If you boil your mooncup to sterilise it...

[Pendulum]

did you allocate a "dedicated pan" for its exclusive use as recommended? I cn't bring myelf to spend on a new pan but equally feel a bit squeamish about using one I also use for food, even after washing it thoroughly.

alternatively, how else can you get it really sterile? I usually use boiling waer and a bit of milton but don't think that's good enough.

Rolf at all of you.

One of the first times Dh stayed at my parents´s house, he came downstairs in the morning to find my mother´s disgusting snot encrusted handkerchiefs boiling away on the Aga hotplate. He was then highly alarmed to see the same pan (orange LeCreuset so rather recognisable) in use in the evening for our cranberry sauce.

Nowt wrong with a bit of snot!

Hmm...maybe we women can be divided into 2 halves: is the half that would boil the mooncup in a pan the same as those that don't clean the sheets in the spare room ready for the next guest...

Oh no Lil - I am a normal pan user but I ALWAYS put clean sheets on for a new guest.

I wouldn't put my mooncup in the dishwasher because I am slightly fearful of bits of food getting on it. I have no idea why this concerns me more than boiling the MC in a pan, then washing the pan and using it to cook our supper.

ooooo i never thought of popping it in the dishwasher - what a cracking idea!

yes lil I ALWAYS put fresh sheets on between guests

I saw a friend of mine use the same sheets for 3 different guests - even after the second people to sleep in them were newly weds so prob gave em a little extra usage

they also dont have specific bowls for their cats (dishwasher them and put em back in the cupboard) I struggle with my cereal when I stay there I have to say! usually opt for toast if I can

Oh and the cats are allowed to eat off the kitchen worktops

I wonder if any of that house hold use moon-cups

I always put clean sheets on for guests, although my mum brought her own with her tonight.

I use a normal pan for my mooncup, I also use normal plates to feed the dog occasionally. The germs in a dog's mouth are WAY more disgusting than anything that comes out of my vagina but as the pan and the plates all get completely clean afterwards it doesn't bother me.

nope. couldn't do the dishwasher for the mooncup. tbh it doesn't bother me to think that other people do, even if I eat at their house, but I just don't think I could whip it out, give it a rinse and stick it next to the Tommee Tippee cups.

also: pube scissors= nail scissors, not bacon scissors.

I have a designated sick and toilet accidents bowl (although can imagine myself using mixing bowl a la girlandboy in emergency)

I only wash nappies with other nappies, not with the general wash.

Have never before thought that I would be unusual in any of this!

SuperBunny on Fri 07-Nov-08 19:47:21 ROLMAO

Hahahhaahhaha!

actually the thought of mixing up my bowl with the cat's or washing them together is far more objectionable to me than the whole mooncup issue.

I wouldn't mind telling my guests. I'll also throw in the fact that the egg theyre eating comes out of a chickens arse via the same hole as their shit. The same shit that was smothered all over the carrots until half an hour before.

Bronze, is that true about egg hole and shit hole? Scuse vulgarity. I have a degree in zoology so am embarassed that I have to ask this.

yes just one hole, called the vent

Answer about eggs

The egg is deposited through the VENT. The Vent is located at the back end of the chicken, just under the tail. , it is a small opening in the form of a horizontal slit, about an inch wide. It is surrounded by a ribbed rim, with skin and feathers on the outside.
Chickens, as well as other birds, have a common opening for reproduction, and for the evacuation of stools/urine mixture.They do not have a bladder because their urine is not a fluid. It is a white paste, called urates.. The intestine, ureters and oviduct come together into a common chamber called the cloaca. This is a rather dirty place, but the egg is always clean and almost sterile when laid unless it is laid on top of or in fecal matter in the nest.

There you go then.

did you know that sewage plants sell the solid stuff to farmers to put on their fields?

our veg is grown in SHIT, people!

And before anyone says 'but we wash the carrots'...well, we wash the mooncups!

And guests almost always get clean sheets in our house - embarrasingly, I have a gender bias... If one of DP's skanky single male friends stays, he might get the sheets slept in for one night only by one of my fragrant female lovely lady friends. But NEVER the other way round

Couples always get clean sheets, as they include a fragrant female.

