Six years ago I relocated from North Carolina to San Francisco. The majority of my good friends still live in NC, which means a few times a year I end up visiting for at least a week at a time, sometimes longer. The first few of those lengthy trips brought up a dilemma: what do I do about things like shampoo and toothpaste?
Germs, like you and I, enjoy the warm and slightly moist embrace of a bath towel. (Hey, if it isn't moist when you first put it on, it gets moist.) But these germs are just here to cuddle; normal use of a bath towel is not likely to make you sick.
How can you break the news to someone who smells bad? You could be honest and compassionate, sitting down with your stinky loved one to broach the topic. But if you just want to drop a truth bomb and run away, we have a few suggestions.
This week we talked about personal hygiene with professional clean person Jolie Kerr. Jolie's been a cleaning expert for Esquire, Deadspin and The Hairpin, and she's the author of the New York Times bestselling book, My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag... and Other Things You Can't Ask Martha. In this episode, Jolie answers questions from our audience on how to handle stinky feet, weird breath, and the other embarrassing issues we all deal with (but don't want to admit to).
Some people squat over a public toilet, because they have quads of steel. Some people just sit their bare tushies right down on the rubella-covered seat, because evidently they have no fear of germs as sensible people should. For the rest of us there are toilet-seat covers. Yeah, you can cover the seat with TP, but the careful tearing, angling and placing of lengths of paper for perfect coverage can get a little tedious when you really need to go -- what is this, macramé?
