How often do you wash your hands?

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Do you remember during the Covid pandemic, government health advice included the exhortation to wash our hands regularly? The reaction of some people to this advice suggested that they would rarely have bothered to wash their hands otherwise, but in our house it really made no difference. We wash our hands often. I think this stems from my mother, who was taught by her father, and I suspect his health-conscious advice largely stemmed from the fact that he was born in India and his mother died of cholera, which was an ever-present danger. My mother also hated housework so she put in place many ‘rules’ to minimise it, for example always putting on old clothes for dirty jobs and taking them off when we came in before leaving the back porch area; no dirty clothes anywhere else in the house. And washing hands – no children with sticky hands touching the soft furnishings or running their hands up the wall as they went upstairs!! So now I’m totally with her on that. Why give myself extra work cleaning the walls or trying to remove covers from sofas etc. unnecessarily? I wash my hands: After going to the toilet, of course. Every time I come home from any outing. Before any kind of food preparation. After handling any animals or anything connected to them (e.g. filling bird feeders). After working in the garden. After any dirty jobs such as with the car or anything in our garage. Any time I get anything sticky or greasy on them. And, now that I’ve got a nasty cold, I’m washing my hands every time I blow my nose – which adds up to a lot of hand-washing in a day! That's what made me think about this. So how often do you wash your hands? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.