SLOP1521#

Introduction to Life: Foundations of Being a Person

Week 2 — Personal Hygiene and Maintenance

The fridge#

Condiments. One ageing lime. Nothing that constitutes a meal.

This image comes back in weeks 4 and 10.

Today’s scope#

Showering, hair washing, deodorant, laundry frequency, and skincare only.

Each one gets a concrete routine to run, not just a definition.

The most immediately fixable topic in the course.

What’s ahead#

• Why frequency beats intention
• A real maintenance calendar
• What “good enough” looks like

Definitions#

• Shower (noun) — a fixture or enclosure in which a person stands to wash the body using a controlled spray of water, typically once per calendar day.
• Deodorant (noun) — a substance applied to the underarms to reduce detectable odour, typically reapplied daily.
• Laundry (noun, uncountable) — clothing and linens requiring washing — also, the act of washing them, ideally before the pile is visible from the doorway.
• Haircut (noun) — a scheduled trim of head hair, recommended at an interval measured in weeks, not academic semesters.
• Skincare (noun) — the practice of maintaining and improving the health, barrier function, and appearance of the skin.

Key point 1 — Frequency, not intention#

Aiello, A. E., Coulborn, R. M., Perez, V., & Larson, E. L. (2008). Effect of hand hygiene on infectious disease risk in the community setting: A meta-analysis. American Journal of Public Health, 98(8), 1372–1381.

Improved hand hygiene reduced gastrointestinal illness by 31% and respiratory illness by 21% across 30 pooled studies.

Check-in: If washing your hands more often cuts your odds of getting sick by a fifth to a third, what does that suggest about the rest of this list?

Key point 2 — Anchoring the daily basics#

Shower once a day, in the same slot as something you already do without deciding — right after waking, or right before bed.

Deodorant goes on straight after, to dry skin, before getting dressed. Wet skin means it wipes off on the towel instead of doing anything.

Haircuts: book the next appointment on the day of the last one, or set a standing reminder every four to six weeks. Decide the interval once, not every time it looks long.

Check-in: Which of shower, deodorant, or haircut currently has no fixed time or interval attached to it?

Key point 3 — The laundry pile as a schedule#

Twenty-three unpaired socks, collected from under a bed, a desk, and the back seat of a car.

Every one is proof laundry got deferred past the point a matching pair survived — not proof of a personality trait.

A schedule fixes the pile; keeping colours separate — whites in one load, everything else in another — fixes the pink towel.

Week 12 returns to this exact pile.

Check-in: Is your current laundry pile a schedule, or an event that happens to you?

Key point 4 — A skincare routine, step by step#

Cleanse the face once in the morning, once at night — a cleanser meant for skin, not the bar soap from the shower.

Moisturise straight after, while the face is still damp. That’s what stops the tight, dry feeling, not the cleanser.

Mornings only: sunscreen, SPF 30 or higher, cloudy days included.

Three products, in that order, under five minutes.

Check-in: Of the three skincare steps, which one is most often the one people skip?

Key point 5 — What “good enough” looks like#

Assignment 1 marks three things: a hygiene product selection (40%), stated against the alternatives on the shelf; three outfit photos (40%), one per occasion; a written justification (20%) tying each outfit back to its occasion.

None of it asks for a flawless routine — just one that survives a bad week and can defend its own choices.

Check-in: What's the smallest version of your routine that still counts as done?

In-lecture activity#

A blank seven-day grid, handed out or projected.

Fill in just one column — today’s date — with what you actually did for hygiene today.

No judgment. Nothing shared aloud.

Conclusion#

A schedule beats a feeling.

Shower, deodorant, laundry, haircuts, and skincare each now have a fixed time or interval attached, not just a definition.

Cheapest topic in the course to fix, and it compounds.

Coming up: this week’s lab (the Maintenance Calendar).

This week’s reflection#

Due 12:00 Tuesday of week 3:

Describe what actually went wrong with your hygiene routine this week — not the routine you intend to run, the one that actually happened — and name the smallest change that would have prevented it.

References#

Aiello, A. E., Coulborn, R. M., Perez, V., & Larson, E. L. (2008). Effect of hand hygiene on infectious disease risk in the community setting: A meta-analysis. American Journal of Public Health, 98(8), 1372–1381.