When it comes to daily life, how much thought do you give to cleanliness? When most people think about what it means to have a clean house, their minds immediately jump to the big things- dirty dishes, cluttered rooms, desks piled with junk mail and important papers. Take a step back and think smaller, smaller…focus on the unseen dirt that is being regularly brought into your home through habits we acquire and never seem to reflect upon. Here are a few examples involving the home and some related examples from outside the home which may help shed some light on exactly what is at risk.

Shoes would have to be one of the biggest culprits. We wear shoes out into the world where they protect our feet from all manner of grime and harsh conditions. When we return home, in a typical American household, the shoes come right along inside with us, dragging along traces of everything we’ve stepped in along the way. Think of the nastiest and most stubborn thing you’ve ever found stuck to your shoe. Would you reach down with a bare hand and touch it, wipe it on your face, purposefully bring a sample of it into the house?

While no one in their right mind would consciously choose any of those options, we are doing exactly that every time we allow shoes to cross into our living spaces. Even if you consider yourself to be extra careful, watch your kids when they come home from a day of play. Where do their shoes end up? On the couch cushions, on pillows, on the carpeting, in contact with any number of surfaces that aren’t regularly or readily cleaned.

Shoelaces are nearly as shocking. The laces may pick up more bacteria and filth than the shoes themselves, because they can become wet and be dragged through messes, have them ground into the fibers. After tying your shoes, wash your hands.

Ladies, when is the last time you wiped down the outside of your purse? Have you ever done so? We carry our purses everywhere, put them down without a second thought, then sling them over a shoulder and walk away. But you’re carrying far more than your cell and checkbook if this is your habit. To bring this into perspective, consider the worst of the worst: a trip to the restroom.

A public toilet is the prime locale for finding concentrated filth. Yet many women will walk in, have a seat, and place their purse directly on the floor, inches from the toilet. They then carry that purse out and place it on the counter by the sink, atop the counter where they order food, on the kitchen table at home. Restroom floors hold many secrets and many forms of bodily waste that, even though you can’t see, is still present even immediately after a cleaning.

How thoroughly would the floor have to be cleaned after an incident before you could feel safe that it is truly disinfected? Is an employee going to show that level of dedication? How often do you think a mop head sees the inside of a washing machine? How often on a shift do you think a mop head is changed? How many times does your favorite eatery roll the same mop bucket into the restroom to clean the floors (where people have missed the mark, bowls have overflowed) and then rolled that mop back into the kitchen to clean the tile where your food is prepared? Who ever wipes down the mop handle? The light switch or door handles?

The same scenario applies to backpacks. Kids drag their packs along and fling them wherever they please. Over the course of a day, they end up on the floor of the school bus or car, in their locker, on their desk, resting near their feet as they study, finally coming to land on the kitchen table for homework. What other item would you drag across a common floor and then place directly on top of the surface where you serve dinner?

People routinely pile their children into the basket of a cart without a thought. Even when the food is not coming into direct contact with the children’s shoes and clothing, traces of what was present are still being left behind, and in contact with the packaging. Take a look at the grocery parking lot. Your food is essentially coming into contact with the things you see there: saliva, leaking oil and other fluids from automobiles, droppings.

Babies have their own little seat on shopping carts. This isn’t because they go well with raw food items. This was done to facilitate shopping for busy mothers. The rest of us, however, should not be using these seats as storage for food items. Babies, no matter how cute and well maintained, are not clean. Their diapers carry dangerous bacteria and potentially infectious material. Put your bananas where a sick child has been sitting and you are asking for a serious illness, one for which you may never realize the source.

Does your local grocery clean their floor mats? Visit during the early hours and you may see what I did- a shopping cart piled high with the dirty mats being taken for cleaning. You may be the one to get that cart the next morning; there are no cart washes. You may simply walk in and begin shopping, placing your fresh produce right where that grimy mat was moments before. If you see something like this take place, notify store management. It is an unsanitary and dangerous practice.

Items brought from your vehicle into the house and placed on the counter or kitchen table are another bad idea. Bags of groceries go from the cart to the car, where they sit in places shared by pets, children, sporting equipment, and anything else you haul. If you place your bag on the car or the ground near the door while looking for your keys, the bag could be coming into contact with bird feces, animal waste, chemicals from automotive or lawn care products. Reusable cloth bags or totes may be Green, but they are also unclean. Run them through the wash between uses.

Pets bring anything on their paws into the house. They also track dirt or germs already present in your home across every surface they touch, through both their fur and their feet. Pets allowed to stand or place paws on counter tops and food preparation surfaces are leaving behind residue. Pet fecal matter can contain worm eggs which cause illness and significant, unpleasant reactions when they find their way into a human body. Cats routinely paw their way through litter, coming in contact with their own waste. Because some owners allow them free access to roam across tables and counters, they are an even greater danger for transmission of illness.

Restaurants harbor many dirty secrets. Unaware staff frequently, repeatedly wipe tables and chairs with the same cloth. Maybe you don’t sit on the ground, on your shoes, or in unsanitary conditions, but many people do. Customers commit their share of some pretty grave offenses. Chief among these- family members who casually place babies in diapers on public counters as they order food. The same spread of infection that occurs when used diapers contaminate a public pool can happen when diapers and unclean children come in contact with common surfaces. No one should sit on, rest their feet upon, or place items from the floor onto counters or food preparation surfaces.

The vacuum is used to tidy up many unspeakable messes. Think about the worst thing you have dragged the cleaning wand across. Did you clean it before moving on to do the drapes? The couch cushions? I know that when I owned one, before I began to pay attention to such things, I would occasionally clean up mouse droppings. I never cleaned my machine. Rodents can harbor serious viral invaders, ones known to kill humans who contract them. Even if I never caught a single sickness, I couldn’t do that today. Using that same wand for other jobs without disinfecting it would be like letting a child play with the toilet brush.

Vacuums also suck air in along with debris, sending it through the bag and filter to be pushed out into your room. You’ve seen this if you’ve ever overfilled or spilled a bag inside and had a subsequent cloud of dust form around you as you work. Allergens and viruses are also being shot right back out for you to inhale. We got rid of the vacuum altogether. If you can’t take this step, consider a more powerful filter, using the vacuum in the presence of extra ventilation, or changing the bag outside.

Items go into the wash covered in all sorts of filth. The machine cleans the clothes, but doesn’t clean the parts of the machine the clothes came into contact with as they were added. When removing items from the washing machine, I take care to avoid allowing clothing to touch these areas. If you believe this is overkill, you have never lived with a maintenance man, farmer, or anyone employed at a job where they bring their work home in their clothing: grease, manure and worse can end up right back on your clean clothes, baked in by the dryer. I wipe the whole machine down, especially the ring over the basket, between really tough loads.

The nastiest possible addition you can make to your home, absolutely guaranteed to trap germs, dirt, odors, stains? Carpeting. Once that thick layer of covering goes down, it immediately begins to trap debris that works deep down into the pile, through the backing, and into the padding beneath. The padding can also break down over time and be forced out through regular use to be inhaled.

A little added awareness, a few moments spent considering the habits and procedures at work in our lives and homes can really make a difference in how we view normal, everyday activities. You don’t have to go overboard with changes, but a few new rules may spare you or a loved one an illness or infection you otherwise would have never anticipated.

For more of my unique point of view, visit my website Free Range Human @ http://jamestwohats.com/quartremoon/