if you use a measuring cup for water do you put it back in the cupboard after using it?
Yes. I don't even wash a knife that's only been used to cut bread--well when it's just me anyway.
after dishes isn't the food that is stuck in the strainer clean?
Yes but only briefly. Many of their chemical components start to decay quickly when exposed to air, and they will also attract microorganisms.
have you ever wiped a fork off on your shirt (or jeans) and put it back in the drawer?
Not even when I was living on campus. I'll re-use a water glass without washing it, and as I mentioned I'm not too scared of bread knives since bread doesn't go bad quickly. But I draw the line at just about anything else. And I'm not going to eat with something that has touched my dirty clothes.
Do you wash the bottom of you feet when you take a shower?
Not specifically, at least not during the 75% of the year when I never go barefoot. As someone else pointed out, your feet are standing in running, soapy water. So unless you've been jogging barefoot through a dog park there's probably nothing down there that won't come off with a good soapy rinse.
How about showering itself?
The U.S. Marines have to learn to shower in thirty seconds. That's pretty water-efficient. The infrastructure here in the Washington DC region is abominable and we've had several long power outages. I was able to take a decent shower in one minute to save the hot water. Of course I couldn't do my hair but Marines don't have any.
Or wiping your arse for that matter?
Back home in California my wife has one of those Japanese toilets with the built-in bidet. Quite a luxury. I'm not sure if it uses enough water and warm air to equal the carbon footprint of toilet paper, but it's a lot more comfortable than most brands of TP.
My office building gets a brand of TP called "Heavenly," which is aptly named. I haven't been able to find it anywhere, apparently it's only sold wholesale.
Paper towels are remarkably sturdy. You can throw them in the washer and dryer reuse them a couple of times. They lose their quilting but they're fine for cleaning up spills.
If you ever pull a pair of pants out of the dryer and say, "Oh crap, I left a paper towel in my pocket," don't throw it away!
Always flush with the lid down. According to Charles Gerba, PhD, a professor of microbiology at University of Arizona in Tucson, flushing the toilet with the lid up is not wise. "Polluted water vapor erupts out of the flushing toilet bowl and it can take several hours for these particles to finally settle -- not to mention where," he says. "If you have your toothbrush too close to the toilet, you are brushing your teeth with what's in your toilet."
I am convinced that this is one of the reasons younger people have such screwed up immune systems. They're never given a chance to calibrate themselves against real toxins! So in confusion they attack perfectly healthy foods (allergies), harmless molecules in the air (asthma) and even your own cells (fibromyalgia and other autoimmune disorders).
Have you ever stopped to wonder where wheat allergies came from? Certainly not inherited from one's ancestors: anyone who couldn't eat bread in the Middle Ages would have starved to death before his third birthday. Or peanut allergies? Half the kids I went to school with ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. That's all their parents could afford. How about being allergic to dogs? They ran loose all over town, no one could have avoided coming close to one. Or perfume? One of the things that made life pleasant; all women wore it.
When my wife and I were in Mexico, she duct-taped her mouth shut in the shower to avoid getting one drop of water in her system. I rinsed my mouth with the stuff after brushing my teeth. Guess which one of us got dysentery?
