Do You Always Wash Your Hands After Using the Bathroom?

February 11, 2026

Do you always wash your hands after using the bathroom?

It is a simple question. Almost childish. The kind of thing we learn early and assume everyone else has figured out by now.

But the question is not really about soap.

It is about what you do when no one is watching.

If I am being honest, do you really want to know someone else’s answer? Would it change your opinion of them? Would you look at them differently at dinner? Shake their hand a little more cautiously?

The discomfort is interesting.

Because most of us know the right answer. The socially acceptable answer. The expected answer. The one that signals responsibility and basic decency.

And yet life is full of moments where the expected answer and the actual behavior drift apart.

No one saw.

It was quick.

It probably does not matter.

Those tiny rationalizations shape more than we realize.

Integrity is rarely tested in dramatic, cinematic moments. It is tested in bathrooms. In empty rooms. In small private decisions that no one will audit.

Washing your hands takes what, twenty seconds? Thirty? It is not a heroic act. It is not a sacrifice. It is a tiny act of care, for yourself and for others.

Which is what makes it such a good question.

If you skip it, what are you telling yourself? That it is unnecessary? That the risk is low? That you are in a hurry?

And if you never skip it, what are you practicing? Discipline? Consideration? Fear?

There is a spectrum here.

Some people cut corners casually. Some people overcorrect obsessively. Both patterns say something.

This question lives in the space between intention and behavior.

In The Weight You Forgot You Were Carrying, I wrote about how unnoticed habits accumulate. Not the dramatic ones. The quiet ones. The ones that seem harmless in isolation but add up over time.

Skipping small responsibilities works the same way.

So does honoring them.

Habits are rehearsals for who you are becoming.

When you choose the shortcut, you are rehearsing a version of yourself that negotiates with standards. When you follow through, even in something trivial, you are rehearsing alignment.

This is not about moral superiority. It is about awareness.

Where else are you taking shortcuts because the cost feels low?

Where else are you going above and beyond because you need control?

Sometimes we skip the small thing because we are tired. Sometimes we double down on the small thing because it gives us a sense of order in a chaotic day.

Neither makes you terrible. Neither makes you perfect.

But both are signals.

There is a public version of you. The one who keeps promises, meets deadlines, shakes hands confidently. Then there is the private version. The one who makes choices when the room is empty.

Which version is shaping your life more?

It is tempting to dismiss this as overthinking hygiene. But simple questions have a way of exposing patterns.

If you are careless in small things, you will likely be careless in slightly bigger ones. If you are intentional in small things, that intentionality travels.

You do not need to be flawless. You do not need to scrub your hands like a surgeon every time. But it is worth asking yourself whether your private standards match your public ones.

The goal is not guilt.

The goal is alignment.

If your answer to this question makes you uncomfortable, that discomfort is useful. It tells you there is a gap somewhere between who you want to be and what you actually do.

And that gap is where growth lives.

Small corrections compound.

Just like crooked progress.