You are normal

That level of unhygiene is insane

I thought you were being a germaphobe until I saw the pictures.

Fucking hell.

I live in a cluttered house, floordrobe et al.

I do keep it clean, just not tidy.

What the fuck is in the white bowl below the metal bowl with what I can only presume is batter in?

Looking at the pictures, there doesn’t seem to be a habit of cleaning and tidying up. My recommendation would be for you to clean that and tidy it up as best as you can and talk to everybody to try to keep it tidy after. It will be a lot of work, but the difference might be felt by them and they might want to keep it tidy and clean.

The habit must be built over time, try to talk to them to help keeping it tidy, it will not be easy and overnight, bad habits are hard to let go. But if you feel it is not good as it is, take the initiative!

Try to make a morning in saturday or sunday to be the cleaning time, or something like that. First show them how great looking it can be and then schedule the cleaning time so it does not accumulate over time.

Afraid, no, that’s insane.

Annoyed and mad yes.

You aren’t going to get sick. It’s just disgusting.

Everything else being said, putting TP in a specific garbage can is normal when toilet plumbing is not to the same standard and TP would clog it.

I learned this travelling.

I read your description and thought maybe overreacting a bit on the germaphobe… then I saw the photos… holy shit dawg

So, based on your description and the pictures, here’s my take:

Your family is unhygienic and gross. Water leaking from surfaces can pick up all sorts of gross stuff. Leaving food waste (I see banana peels I think?) out and exposed to open air leads to rotting and mold which can definitely make you sick. Used toilet paper with fecal matter on it left in an open trash can? HELLA gross.

BUT

Your reaction to this environment is going too far. Disinfecting your phone constantly? Concerns about people spitting in the trash? Not eating any leftovers or drinking from any container you didn’t open yourself? These are going too far. As others have pointed out, some contact with germs is important to maintain a healthy immune system.

There’s a middle-ground that both you AND your family are missing.

Wash your hands after using the bathroom and before eating, sure. Don’t leave things that rot out in the open, of course.

Putting the garbage can next to the table while clearing it? Totally fine. Eating leftovers that have been refrigerated for a day? Totally fine.

I understand why you’ve developed hyper-vigilence living in that kind of environment. It makes sense. But I think you’re probably overcompensating.

You might benefit from learning more about the human immune system, food safety, and other science-based topics. Did you know that urine, for example, is sterile? You can literally safely drink human urine (with some exceptions). Feces, on the other hand, is total opposite of sterile.

I’m sorry you have to live in such a gross environment. I hope you can find a way to convince your family to meet you in the middle.

I’ve found that the human body is remarkably resistant to a lot of shit the germaphobe thing has gone a bit far imo. That been said ur house looks like a fucking shithole. I’d be more worried about the mental toll living in a pigstye like that. That’s fucking disgusting not necessarily a health risk unless u got mould on shit ur eating (and even then odds are ur fine, most moulds are nontoxic, only a few can kill you).

I think the core issue in situations like these is that you are made to lack a baseline feeling of comfort in your home. Fear of germs can be a rationalization to justify the bad feelings, and it can also be used by others to dismiss your feelings. We each need to feel a baseline of control over our own bodies, and that can be disrupted by the persistent actions of others when those actions unavoidably affect us. I think that such living conditions can act as a sort of feedback loop, in which your need for a feeling of cleanliness becomes stronger in response to the grossness you perceive around you, while your attempts to get them to be more mindful of their actions might cause them to “double-down” on the very things causing your distress. You maybe only ever feel safe and comfortable in your room, or if it’s shared with others then maybe not even there.

You are not unreasonable to have these feelings; your feelings are valid.

I hope your post at least grants you some assurance that you are not the problem.

You absolutely have to wash your hands with soap after using the bathroom. Although keep in mind that men are able to urinate without touching anything unclean. But it’s not a big deal if the trash can is touching something. It’s not like infectious disease is in it. There are normal germs, and there are harmful germs. You need to be concerned about the harmful ones, not necessarily the normal ones.

Washing hands with soap is definitely important. IDK that you’d really get sick from a trash can being carried around the kitchen, but it sounds like your mom just generally doesn’t wash her hands after touching dirty stuff. Some germs are more harmful than others, I wouldn’t trust her around chicken or when there’s actually someone in the household with an infectious disease …

I subscribe to the George Carlin immunity theory. Your immune system is not a perfect machine, but it’s evolved for thousands of years to be able to defend us against the bad germs we are exposed to. Key phrase there is exposed to. If you are never exposed to at least small amounts of germs, your immune system has no training and will be unable to respond effectively to real threats, or it will freak out and panic at minor threats, making you sick from things that wouldn’t even bother someone else, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In George Carlin’s monologue, which I think is faithfully reproduced in text form here he makes the observation that for his whole childhood he swam in the Hudson River with raw sewage, and he never gets sick. The point he makes is most people’s immune systems cower and hide when they encounter an unknown pathogen, meanwhile his immune system is patrolling his body with automatic rifles and grenades and a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy.

Most germophobia is sold to us by cleaning product companies (through government representatives that they own). It’s all a fucking scam, they want to convince us to do things that make us sick and then sell us the cures and have the cures also make us sick so they can sell us cures for that too.

Thousands of years of evolution may not be perfect, but I trust it more than I trust these fucking corporate fucks, that’s for sure.

That’s pretty gross, definitely against all recommendations. I wouldn’t be comfortable with it. I also don’t think it’s super rare, and the average person probably won’t get sick from it that often. But I hold myself and those I care about to higher standards.

Don’t forget some germs are necessary to build immunity, if u isolate your self completely you will do more harm then good. If you have an illness or condition then yeah u make sense.

When did you last disinfect your phone?