'The bathroom is not your office': Hygiene guidelines to adhere to in lockdown

“We do NOT eat hot cocoa while pooping!” These words of what some might call obvious wisdom came flying out of my best friend Jessica’s mouth last week after she discovered a mug of half-finished Milo next to the toilet in the bathroom she shares with her husband and two small kids.

“I had to bellow the words because I don’t know who did it”, she explained over text, her faith in her family vanquished. “I will probably never know.”

One thing we both know is that, since Sydney and Melbourne have gone into extended lockdown, the lessons we gleaned from the pandemic last year regarding proper hygiene standards have, for our loved ones, yet to be fully realised. And we are far from alone. A survey undertaken by the research and analytics group YouGov found that 17 per cent of Britons had abandoned daily showers during the pandemic, with many people on Twitter saying they had done the same.

The Washington Post reports that anecdotally, people in the US were not just foregoing bras and jeans but showering and shampooing less in lockdown, too.

Most doctors and dermatologists agree that showering every day is unnecessary and may even damage our skin. It’s one thing to skip a day (especially in the thick of winter), but it’s quite another to sip a frothy hot mug of Milo while on the can.

With roughly 10 million people currently stuck at home – many of us sharing with people we thought we could trust to uphold the social contract of not being gross – here are some hygiene guidelines on what to do in lockdown for the sake of your loved ones.

Use deodorant

If you absolutely do not want to shower every other day, please – for the sake of your family or housemates – use deodorant. To paraphrase one famous tweeter, the stakes are too high for you to be experimenting at this time – go the hardcore aluminium. Go the one that says “48-hour protection” or “so powerful you can skip a day”. You can go back to that natural vegan one when we get out of lockdown.

The bathroom is not your office

That means no Zoom meetings in the bathroom. That should be obvious, but apparently, it’s not, at least according to a couple of people I know. Absolutely nobody wants to hear that tell-tale splash of the toilet water as you kill two birds with one stone – least of all your boss. I don’t care if the “acoustics are amazing”. All that means is other bodily functions are amplified. Just don’t.

Always flush

It’s a well-established fact that fathers like to hide out in toilets. A 2018 study found that, on average, men spend seven hours a year in the bathroom – hiding from their kids, their spouse and a litany of chores. The findings also revealed that 25 per cent of men “don’t know how they’d cope” with the stress of home without the bathroom trips, and 23 per cent called the bathroom their “safe place”.

OK, so we know you guys need your potty time, and you need to bring your phone in there too, which is revolting, but we’ve accepted it. But, can you do everyone else a favour? Could you flush as soon as you go? Yes, normally, “leaving it mellow” is good for the environment. But, speaking for those in your immediate environment, we don’t need the place where we brush our teeth to smell like a public toilet.

Brush your teeth

This is lockdown, not Survivor. 

Clean up your mess

It’s hard enough having less personal space when everyone is home all the time. We do not need clutter added to the burden. And this is an evergreen gripe, but you don’t get to make a huge mess when you cook and say, “But I made dinner!” If you don’t want to end up in the titular role of a true-crime podcast about a murder in a “nice family home” during COVID, please: clean as you go.

And for those who do clean and do uphold the social contract, remember that though we are all in this together, it hopefully won’t be for much longer.