The Nasty World of Bathrooms
The bathroom is the world’s most widely used room. Besides the obvious, it is used for taking baths, showers, brushing teeth, fixing hair, etc. Speaking of brushing teeth, 400 million tubes of toothpaste are used by Americans each year! Wow! It is great to know though, that Americans are really concerned about the hygiene and health of their teeth. 40 percent of people squeeze their toothpaste tubes from the middle.
Have you ever wondered if your guest ever peek into places they should not? Well, 70 percent of house guests snoop through other peoples medicine cabinets and drawers. And a whopping 66 percent of Americans have expired products inside these said cabinets and drawers. So, be sure to clean your medicine cabinets out and put away anything you don’t want seen, and go through all those expired products and throw them out!
Another fun fact is that 433 million miles of toilet paper is how much Americans use annually and this could stretch to the sun and back. 53 percent of people prefer for their toilet paper to roll over the top, and 60 percent of people actually look at the paper after wiping.
We women cannot stand it when men or boys leave the toilet seat up, I mean how hard can it be to shut it and the lid along with it??? If we can constantly put it down AFTER them, then by golly they can put it down. 46.5 percent of men claim they always put the seat down. I hope there is not a lot of women out there falling in the toilet! This might be one of the reasons that 200,000 bathroom related injuries are reported by U.S. hospitals each year.
43 percent of homes in the U.S. have two or more bathrooms, and shockingly enough 18 percent of those homeowners scrub and clean their shower in the nude. I suppose it feels more natural to be nude in the shower? Who knows!?
Do you use the restrooms at gas stations or rest stops? 36 percent of professional cleaners deem gas station bathrooms “unsanitary”. I think many of us could have told you that already, right? 17 million people have what is known as paruresis, the term associated with “pee shyness.” Women spend 2 minutes in a public bathroom stall per visit, where men spend 4 minutes per visit. I guess us women can recognize “unsanitary” a little faster than the men maybe?
How filthy is your bathroom? Even though you would imagine the toilet as being the dirtiest surface, the sink actually is. The sink has 100,000 germs per square inch, where the toilet seat only has 100 germs per square inch. But, with every flush of the toilet you do send an invisible six foot plume of bacteria that lands on exposed surfaces, including toothbrushes. Be sure and wash your hands after using the restroom with a paper towel. Paper towels decrease hand bacteria by 29 percent, a hand dryer increases it by 162 percent.
I’m sure by now you are throughly disgusted, and I am also. From now on I will be carrying all the antibacterial wipes and hand gel that I can when visiting a public restroom, if I must. And yes, I will be shutting the toilet lid before I flush from now on!
