5 Reasons Cleaning May Just Make You Dirtier

5 You May Stir Up the Bed Mites

When you were young, your parents taught you to make your bed every morning. As far as we can tell, this was purely about teaching you discipline, rather than giving you an important skill. Or maybe it was about making your room look better for guests, because it sure didn’t make sleeping in it any more comfortable. Sleeping in an unmade bed is just as comfy as sleeping in a made one. It’s potentially more comfy, even, because it’s easier to get under the covers.

If you’re in a hotel, a made bed means they changed the sheets (hopefully), which is why you associate it with cleanliness. But at home, simply straightening your blanket doesn’t make your bed cleaner. In fact, it does the opposite. Your bed inevitably hosts large numbers of tiny mites, and these mites thrive more in a made bed. Tightening the sheets traps more of the moisture they love, while leaving the bed unmade lets the bed dry out more, reducing mite reproduction. 

This news lends new meaning to the otherwise baffling expression, “You made your bed. Now lie in it.” Why would lying in a made bed translate as someone suffering retribution for their actions? Because of the mites, that’s why. 

4 Dust Will Fly Out of Vents and Choke You

Buildings have vents, because the bigger a space is, the more complicated heating and cooling it becomes. Thanks to the constant airflow, the insides of ducts become lined with thick dust. The dust that collects there is so concentrated that if you sprayed a little water into it and let the result drop into a bucket of water, the whole bucket would go black. That’s got to be a big health hazard, right?

Well, maybe not. The dirt that’s trapped there is trapped there, which means the system isn’t belching it back out at you. But every so often, a company will have the entire duct system cleaned professionally. And this process turns out to be the one thing that dislodges the dust and releases it into the air, creating a mild hazard where none otherwise existed. 

Really, the only reason to clean ducts is to keep them clean for whoever’s using them to sneak from office to office. That way, when Santa comes down the chimney this year to save your office from terrorists, his suit will stay nice and fresh. 

3 The Cleaning Chemicals Themselves Will Kill You

The news of JFK’s assassination in 1963 affected quite a few people. For that flamboyant performer known as Liberace, it meant that his performance for November 22nd was canceled. Then, the next morning, without his usual system for costuming in place, he figured he needed to dry clean his suits by himself. 

He felt dizzy when he later took the stage. Then his staff rushed him to the hospital. The dry cleaning fumes had shut down his kidneys, and the hospital had to treat him using what was then still a new treatment (the first outpatient dialysis center had opened only the previous year). A priest performed last rites on him and everything. 

He pulled through in the end, but it was close. Some might say that the lesson here is that dry cleaning fluid is dangerous and should only be used in a professional setting. Some might say the lesson is that that specific fluid should be banned — which is why it was, in fact, eventually banned. Or maybe the lesson here is that Liberace was the Kennedy assassination's true intended target. 

2 And Don’t Forget About the Anthrax

In 2001, someone mailed live anthrax to a bunch of targets in the northeast and Florida. Five people died, one of whom was in the same building as Cracked’s offices. Two of the others weren’t recipients of the letters at all but employees of the postal service. 

No, these employees didn’t become exposed to the anthrax because they were snooping around and opening people’s envelopes without authorization. And up to that point, scientists had believed anthrax was unable to leave a sealed envelope. But some of the spores did leak through the paper, and they spread through the mail-sorting centers because the facilities blew air through the machines to clean them. 

In addition to the two who died, nine postal employees were infected. So, half of the attack’s victims were postal employees rather than the letters’ recipients. This is a shame because, historically, postal employees are supposed to be the ones committing mass murder, not the ones suffering from it.

1 If You Clean, You’re Doing Exactly What the Government Wants You to Do

In 1954, the government put out a propaganda film telling Americans that it’s their duty to clean their homes. Indeed, cleaning your home may save you from dying in a nuclear attack.

The film didn’t claim that washing your dishes would save you from a direct bomb impact. But it did suggest that debris in your home would leave it more vulnerable to catching fire. This almost sounds convincing, even in absence of a nuclear attack, but you’ll notice that their example “messy” house doesn’t look especially messy at all. The most visible difference between the homes is that, in the neat house, sheets of plastic cover the furniture, which was a practice we’ve rightly abandoned. 

Watch the film a couple times, and you’ll notice they aren’t just telling you to tidy up in general. They’re specifically telling you to paint your house, as unpainted wood catches fire more easily. This is questionable advice, unless you use special fire-retardant paint. In reality, paint may even make wood ignite more easily. 

That’s when you realize this government propaganda film was actually produced by the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association. Like so much government advice, this was secretly just a campaign created by a special interest to make you buy their product. Well, we’ll be smarter than that. We’ll leave cushions strewn on our couches, in exactly the way the film warns us not to. 

And if the nukes fall, that’s fine. We’ll take our chances in the wasteland, where cleanliness will be everyone’s last priority. 

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