Your family’s health could be at stake
Aug 23, 2009
WHAT is the first thing people are likely to notice when they walk into your house? Will it be the months’ collection of dust on the window sill or on the TV? Will they see a cluttered room with hardly any room to manoeuvre? Or will it be an immaculate
By Carol Kezaabu
WHAT is the first thing people are likely to notice when they walk into your house? Will it be the months’ collection of dust on the window sill or on the TV? Will they see a cluttered room with hardly any room to manoeuvre? Or will it be an immaculate space that seems to say “look but don’t touch�
Your home says a lot about who you are because it is your refuge, the place you most feel comfortable and relaxed.
I do not like staying overnight in a strange place even if it is a friend’s house. I am so comfortable in my own home and one incident really reinforced that stance. I spent a night at a friend’s house a few years back after a party. she has a very large family and they are a loud bunch so I thought it would be fun. I had a great time, and when the time came to go to bed, she told me that I was to sleep in her bed and she would sleep in the living room.
But the bed was a mess; the bedsheets probably had not been washed in months and the duvet was dusty. I have sinuses, so I was sneezing the whole night, in fact, I hardly slept. The floor was covered in heaps of clothes and the dust in the room was choking. I could not wait to get back to my own place.
When I went to take a shower the next morning, the scum in the bathtub was enough to force me to forego the ritual for later. I simply washed my face and went to have breakfast.
Even that was impossible because the kitchen sink was stacked with dirty dishes and cups, so everyone had to wash their cup before taking tea and then drop it back into the sink until the next meal. I could not believe that people actually lived like that, but now I realise they did not even notice the mess.
We often dismiss such people as dirty or disorganised, but what health implications does a dirty environment like a house have on the people living in it?
Dr. Gloria Arinaitwe of Makerere and Mbarara Joint AIDS Programme, says a dirty place is always infected with germs and if one gets in contact with them, one can easily develop an infection.
A dirty home is especially dangerous for young children who are still crawling because they are likely to eat anything they find on the floor, so if you have clutter or you do not keep your floor clean, your children’s health is at stake.
You can contract typhoid from drinking unboiled, contaminated water. A dusty home is unfit for people suffering from allergies and respiratory complications. The kitchen is one of the most important rooms in a house. Hygiene in the kitchen is very important.
“If you have dirty utensils or you don’t wash raw foods, you are likely to contract faecal-oral diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery and cholera,†says Arinaitwe.
The bathroom is another place that carries a lot of germs. People do not like to clean the toilet area or even the bathroom. Arinaitwe says people, especially women, will contract urinary tract infections from a dirty toilet.
“Because a woman’s urethra is very short, the infection can easily reach the bladder from a brief contact with a dirty infected toilet,†she says.
Some people are by nature, procrastinators (postpone to do something). They will leave their house to deteriorate before they decide to do something. Whether it is a broken tile, a missing door knob, a shattered glass pane, a blocked drainage or a stain on the wall, these are simply too trivial to be bothered with.
Clutter is, especially, the biggest problem brought about by procrastinating. Some people leave the items to pile up until there is hardly any room left and it is like living in a thick jungle of stuff.
WHAT is the first thing people are likely to notice when they walk into your house? Will it be the months’ collection of dust on the window sill or on the TV? Will they see a cluttered room with hardly any room to manoeuvre? Or will it be an immaculate space that seems to say “look but don’t touch�
Your home says a lot about who you are because it is your refuge, the place you most feel comfortable and relaxed.
I do not like staying overnight in a strange place even if it is a friend’s house. I am so comfortable in my own home and one incident really reinforced that stance. I spent a night at a friend’s house a few years back after a party. she has a very large family and they are a loud bunch so I thought it would be fun. I had a great time, and when the time came to go to bed, she told me that I was to sleep in her bed and she would sleep in the living room.
But the bed was a mess; the bedsheets probably had not been washed in months and the duvet was dusty. I have sinuses, so I was sneezing the whole night, in fact, I hardly slept. The floor was covered in heaps of clothes and the dust in the room was choking. I could not wait to get back to my own place.
When I went to take a shower the next morning, the scum in the bathtub was enough to force me to forego the ritual for later. I simply washed my face and went to have breakfast.
Even that was impossible because the kitchen sink was stacked with dirty dishes and cups, so everyone had to wash their cup before taking tea and then drop it back into the sink until the next meal. I could not believe that people actually lived like that, but now I realise they did not even notice the mess.
We often dismiss such people as dirty or disorganised, but what health implications does a dirty environment like a house have on the people living in it?
Dr. Gloria Arinaitwe of Makerere and Mbarara Joint AIDS Programme, says a dirty place is always infected with germs and if one gets in contact with them, one can easily develop an infection.
A dirty home is especially dangerous for young children who are still crawling because they are likely to eat anything they find on the floor, so if you have clutter or you do not keep your floor clean, your children’s health is at stake.
You can contract typhoid from drinking unboiled, contaminated water. A dusty home is unfit for people suffering from allergies and respiratory complications. The kitchen is one of the most important rooms in a house. Hygiene in the kitchen is very important.
“If you have dirty utensils or you don’t wash raw foods, you are likely to contract faecal-oral diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery and cholera,†says Arinaitwe.
The bathroom is another place that carries a lot of germs. People do not like to clean the toilet area or even the bathroom. Arinaitwe says people, especially women, will contract urinary tract infections from a dirty toilet.
“Because a woman’s urethra is very short, the infection can easily reach the bladder from a brief contact with a dirty infected toilet,†she says.
Some people are by nature, procrastinators (postpone to do something). They will leave their house to deteriorate before they decide to do something. Whether it is a broken tile, a missing door knob, a shattered glass pane, a blocked drainage or a stain on the wall, these are simply too trivial to be bothered with.
Clutter is, especially, the biggest problem brought about by procrastinating. Some people leave the items to pile up until there is hardly any room left and it is like living in a thick jungle of stuff.