I assume we are all imagining, at all times, that we have COVID-19. Every time I cough in the night I assume this is it, I am infected. I immediately start planning for total isolation and making mental lists of everything else in the house I have touched in the past 24 hours and dithering over whether or not it is safe to take Advil.
Then I usually wake up in the morning feeling fine and carry out my business. But still! Every cough, or every time I feel a little chilly, or every time I have a hint of headache, I immediately jump to Worst Case Scenario.
Despite this, I feel like I could be doing a lot better at keeping our house disinfected. For my own sanity, I have only been moderately careful when grocery shopping. Of course I try not to touch my face and I wash my hands frequently after getting home and putting things away. But I haven’t gotten myself a face mask yet, and I don’t wipe down the car or doorknobs or grocery bins, and I don’t let stuff sit untouched for a day before putting it away, or anything like that. I occasionally feel a bit of panic over this but I found that I was panicking MORE when I was actually trying to disinfect everything all the time so I’m just going with this for now.
(I am, however, interested in hearing your own personal shopping protocols and methods and seeing if any will work for me without making me spin out of control. Comment away!)
In other cleanliness news, like most of us I am now cleaning my own house, as our service is suspended for now. I have to say…I don’t mind it. It’s a ton of work, and takes a whole day every two weeks, so it’s not like I don’t appreciate someone else taking care of this for us. But I get a lot of satisfaction from standing in the middle of a clean house and knowing I did this, I made it clean. It’s very immediate in a way that my regular work is not. I’m even considering continuing to self-clean when this is all over, but we’ll see how long my resolution lasts once I lose my Cleaning Audience and their Exclamations of Extreme Appreciation (i.e. my husband).
One thing that comes from cleaning your own house is that you really dig into those areas that don’t get enough regular attention. We have two full bathrooms in this house, one that Sir Monkeypants and I share with the Captain, and one that the girls use. For at least a year now, the girls’ bathroom has had a funky smell that I have been unable to locate and eliminate despite many sniff tests. I have bought every kind of spray and room freshener possible and some of them can cover the smell, sometimes, but mostly it just lingers there, all the time, to my extreme frustration.
Last week while cleaning their bathroom I noticed that there was mould growing on the grout between the shower tiles. EUREKA, I thought. I ordered a super powerful bleach-based mould cleaner (because I am not the type to mess around with home cleaning solutions, BRING ME CHEMICALS GODDAMMIT), and picked it up an hour later from our Home Hardware which was doing curbside pickup. Then I came home and sprayed the crap out of the shower and the mould vanished BEFORE MY EYES and OH MY HEAVENS, the bathrom smells AMAZEBALLS.
It was a major win, is all I’m saying, and couldn’t we all use some of that right now? Yes, yes we can.
TurtleHead 
I’m still shopping pretty much like I did before, while obviously complying with social distancing and putting up with queues (it’s getting out of control around here!). I do my best to not touch products unless I put them in my basket but sometimes I have to check best-by dates so, well, sorry. I try to use my credit card (used to pay cash). I’m not overly paranoid and certainly don’t wipe boxes, etc. I use hand sanitizer when I’m done and then I wash my hands when I come home but I’ve always done that (the hand washing, not the hand sanitizer part…).
The only items I clean with alcohol every night are my phone, earbuds and my FitBit wristband. I tend to do that often anyway… not so much because of the virus but these are items I wear or touch often when I’m out.
I clean the house as usual. Honestly, my own cleaning routine hasn’t changed much. By the way, we’ve always had a mold issue and I suspect it’s the water. I deep clean everything with bleach and all every week but after a few days, it,s back, it’s crazy. Definitely the water in Ottawa, never seen that anywhere else and it’s a newish house.
I don’t do anything special with the groceries. I do have a thing of wipes in the car (that I found in our camping box) and after returning to the car I wipe my hands, the steering wheel and the car door handles. Eve and I always come home from anywhere and scrub our hands, so that’s the same. I put everything away and wash my hands and the table and counter. That’s it. I’m also finding the cleaning quite satisfying, but I’m not doing it all in one day – I have a bad shoulder and arm right now, so I can only tax it so much at one time.
The funny thing is that I’m the biggest hypochondriac around, and I’m fairly convinced that if I DO get covid I will die from it, but I have not once thought that I have it – and I have felt really unwell a couple of times. Not sure what that’s all about, but I’m sure my husband is thankful for it.