And always clean pillowcases, don't like the thought of dribble and snot from other people next to faces.

And more than one night is automatically sheet washing time.

yes, said field is 20 feet from my house.

Ahhhhhh, very rural aroma round here

I dont boil mine - jus twash it is very hot water.
Tampons are not sterile so why does a mooncup need to be?
(my excuse for being a bit lazy...)

But you don't squeeze a tampon out then re-insert it 3 weeks later, do you? I am sure washing it in hot water is fine. I like the ritual boiling of the mooncup for some reason, whether it is necessary or not.

OK, have thought about this a bit more.

There seem to be two main arguments on here:

• that boiling in a pan or dishwashing gets things so clean that it doesn't matter what you put in there. If that is true then we would all feel fine about putting our toilet brushes in the dishwasher with the plates.

• that even if the above is not true, menstrual blood is no different from the blood in meat that you might cook in a pan. Although I might be shaky on the biology here, I think this is where I have the problem. To me it is a human waste product, no different from what goes down the loo. Would/ should a restaurant kitchen pass a food hygiene inspection if the chef's mooncup was in the dishwasher?

I am genuinely interested in why my reaction to this differs from the majority and whether it is well-founded- I am certainly not calling anyone disgusting

You wash carrots???

I used to steam sterilise mine in the little travel steriliser.

Did the dummies in that too.

The goat made me snort with ''the condom ice cube scenario is repulsive and adds to my suspicions that you have some sort of ocd related psychosis'' LOLOLOLOL

I really can't see the problem - there's a lot of ott revulsion at bodily fluids - a mooncup that's being boiled is not dripping with blood is it - it's already clean anyway, there can't be a single trace of human blood left over after boiling and washing the pan out - it's just the idea of it which is freaking some people out - and that's all in their heads. By these standards you should have your fingers removed and replaced with small sterile plastic nodules, and your bum taken off. And mouth. In fact just keep your brain in a jar. A jar of milton.

I was thinking about this thread this morning, and ironically I wouldn't put my Mooncup in the dishwasher, because I'd be worried about it getting food residue on it, not the other way round!

when you wash a Mooncup with hot water and soap before boiling it, it is really 99.999999999999999% clean. It's surgical grade silicon which does not allow germs to multiply on it.

I'm not convinced things that come out of the dishwasher necessarily are that clean, I think they're clean enough for human food consumption, but not necessarily for inserting into other orifices.

After all, your saliva is midly antiseptic, and your stomach acid is pretty darn strong. Hence why we can eat all sorts of raw things and not get sick except from some very strong bugs, but we can't poke food up our fanjos without trouble ensuing.

So I would probably class a dedicated Mooncup pan as cleaner than the average food preparation pan, and would rather you heated my soup in the Mooncup one than the normal one!

WFHIT, that is exactly my concern. I'll eat from a mooncuppy pan but I do not want food near my mooncup.

You're right about the bog brush actually though.

Not sure if anyone is still following this thread - but I found it very entertaining and interesting to see people's diff points of view.

I think there is one thing we all agree on: that using an ordinary food pan (or cup in microwave) does not pose a health risk to anyone.

However, some people find the 'idea' of it distasteful/inappropriate, and think guests would be horrified if they knew.

I don't personally have a problem with the idea, but could understand that guests might be offended. However, that may only be because they hadn't had the benefit of this detailed debate, and therfore hadn't fully comprehended that there is no risk.

I would personally keep it quiet, and not mention it at the dinner table - in the same way as we wouldn't discuss bowel movements, or where our fingers had been earlier in the day etc!

A much more distasteful thought which has occured to me.... presumably we all empty mooncup down toilet but then rinse it in hand basin. The same handbasin that various people may wash their faces in. I rinse the sink, but I don't disinfect it... come to think of it that's much worse.

Also, no matter how clean and sterile it was - none of us would ever lend or share our Mooncup, would we? i wonder why - as it would be completely safe if sterile. It is just the idea, isn't it? It would have been inside another woman.... but then so have our partners penises, at some time... but strangley we can live with that.

Interesting.