, I know it’s time for new rugs.

4. Dishwasher
Why wash something that is responsible for washing other things? It doesn’t make sense, but yep, it needs to be cleaned. I’m not just talking about under the central spray arm. When you put your dirty dishes in and things drip down, this part of your dishwasher gets dirty fast and doesn’t get cleaned easily because it is often covered by the door. I’ve tried to show it in this pic, indicated by the red arrow. Picture the area underneath that is covered when the door closes.

I find I have to give this area a wipe every other wash or so, as well as the corners. And I’ve had some high end dishwashers as well as some cheapies. Currently, I have this one, which was the best you could buy at the time and cost us a fortune, and I have to wipe it down every once in a while or it gets really gross.

5. Shower Curtains
We have a glass door but the kids have shower curtains in their bathrooms. I buy fabric shower curtains so I can take them off and wash them easily. And my guests will be happy to know that I have separate cloth shower curtains for them. I do this because plastic shower curtains easily build up gunk, including soap scum and mildew. Let’s not even talk about body dirt and germs. Yuck. Let’s not.

6. Your phone, keys, cards and wallet
I did this even before Covid. I mean, strangers touch my credit and debit cards, and I sometimes put them in my mouth. Ew, right? And keys sometimes fall on the ground or the floor of your car. And let’s not talk about what gets on the phone. I’ve got Kira trained – she disinfects her phone each time she comes home from somewhere. Max still needs a reminder.

7. Steering Wheel
I keep disinfecting wipes in the car. Every once in a while, I give the steering wheel, gear shift, start button, and all the buttons I regularly touch, a quick wipe.

8. Utensil trays, toothbrush holders, soap pumps
I don’t know about your house, but at ours, our utensil tray always gets filled with crumbs. I wash ours out pretty often. Also, toothbrush holders get pretty cruddy. Open yours up and look. And if you think that you are always touching your soap pump with dirty hands, that means the top of your pump is pretty germy. Thankfully we have the touchless ones.

9. Cleaning supplies
Another one that seems counter intuitive, but if you think of cross-contamination, you take those cleaning supplies to the washroom so you get washroom germs on them, and then you take them to the kitchen. Nasty. After using them in the washroom, give them a swipe with a wipe before you put them away. I actually have different supplies for the bathroom that I keep in a different place and my family knows what they are for.

10. Pop-up sink plug
This is the most disgusting, IMHO. You’ll either thank me for this or hate me forever. If your sink drain/plug thing looks like this:

did you know it has to be cleaned every once in a while? Yah, I didn’t either until about 10 years ago when I had one for the first time. Don’t believe me? Go ahead, pull it out, then stop reading to give yourself enough time to barf into your toilet and then clean yourself up, and then come back so I can say, “I told you so.” Yep. DISGUSTING. When it’s clean, it will look like this:

When it’s dirty it will make you want to cry that something so vile was actually so close to you when you were naked and vulnerable. Now that you know, you will be obsessed with cleaning it weekly whenever you scrub your sink, like I am.

I didn’t include things like the exhaust hood fan, windowsills and window tracks, shower door tracks, the top of the shower door, mattresses, pillows, toilet pedestals, behind the toilet, on top of the fridge, under big appliances like the fridge and the stove, and behind big furniture that is hard to move. All of that stuff gets done – not every week or even every month, but they stay clean if I remember that they get dirty and they have to be done. At different points in our life we’ve had cleaning people, and I’ve asked them do keep on top of things like this. They either have, or they haven’t, or they have but not very well. I guess in the end, no one cleans as well as I do, so if I want all of these things done and done well, I have to do them myself!

So, what do you guys think?!
I am crazy for cleaning the things that I clean?
Do you clean these things?
Did I open your eyes to something or gross you out about something else?!
What are some of the crazy things you clean that I don’t?
Share your stories! Comment on the blog!