Does your personal hygiene checklist grow with age?
Mine does.
My first effect of poor personal hygiene was a little piece of hair showing out of my ear while I was getting ready to out. It stuck out from the ear and it was visually unpretty.
It was something I never had an issue with before. But, now when I’m 35, I have to handle more things of that sort to maintain a pleasant physical appearance.
That happens to most of us. We age. Our body changes. And it requires more attention from us.
As adults, the teenage hygiene checklist may not be enough to keep our bodies hygienic. Because you meet more people than you used to or you happen to be in much more different circumstances.
The question is, how do you practice good personal hygiene in everyday circumstances?
I have compiled a personal hygiene checklist that you can use to enjoy the personal hygiene benefits to their full extent.
Find it below.
The daily personal hygiene checklist
1. Wash your hands
One of the most important daily personal hygiene tasks is handwashing and for good reason.
Hands are the dirtiest part of the human body because you touch or grab everything with your hands. You may touch with your hands different dirty or dusty things that contain harmful microorganisms.
The worst is that, after landing on your hands, the germs may get inside your body through the mouth, eyes, and nose.
Do this:
After getting in contact with dirty things or objects, wash your hands with soap. Soap eliminates up to 95% of all the existing microbes.
2. Trim your fingernails
The black line of mud under the fingernails looks embarrassing.
Because of that, some people may feel embarrassed and refuse to shake hands with you after noticing your poor hand hygiene.
They don’t know where your hands have been before the handshake, so they may feel that shaking hands with you may be unhealthy for them.
For them, that kind of behavior is a measure of preventing the spread of microorganisms and diseases.
Do this:
Trim your fingernails at least once per week. Do that after showering when your fingernails are softer and easier to cut.
3. Wash your face
During the day, the skin on the face gathers sweat and dust, which leads to pores clogging on the face.
To prevent this, wash it a couple of times per day.
Do this:
Wash your face first thing in the morning and a couple of times per day. That keeps away the sweat and dust that accumulates on the skin of the face making it look tired and old.
For skin face washing, use a mild soap.
4. Floss
To remove food residues from between the teeth, floss frequently.
Floss before brushing your teeth, floss after meals, or floss whenever something is stuck between your teeth.
By the way, do you know why, first, you need to floss and, second, to brush your teeth?
The reason is that the toothbrush bristles inability to reach all the areas of the teeth. Because of that, small food particles may remain between teeth.
But when you floss first, the teeth are free of food, which makes teeth brushing more effective.
5. Brush your teeth
Brush your teeth daily to maintain them clean and to prevent the development of carries.
During the day, brush your teeth once in the morning after you wake up and one more time in the evening before going to bed.
For extra cleanliness of the teeth, brush your teeth after each meal. But this is optional.
6. Clean your tongue
Use a toothbrush or a tongue scraper to scrape the white coating off your tongue. Scrape it until it becomes pink.
The thin film on the surface of the tongue is a collection of food residues and bacteria that may serve as a bad breath source.
7. Avoid sugary and acidic foods
Sugar has a direct impact on tooth decay.
The sugary molecules combine with saliva and bacteria present in the mouth, which creates plaque on the teeth. The tooth plaque dissolves the tooth enamel, which leads to cavities appearance.
At the same time, acidic food consumption may also impact teeth enamel. So, make sure to limit their consumption.
8. Take showers
Take showers regularly.
How often to take showers depends on the type of weather in your area.
If you live in a warm-weather area, you may need a couple of showers per day to stay clean. But if you live in a cold-weather area, taking one shower per 1 or 2 days may be enough.
Use your common sense.
The main point of showering is to wash away the sweat and the dust off the body, to prevent odors, and to maintain it fresh and clean.
Also, your coworkers will thank you as you contribute to good personal hygiene in the workplace.
9. Shave your armpit
The armpit is the area on the body where bacteria thrive due to the hair and high humidity.
Hairy armpits increase the body's temperature, which promotes sweating and body odors.
Reduce odor-releasing areas on the body, shave the hair in your armpits.
10. Moisturize your skin
After taking a warm shower, give your skin a healthy treatment by using skin-moisturizing products. These products hydrate your skin and make it softer and smoother.
11. Wash your feet
To wash your feet properly, soak them in warm soapy water. Wash the bottom and the sides of the feet, and between the toes. Use a pumice stone to scrub the dry skin off the heels.
When you have finished, dry out your feet. Especially between the toes because that is where fungal infections usually start developing.
12. Clean your ears
After taking a shower, when the ear wax melts down, it’s the best time to remove it from the eardrum canal.
