This paper came out Nov 10th. Pretty simple: they compared HCW (health care worker) blood samples between April 2020 and April 2021, and of 181 people working with covid (or suspected-covid) patients, only one showed signs of SARS infection, and he had plausible exposure outside the workplace. Hopeful message: PPE works, very well!

( But )

tl;dr: ditch your surgicals (if any), wear respirators.

Previously

I forgot one tool I'd consider pretty important, especially without a dishwasher: a drying rack! Amazon has some for $17-19 list. Though, if you're single and careful about rinsing right after eating, you can get away without one. Then there are sponges or cloths, though arguably those fall under "consumables". Whether you need a potholder depends on what tools you cook with; a cast iron handle is more likely to heat up. $8 for cheapest holders, though you could maybe use an old shirt or towel.

( Read more... )

I've been reading Goodman's The Domestic Revolution and should blog about it sometime, but a brief post for now. In my current section she's been talking about the evolution of cleaning as Britain transitioned to burning coal in homes, like how beforehand cleaning was mostly sweeping/brush, scrubbing with wood ash or sand, and using lye on laundry. Also talking about massive advertising by the later soap companies, associating soap with all forms of cleanliness, and British imperialists overlooking ways that e.g. Chinese people were cleaning their homes, like earlier British people.

Anyway, one thing she says is that often just hot water will get something clean, but a lot of people won't accept it unless soap was involved, and that echoed with me. Even as a kid, I noticed that if you rinse a bowl used for milk-and-cereal right away, that's pretty much all it needs. Ditto for a glass of orange juice. But if you let them sit and develop dried milk or juice residue, then eww.

Much more recently I'd noticed that hard surfaces, when greasy, often get clean just from a jet of hot water, like the grease simply melts off. Cleaning to the point of being squeaky-clean, even. But, I realized, today, it may really depend on the material.

Metal fork and spoon? Squeak.

Ceramic (or maybe hard plastic, I'm not sure in this Airbnb)? Squeak.

Rubbermaid plastic? Nope. A lot leaves, but a greasy film and its tomato stain remained, until I brought soap in.

Notably, I was removing the same stuff in all three cases: a fatty tomato pork sauce. To be fair, the Rubbermaid had been storing the sauce for days, while the other pieces only had minutes of exposure. Still, I suspect that glass storage could have gotten clean with just hot water.