part0016

This one is deceptively simple: shut the lid of the toilet before you flush. As easy as it sounds, it is really easy to forget to do this but it’s worth taping up a huge sign on your bathroom door to make sure everyone in the house remembers.

Dr. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist working at the University of Arizona, explains that the force of flushing the toilet sends water particles (polluted with waste debris) up into the air.

These particles can float around for a few hours before finally settling on all surfaces of the bathroom and even your toothbrush.

While these particles are harmless in most cases, on rare occasions, they can carry E Coli and other harmful bacteria that you don’t want living on your toothbrush, make up, or any other bathroom products.

In reality, you probably don’t find the idea of brushing your teeth with harmless fecal-based bacteria all that appealing either. Even if it’s not harmful, it’s still pretty gross.

To avoid coating everything in your bathroom in a fine layer of waste particles, shut the lid before you flush the toilet. Make it a habit to keep the lid closed any time the toilet is not in use. This way, waste particles and bacteria stay safely trapped in the toilet and far away from your toothbrush or shower sponge .

You can consider this part of your habit of cleaning every day. This habit will help make sure that you maintain a high level of sanitation and cleanliness in your bathroom.

The bathroom is an especially important area of the house to keep clean because it’s where you go to eliminate waste and wash off germs and bacteria—which means that your toilet, sink, shower and other bathroom areas quickly become full of those same germs and bacteria that you cleaned off of yourself.

Keep the bathroom as clean as possible to avoid letting those bacteria multiply and find their way back onto your skin or worse, into your mouth, ears, eyes, or nose where they can cause serious infection.

Before this becomes a fully-fledged habit, it is going to be hard to remember to do this (and even harder to get the other members of your household on track with it, too). Here are some tips to help you remember to do it and help get everyone else in the habit as well:

Post a simple sign with something like “Close the lid before you flush” in the bathroom. Make sure it is somewhere that you see while sitting on the toilet (or above the toilet so that you see it when you go to flush) .

Use colors that attract attention so that you don’t ignore it. Red has been shown to attract the most attention (which is why it’s so often used in warning signs). Also use highly contrasting colors so that the sign really stands out (like bright red on a white background).

This may not be the most beautiful decoration but you only need to keep it up for a few weeks. Once everyone is in the habit of closing the lid, you can take it down.

Tell the other members of your household why it’s so important to close the lid before flushing.

They will probably be equally disgusted by the thought of having fecal bacteria on their stuff as well. If they understand why they’re doing it, they’ll be more likely to put the effort into making it a habit.

One trick to making any habit stick is to develop a trigger that reminds you to do it. For example, people trying to wake up earlier will get up in exactly the same way each morning.

This ritual of waking up the same way works as a trigger to get your mind in the right gear. To get in the habit of closing the lid, set up a new toilet ritual.

For example, when you get into the bathroom and see that the lid is open, try closing it and then opening it again. Ideally, when the habit is in place, you will have to open the lid each time you use the toilet (because it should be closed whenever it’s not in use). Shutting and opening the lid before you use the toilet will trigger your memory to close it before flushing.

It’s easy to use the toilet without paying so much attention to what you are doing. You use the toilet every single day (usually multiple times per day) so it becomes a sort of unconscious routine.

Since shutting the lid is not yet part of that unconscious routine, you need to work on being conscious of everything you are doing so that your mind doesn’t wander off, leaving your body to go through the routine motions.

Pay attention to everything from closing the door and sitting down to counting how many squares of toilet paper you pull off the roll.

You can explicitly tell yourself what you are doing to help you stay present and in the moment. For example, when shutting the door, say “I am shutting the door.”

It might feel silly or awkward but again, you only have to do this while you are trying to develop the habit. Once it becomes part of your regular routine, you’ll be able to shut the lid without having to consciously think about it.