Hygiene Is Over-Rated

A few weeks ago I went on a business trip to Chicago, and while I was there —

What’s that? I already wrote about my Chicago trip in the last two columns? Yeah, so? You don’t think I’m capable of milking another essay out of that trip? O ye of little faith. Haven’t you figured out yet how this humor column works? I take an insignificant little idea, and then expand that insignificant idea into a rambling 600-word insignificant discussion. Easy peasy. I could write weekly columns for the next six months about my Chicago trip, and it wasn’t even that exciting of a trip. But for your sake this will be the last one — maybe.

Anyway, I was stranded in Chicago for two extra days because a blizzard in the Northeast cancelled all the flights home. Once I booked another flight home and got the hotel to extend my stay, I still faced a problem: how to make three days’ worth of clean clothes last five days?

Now wait a minute, before you tell me about the service most hotels offer to launder clothes, which is why they have those plastic bags hanging in the closet, let me stop you right there and say no, that was never an option. I was not about to give my dirty socks and pungent BVDs to a total stranger. Who knows when or even if I’d get them back? I’m sorry, but I only give my dirty socks and pungent BVDs to people I love, such as my mother and my wife. Dirty socks and pungent BVDs are way too important to leave in the hands of unreliable strangers.

However, I remembered an important lesson I first learned in college: if you take a shower and then put on yesterday’s clothing, you are clean. Or at least clean enough. I learned this lesson my freshman year when I went the entire fall semester and only did laundry twice — and one of those times was when I brought a 90-pound duffle bag of dirty clothes home for Thanksgiving, which my mom happily washed for me. Additionally, since I was spending all my time in Chicago hanging out with other guys from the heating and air conditioning industry, my definition of “clean enough” was PLENTY clean enough.

Also, do Google searches for the phrases “Americans shower too often” and “Americans wash clothes too often.” You’ll find a lot of interesting articles, the gist of which is that Americans are overly obsessed with cleanliness, far more than we need to be. Granted, some of the Internet articles are authored by ultra-wacky tree huggers who won’t be happy until we’re all living like cavemen (or I suppose they would say “cave-persons”), but some of the information seemed credible. For example, the American norm of showering each day is very bad for our skin. And washing shirts and pants after only one wearing wastes water and energy, and causes the clothing to wear out much sooner than necessary.

Pretty interesting, huh? I certainly learned a lot after being forced to wear the same dirty socks and pungent BVDs multiple days in a row. I now realize that hygiene is overrated. From now on I’m going to bathe periodically at best, and wash my clothes once every fortnight or so. (Wow, after 20 years of writing this column, I finally got the opportunity to use the word “fortnight.”)

My wife is glad that I won’t be wasting water and energy anymore, but for some reason she insists that I have to sleep in the garage with the raccoons. Hey, did I tell you about the raccoons in Chicago? Maybe in next week’s column.

(This humor column, "A Matter of Laugh or Death," appears each week in the Republican-American newspaper, Waterbury, Conn.)