Gloves

I love the British show "How Clean Is Your House?" that airs on BBCA. Partly because of the insane gross-out factor. Partly because it makes me feel SO good about my housekeeping skills. Partly because it inspires me to clean up around here.

What I hate? That they do the preliminary inspection and paw through the filthy houses WITHOUT GLOVES!!! People literally don't clean their kitchens or bathrooms for years (sometimes decades), and they slide their unprotected fingers through the muck and then hold them up to the camera. They use their nails to scrape of hellacious detritus from dishes that, again, literally haven't been washed in years. They pull giant clumps of hair and rotting things from drains. The pick up dead bugs. All with no gloves.

I'm sure this is all meant to heighten the *squick* factor (note to the BBC: it works!), but I'm honestly shocked that these women haven't contracted some bizarre disease from doing this. I'm equally - if not more - surprised that the insurers underwriting the program/studio/whatever don't require gloves. Lord knows that the few times they've sent swabs off for analysis, there have been some pretty skeevy results! Skeevy as in "organisms I was taught are 'rare' back when I was in pharmacy school, yet here they are coating entire rooms of houses." I remember one house where the dad had a saltwater aquarium, and he fed his fish raw food (squid, etc.) then went about his business without washing his hands. His ENTIRE house was coated with toxic levels of salmonella. They were a bit freaked because there were NO other organisms - the salmonella was colonized at such high levels that it had actually killed off any other bacteria!

I know I'm odd in that I buy boxes of latex gloves for myself, for doing things like cutting up raw meat and stinky veggies like onions. That's mostly about the fact that the idea of that gunk under my nails or smelling up my hands bugs me. But would it be so hard for these gals to pop these on? Heck, it might further emphasize just how nasty these houses are!

Aggie? Kim? Put on some gloves!!!