I'm chopping vegetables in my kitchen and a bit of red bell pepper falls on the floor. I snatch it up and toss it in the garbage. I come indoors after working in my garden and hop into the shower -- my second one of the day.
That's my "at home" cleanliness.
Did you know that there's actually been a scientific study on the 5-second rule? Turns out, our kitchen floor might not be all that terrible when it comes to dropped food. The dirt in our campsite, however, is probably not so easy to study. Nor as safe.
It seems to me that we've become far too paranoid about germs, bacteria, and so on. Not that I'm likely to change my careful behavior at home...but I'm also okay with my questionable decisions on cleanliness while out camping, hiking, and climbing. I do carry hand sanitizer with my TP and "cat hole" digger for those backcountry calls of nature and even for the visits to those vault-like outhouses in many campgrounds. And I use it. I'm not totally crazy. Dirty, but at least partially sane.
Have I ever gotten sick (in the gastro-intestinal sense) on a camping trip (or shortly after one)? Just once, as far as I remember. A friend cooked up a lovely vegetable stew for our group's dinner one evening. What she didn't mention is that the baby carrots hadn't been kept in the cooler the previous few days -- they resided inside a tent that sat in the hot sun. It wasn't pretty. I wasn't the sickest person in our group, but what I experienced was no walk in the park. (Maybe "trot in the park," but let's not go there).
Thinking back to my childhood, neither my mother nor I seem to have suffered any ill-effects when she "kissed my ouch-y" either.
That's my dirty little secret. Now, please excuse me while I go wash my hands before cooking dinner. I'm at home, you see.
