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People want to be clean and look nice and not smell. I truly believe this, because almost all of us were traumatized at some point in elementary school by being called stinky or watching the insult destroy someone else.
If that fear has followed you into adulthood, first, welcome to the club.
Second, here are some hygiene tips everyone should incorporate into their routine.
15. Ear cheese.
If you wear earrings, take them off and clean frequently.
Ear cheese. All piercings will get this stuff, it’s a collection of dead skin cells, sebum, sweat etc. Even if you have piercing holes that you don’t wear jewellery in, you might find that every so often if you squeeze the holes that a little bit of stuff will come out and it will have a smell to it.
14. Interesting.
If you have bad breath that doesn’t go away you may have tonsil stones.
They usually form in tonsillar crypts, those pockets in the back of your throat. I got myself water jet flosser or irrigator and it is great at removing them.
Just wash it once every few days and bad breath just disappears if you keep rest of your mouth clean.
13. Especially relevant.
Keep your nails clean.
Tidying your nails helps you prevent spreading germs into your mouth.
12. More than once if necessary.
change your underwear everyday. please, just do it
11. Either or.
If you have bacne (ie back acne), lean your head forward to rinse your hair products OR wash your back thoroughly with soap after rinsing your conditioner/last product.
Most people lean their head backward to rinse, which washes their hair products all down their back. If you wash with soap after, no biggie, but many people wash their body first, typically while letting the conditioner sit in their hair for a few minutes and thus rinsing after.
In which case, you step out of the shower with hair product residue all down your back and ass. For some people and products, it’s fine; for others, it causes skin irritation and acne.
It should always be your first step in trying to eliminate bacne, just in case it’s the cause for you.
10. A little bit is always better than nothing.
If something is worth doing, it’s worth half-a$$ing it.
Say you’re running late and need to be out the door 10 minutes ago, it’s still worth giving your teeth a 10 second scrub rather than skipping it.
9. Every last one.
Clean every obscure surface in your house that your hands continually come into contact with.
Scrub the underside of your toilet seat and lid.
At the beginning of the pandemic my kid and I did an experiment where we swabbed various surfaces and then let them sit in a petrie dish to see what surface was the grossest.
It was the dining chairs. Where you touch them to pull it out or push it in constantly. Worse than the toilet phone and iPad
8. The worst smell in the world.
Make sure your clothes get completely dry. You’ll smell like mildew otherwise.
If that happens, or you forget a load of laundry in the wash, add about 1/4 cup white vinegar to the wash cycle. It gets rid of the mildew smell and doesn’t smell like vinegar.
7. No exceptions.
If someone offers you breath mints, take them without question.
6. They’re begging you.
From someone who works in medicine literally wash your butt. Often.
5. Yes, yours too.
Belly buttons need to be cleaned.
Please for the love of god. The amount of bellybutton grime I have encountered while prepping people for abdominal surgery is truly astounding.
4. Wash your pits.
Deodorant is not meant to go on top of bad smells!!
The bad smells come from bacteria.
Shower first, then put deodorant on. It works by making your skin uninhabitable for bacteria. The nice scent is the cherry on top, the main benefit is preventing the bad smell from growing.
3. For real life.
Wash behind your ears.
It’s not an old wives tale that grandmas scold kids with. There are lots of oil producing sebaceous glands there.
You can get a nasty smell, and you can even get flaky skin or “cheese” build up behind there if you don’t wash with soap.
2. Those sensitive bits.
I used to live in a very hot, humid place. I found that the only thing that kept my groin area from smelling funky was to wash daily and the make sure everything got really well dried out afterwards. Towels didn’t quite cut it. So, yes, I blow dry my lady garden. Not inside my vulva, but outside and around. Keeping my pubes trimmed short and changing into clean underwear often also helped.
This also applies if you have fat rolls or loose skin folds (yes, I have both). Wash well in between skin folds, such as under breasts and between belly rolls. I like Dr Bronner’s soap, but any soap will do. Dry thoroughly afterwards. This will prevent smells, and will also prevent itching and rashes. Also, Lume deodorant works really well for these areas.
Also, one more thing: deodorant is water resistant. It won’t wash off by just splashing water on it. You need to give it a good scrub with soap to get it all the way off your skin. If you don’t get all the old deodorant washed away, the new deodorant you apply won’t work. It has to be fresh deodorant on clean skin.
Even if you don’t like the way your body looks, take care of it. It’s where you live!
1. Both are true.
Less is more with perfume/cologne. It does not substitute washing yourself.
There are all good reminders, I think.
What else would you put on this list? Let us know in the comments!