Use a cotton stick to gently scrub the ear wax from the eardrum canal walls.
13. Maintain your hair
Wash your hair with shampoo.
Your washing schedule may differ depending on the length and the type of your hair.
A good rule to follow is to wash it whenever it gets greasy and dirty.
Also, it helps to visit a hairstylist from time to time.
14. Maintain your privates clean
Keep the area down there clean and fresh.
For example.
- Wear clean underwear.
- Wash your privates daily.
- Trim your pubic hair.
Male genital hygiene:
- Rinse away the debris collected under the skin.
Check out also personal hygiene for men.
Female genital hygiene:
- During the period, wash your genitals more than you are used to.
- Use special intimate gels.
- Wipe from front to back.
Check out this hygiene routine for females checklist.
15. Don't share personal care tools
Whether your brother, sister, or a friend asks you to give them your comb, toothbrush, or towel, don’t do that.
Sharing personal care tools is unhygienic because along with the tools you share the microorganisms from a person to another.
16. Recreation and sleep hygiene
Spending time on your smartphone before sleep is not a good habit for recreation.
Here’s a list of habits to ensure a good sleep at night:
- Don’t drink coffee, smoke, or drink alcohol before bedtime.
- Do regular exercises to promote physical fatigue, which allows the brain to rest better.
- Don’t eat right before bedtime.
- Create a pleasant and relaxing sleeping environment. Dim the lights and keep the gadgets outside the room.
17. Food hygiene
Don’t eat garbage!
Your body isn’t a trash box. If you respect yourself, eat healthier.
Remove junk and spoiled food from your refrigerator, and replace it with fresh, clean, and nutrient-rich products.
Here are a few food hygiene guidelines:
- Balance your diet according to the nutrients composition. Eat proteins, fats, and carbs in the correct balance.
- Respect the calorie intake in relation to your physical activity. Low physical activity and high food intakes lead to weight gain.
- Follow food safety requirements. It’s safe to wash fruits and vegetables before their consumption. Check the deadline for their freshness.
- Drink more water in relation to the physical activity done during the day.
18. Sexual life hygiene
Avoid promiscuity!
The modern trend tries to convince you that having many sexual partners is fun. But these trends don't tell you about possible pregnancy or getting a sexually transmitted disease.
The truth is that having one sexual partner is way healthier.
If an unwanted pregnancy happened, use contraceptives.
For casual sex, always use condoms. After intercourse, use antiseptics for genitals to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
19. Garments and shoe hygiene
You don’t need expensive clothing and accessories to look attractive. Wearing clean and neat clothing, pretty much, does the job.
Clothing protects your skin from cold, snow, rain, excessive solar radiation, and maintains it safe from various contaminations.
Here is a short guideline wearing clothes to maintain good hygiene:
- Change your underwear daily after taking baths or showers.
- Change socks, stockings, and tights daily.
- Wear clean and fresh clothing. Wash them regularly.
- Don’t wear someone else’s clothes or shoes. It’s unacceptable!
- Give preference to clothes made from natural fabrics — cotton, linen, or wool.
- Shoes and clothing should match the size of your body.
20. Home hygiene
How does maintaining your house clean contribute to personal hygiene?
Your home is the environment where you spend a lot of your time.
Let’s imagine that your home is a dusty, cluttered, and dirty place. How efficient personal hygiene activities might be if after showering you’d lay over dirty bedsheets or walk over dusty floor. Not much. Right?
That’s why it is important to maintain the environment in your home clean.
You need to regularly clean the dust, open windows to ventilate the house, and remove blinds to let the sunlight in.
Check out this housekeeping grooming checklist to keep the environment in your house clean and healthy.
21. Give up on bad habits
If your goal is to live healthier, bad habits such as excessive alcohol drinking, smoking, eating garbage food too often, etc are wasting your time. They don’t support your goal, and it makes you work twice as hard to return to the initial healthy position.
For example, to drop off the calories gained after eating a bar of chocolate like Snickers, you might need 5 to 8 miles of jogging.
Maintaining a healthy body isn’t easy. Bad habits make this goal even harder.
22. Groom yourself
When it comes to personal care, hygiene and grooming go hand in hand.
Personal hygiene activities manage the microorganisms shared between people so that they don’t infect each other.
While maintaining yourself safe and healthy, groom your physical appearance so that it looks appealing and attractive.
After finishing with personal hygiene, continue with these grooming activities.
Conclusion
Follow the above personal hygiene checklist and grooming activities daily and your physical image will improve, your health will thrive, and you'll enjoy living in a clean and hygienic body.
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