Is too much cleaning good for your health?

Well, today is Wednesday and a truly cold day- a first sign that winter is on its way.

Danny stayed at home both yesterday and today- he has a cold. Over the years, he has never been seriously ill, thank god. No raging temperatures like I used to have as a child.

I can still recall my mother and grandmother, leaning over me anxiously in a middle of the night when my fever reached the top end of the thermometer and angrily demanded to go higher. I deliriously let them wrap me up in a towel plunged into a freezing water before I was wrapped up in it, but I hardly felt the cold, my small body being so hot. Then endless dry towels and blankets were put on top of the wet one. I stayed like that for a good 30 minutes before they started again. To help bring the fever down, they also used to rub lemon on my forehead and inner sides of my wrists. I really was a difficult child compared to my own son. I certainly never gave my parents even a year off from my  fevers!

Danny on the other hand has sailed through the years without so much as a single fever- except for one time when he had a food poisoning. But I put this down to the fact that he spent every single weekend, since he was born, at his grandparents- his dad’s parents. Now, they are the nicest people in the world but they know nothing about hygiene or cleaning. So his health and well-being could have gone in 2 directions; one, to make him constantly sick with food poisoning/ viruses or two, to make him extremely strong and resilient. I guess he took the resilient way.

So it actually might be true probably that the endless scrubbing, cleaning, bleaching and putting on more layers of clothes than necessary might be actually bad for you.

Once I caught my father-in-law sitting in the garden with my then 6-months old son, giving him a sip from his coke. My son was sporting only a thin babygro in the middle of the winter, and no hat. I was very upset and even wowed never to bring him there again. However, it seems that my own upbringing, carefully documented in fuzzy black-and-white pictures, did me more harm than good. There is a photo of me sitting in the pushchair at about 6 months old. It was in the middle of a scorching hot summer, but I was wearing a thick hat, endless knitted sweaters and thick trousers whilst some relatives around me were in shorts and tiny tops. No wonder I had tears in my eyes (or was it a sweat coming down my face? I can’t tell :))

This was not mu mum's fault; it was all down to my ever-present grandma, always at the ready with her advice. I witnessed it many times when I was older on my own sisters:

'Put another jacket on him', she would say as my mum was dressing up my baby sister, in summer again. Even though we were all girls, my grandma refered to us as boys. I still don't know why. It was always 'Give him more food', or 'He needs new shoes'. We were very confused whilst growing up! :)

What is your own experience, mummies? :)

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This post comes from my blog, 'Single Mum will dance!' Feel free to catch up with me there for lots more!

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