I've never been a very cleanly person, living not far removed from the college dorm room life my entire adult life. Recently, though, I've learned the creature comforts of washing the bedsheets once in a while, scrubbing out the soles of my feet for dead skin, and vacuuming more often than once every 2 months, or "when it becomes unbearably dirty," whichever comes first, which was my previous standards.
Reading Bill Bryson's book "At Home" about different rooms gave me a wake-up call as to how lucky we are to live in current times, not only because of the technological and medical advances we have but also due to our developed sense of hygiene. People who lived just 200, even 150 years ago, likely smelled really bad, with no running water at the tip of their fingers, bad sanitation, and rats being much more prominent around homes than they are now. (MJ winces even when she gets in sight of a single mouse or rat, so imagine the horror of multiple nice in the night scurrying around in the bed area, or the sound of rats passing through above the ceiling of one's house. Even I found that a little disturbing). If we go even further back, people actually warned against being clean during medieval times, with the best minds of the age agreeing that keeping the pores clean would only allow disease to enter into the pores, thus clogging them with dirt and other material was preferable to washing with water. Laughable and absurd logic nowadays, but people must have been very scared of disease back then, since there was no way to cure it like we have now, no vaccines, no immunity, no treatment.
It's only been in like the last 100 years or so that regular daily showers have been developed as the standard. For me, I can barely make it through the day if I don't take a shower- something feels missing. And on the occasional day after I skip a shower, I feel clothes getting a little sticky, the beginnings of dirty buildup on my skin. Not showering is really depriving myself of the best time of the day: coming out of the shower and feeling refreshed, and my skin almost singing out to the world like, "I'm here! Feeling great and ready to mingle!
Another great feeling is the feeling of putting on fresh clothes: which apparently people in olden times did not believe in, certain people even wearing the same shirt (and underwear!) for years on end, to the degree of when they finally did take off their shirt, parts of their skin also came off with it. If you haven't been turned off by certain portions of the book yet, the book also mentions how many dust mites and small micro-organisms exist on toilet bowls, kitchen counters, and even on the beds where you sleep, no matter how many times you wash it. A neat-freak OCD person's nightmare of a book.
But also, some practical advice from Bill Bryson (who has apparently retired from writing books, unfortunately): using the stairs is actually one of the most dangerous things people can do inside a home, as gravity gets involved and it really depends on the gradation of the stairs, as there's a standard slope angle of like 22 degrees or something. 90% of accidents happen when descending the stairs as opposed to going up the stairs, especially on the last 3 steps of the stairs (my old gym teacher broke her leg because she didn't realize there was one more step to go and tripped on the stairs down). A good lesson for older people, as my grandpa, before he passed away, was a major fall risk at the age of 90-plus, so we switched his bedroom from upstairs to downstairs, so he never needed to use the stairs at home again. I miss grandpa.
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