YouWereGr8InLittleMenstruators ·
08/04/2025 18:50
Just spent a lovely afternoon cleaning (I like a good spring clean, but am no clean-freak). My family touch everything, the main culprit being DP. Doorframes and doors around the handles, cupboard doors around the handles, inside cupboards, bannisters, walls around light switches, mirrors -they get their mits everywhere.
DP does a lot of our cooking, always from scratch, always delicious and always messy. Whereas I, when I cook, will frequently wash my hands between processes if I get food or oil or whatever on them, and then dry them and resume cooking with clean hands. Not DP. He'll marinade tofu, swishing the cubes around in the marinade, then open a cupboard (grabbing the bottom of the cupboard door as opposed to the handle), pick out some ingredient, then shut the cupboard by pushing its door square in the middle, all with his marinady hands. This goes on and on, and when I pick him up on it, he scurries to grab a wet sponge and hurriedly sloshes it, dripping wet, over the cupboard / fridge / oven door, not really removing anything. The light switches in the kitchen frequently have a crust of tandoori or bechemel at the end of the evening.
Our lovely wooden doors develop a dark shade of grime around the handles and edges, as if they're opened and closed by any means other than the handles. I'm forever scrubbing. I'm not even sure their hands are that grimy, it's just the frequency of the touching.
Anyone else's family members act like this? I can't get any of them to tell me wtf it's about; they either say it's not them or that they'll be more careful. I'm after some sharp suggestions for how to get them to quit just this one thing and keep their hands to themselves. I sinisterly mused with DD that I should wire an app to all handles, awarding points each time a door was opened by its actual handle but administering a small electric shock or emitting a high-pitched sound if any other part of the door was to be touched.